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Milwaukee Area, WI

So I wrote about 10 songs and I wanna put them out into an EP. I pro-sounded my DMG and the sounds is better, but whenever I try to record I'm always disappointed with the sound quality. I record in Wav 16-bit loseless and it still sounds kinda poor. It doesn't sound as good as some of the other artist out there. How do I go about making it sound like I know what I'm doing and not an audible mush?

I record with Audio Hijack Pro and I have Soundbooth and Logic 9 to edit audio. Edit: I have a Mackie 802 Mixing board as well.

Last edited by Moriokun (Dec 10, 2011 12:36 am)

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BK

What's the method you're using to get the audio into the computer? are you going in through a mic jack or through a dedicated audio interface using usb/firewire?

You can get good sound by using the mic jack if you gainstage correctly and don't blast the game boy too loud, but if you can use an audio interface, that'll likely give you a headstart in terms of sound quality.

You may also want to try using some EQ and maybe a touch of compression in Logic.  Also properly adjusting the levels on your instruments in LSDJ/nanoloop will help your songs sound more cohesive.

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Milwaukee Area, WI

yes, I am using the mic jack on my Mac (It's stereo in). I fiddle with the EQ knobs on my hardware mixer till I get what I like. I figured out how to get the levels on the recording software (Audio Hijack Pro) just right so that I'm not hitting the cut off. I usually get the levels around center of the meter so that only the snares and kicks are just touching the yellow range. As for audio interface, would one of these work? I really don't wanna spend too much money. 

I had a hunch that I wasn't equalizing correctly, although I have no idea how to do compression; looks like I have a fun project this weekend. I'm gonna be honest, my ears aren't the best, what is the general rule of thumb when equalizing and compressing?

Last edited by Moriokun (Dec 10, 2011 1:00 am)

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Dublin, IN
Moriokun wrote:

yes, I am using the mic jack on my Mac (It's stereo in). I fiddle with the EQ knobs on my hardware mixer till I get what I like. I figured out how to get the levels on the recording software (Audio Hijack Pro) just right so that I'm not hitting the cut off. I usually get the levels around center of the meter so that only the snares and kicks are just touching the yellow range. As for audio interface, would one of these work? I really don't wanna spend too much money. 

I had a hunch that I wasn't equalizing correctly, although I have no idea how to do compression; looks like I have a fun project this weekend. I'm gonna be honest, my ears aren't the best, what is the general rule of thumb when equalizing and compressing?

Reply to part one; USB is almost automatically better than the sound card. The data transfers faster, allowing for higher quality. You could probably do better, but even that should be better than this.

Part two; I'm probably about as lost as you are.

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Matthew Joseph Payne
Crooked Sidewalks wrote:

Reply to part one; USB is almost automatically better than the sound card. The data transfers faster, allowing for higher quality.

That is not at all how it works. USB is a digital signal, the headphone jack is an analog signal - there is no "data" in an analog audio signal, just analog audio. Getting an audio interface just moves the job of converting analog audio into digital data from the internal sound card (decent at the job) to an interface) hopefully much better at the job).

The issue here is impedance matching - a prosounded gameboy outputs at line level-ish, and your Apple laptop's audio input is designed to recognize the difference between line level and mic level. Long boring technical story short, I do quick demos of gameboy tracks by plugging prosounded (or even unmodded headphone) jacks into my laptop's sound in all the time. It sounds totally passable, and yours should to.

When I do serious recording of the game boy, it always goes through an audio interface, and there is a noticeable improvement in bass response and clarity which I find most necessary when combining the resulting signal with other signals.

My recommendations:

1. Try recording without the mixer (straight into the jack) and see what happens. You may very well be fucking something up with that mixer in line. If you can get it to sound halfway decent without the mixer, then try working the mixer back in. You haven't really given any details on how you are plugging the mixer in, so hopefully you aren't using the headphone output or something like that.

2. Eventually buy an audio interface; if all you can afford right now is that Behringer thing, wait. You need to get something that will actually do a better job than your internal sound card. Save up a couple hundred bucks at least.

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Milwaukee Area, WI
kineticturtle wrote:
Crooked Sidewalks wrote:

Reply to part one; USB is almost automatically better than the sound card. The data transfers faster, allowing for higher quality.

1. Try recording without the mixer (straight into the jack) and see what happens. You may very well be fucking something up with that mixer in line. If you can get it to sound halfway decent without the mixer, then try working the mixer back in. You haven't really given any details on how you are plugging the mixer in, so hopefully you aren't using the headphone output or something like that.

2. Eventually buy an audio interface; if all you can afford right now is that Behringer thing, wait. You need to get something that will actually do a better job than your internal sound card. Save up a couple hundred bucks at least.

Reply to 1) I just got the mixer last week so I'm still learning how to use it. I have winter break coming up so I'm going to focus on recording then. As for audio hook up: I send everything into the hardware mixer, fiddle with the knobs, till I get it close to what I want, then either run audio straight to my speakers using RCA Tape Out, or straight to my audio recording program via a 3.5mm cable to the Mac's line in and then I redirect the audio back out to the speakers from the line out. Pic here.

Reply to 2) I'm glad you said that because I just spent a couple hundred dollars upgrading my set and really don't wanna spend money unless I have to. I don't really care if my stuff is studio quality, I just want it too not stick out with it's bad audio quality if you mixed it in with other tracks in a playlist. 

From what I'm gathering, I just need to equalize better and figure out compression.

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rochester, ny
Moriokun wrote:

It doesn't sound as good as some of the other artist out there. How do I go about making it sound like I know what I'm doing and not an audible mush?

you could always pay someone else to mix it too.

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Tokyo, Japan

Have you tried recording something other than your gameboy? There is a possibility you messed up the pro sound mod.

Edit - Sorry, that wasn't intended as hostile I am a well known botcher of all kinds of things.

Last edited by Lazerbeat (Dec 10, 2011 6:54 am)

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Milwaukee Area, WI
Lazerbeat wrote:

Have you tried recording something other than your gameboy? There is a possibility you messed up the pro sound mod.

Edit - Sorry, that wasn't intended as hostile I am a well known botcher of all kinds of things.

It's cool man. No it sounds fine when I'm writing songs. Only the recorded song sounds a little weird. I think I just need to Equalize better. Gonna have to try it over winter break.

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Maybe it is just a problem with equalization. Do you use flat headphones when composing? Are you equalizing to much? (that can make it sound bad (maybe your bass is clipping?)...) Try no eq = )

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buffalo, NY

Ok if you're using a DMG I have some bad news for you. 

You don't need awesome mixing and EQ to sound good.

Yes, I do post processing on my tracks, but it's very minimal with some minor EQ bumps, limiting, and a tiny bit of stereo enhancement.  Nothing major at all.  Why is that?  Because you can get a pretty great mix coming right out of your DMG.  You have to make it huge in your arrangement, not in post production magic.  Surprisingly so, it still baffles me, and I'm a recording engineer and mastering engineer.

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Milwaukee Area, WI
danimal cannon wrote:

You have to make it huge in your arrangement, not in post production magic.

How does one make it huge in the arrangement? Also please define what you mean by huge.

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buffalo, NY

I make a big sounding kick drum, usually wave channel (it's loud and goes an octave lower than the PWchannels).  Same thing with the snare using noise channel shaping. 

Then I keep my instrument volumes relatively low in order to make the kick and snare sound louder, and bigger.  It impossible to make your kick louder, but it's easy to lower the volumes of everything else. 

Next I play around with a stereo effects in order to achieve a WIDE sound.  This can be tricky to do right, but adds a lot of depth to your arrangement. 

Check out some of the stuff on my record if you need examples.  I learned everything I know from critical listening.  If you purchase it, I also include the save files if you want to poke around and see what I did.  Good luck! 

Edit: these aren't THE ONLY answers, this is just what has worked for me.  The DMG is a surprisingly powerful instrument but it took me a while to be able to unlock it, keep at it and listen critically to what others are doing.

Last edited by danimal cannon (Dec 10, 2011 9:55 pm)

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Matthew Joseph Payne

Listen to the danimal. Also be aware of the quality of the speakers and headphones you're listening to. There are probably things going on in your tracks you're not hearing that can have unpredictable effects on your inputs, outputs and listening environment.

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Milwaukee Area, WI

accidentally hit submit, ignore post. Will respond later.

Last edited by Moriokun (Dec 10, 2011 11:20 pm)

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Canada
danimal cannon wrote:

I keep my instrument volumes relatively low in order to make the kick and snare sound louder, and bigger.  It impossible to make your kick louder, but it's easy to lower the volumes of everything else. 

Next I play around with a stereo effects in order to achieve a WIDE sound.  This can be tricky to do right, but adds a lot of depth to your arrangement. 

The DMG is a surprisingly powerful instrument but it took me a while to be able to unlock it, keep at it and listen critically to what others are doing.

Listen to Danimal. Truer words have never been spoken.
post-production can help even out frequency ranges, giving each 'track' its own 'space', but to make it wide and thick *cough*, you must first invent it on your gameboy. Everyone should be referred to this comment when asking how they make their chipmusic sound better, haha.