Waveforms?

[seezesea]

So I was just listening to the beats for battle 229 and it made me wonder why are some people's waveforms on soundcloud so even and sorta squared off and others (mine included) really wavey with lots of peaks and valleys. 2 that stuck out at me in that battle were pillow's and asha c's, just looking at the waveforms you would think those beats don't have any dynamic contrast at all but they do. Do folks just compress and/or limit the hell out of their beats or what?

[HELLOPILLOW]

FIRST: COMPRESSION(S) ON SP

THEN

IZOTOPE VST (COMP/EQ/DYNAMICS/MAXIMIZER/STEREO ENHANCER...)
+ LIMITER FX (+ PUSH A FEW NOT TOO MUCH BC YOU LOOSE DYNAMICS WHEN YOU PUSH TOO MUCH)

ON THE MASTER

I HEARD EXTERNAL COMPRESSOR/LIMITER DO MIRACLES BUT I DON'T HAVE ONE

[asha c]

I just used the vinyl sim all the way up, its the compressor thats caused it to lose the dynamic range

[ryba]

Seem some guys (me included) use some Maximizer (Limiter?) in DAW (or some external units) at the end of mixdown/mastering process.

[seezesea]

Interesting, I've heard good things about that izotope so I'll have to look into it when I get a suitable computer. I've got some experimenting to do for sure, I'll have to give external stuff a shot cuz I can't seem to find the right ratios with the 404sx's compressor, at least not over fully completed tracks

[JOHNSONDONTSURF]

This is probably a stupid question, but when everyone says they are using compression is that when the whole track is complete or do you compress all the samples one by one i.e. kick-resample compressor, snare-resample compressor. Or do you record the drums then resample the drum loop and use compressor.

Also i see some people when recording into daws they record everything one by one and line up the tracks. i.e. the drum loop is on track 1 the sample is one track 2 and the accappella is on track 3. All my stuff as been recorded live into one track. Is that a BIG NO NO?

[asha c]

This is probably a stupid question, but when everyone says they are using compression is that when the whole track is complete or do you compress all the samples one by one i.e. kick-resample compressor, snare-resample compressor. Or do you record the drums then resample the drum loop and use compressor.

I think it varies for me, sometimes I compress each thing and then the whole track too, sometimes just the whole track, pretty much just messing until I like it.

Also i see some people when recording into daws they record everything one by one and line up the tracks. i.e. the drum loop is on track 1 the sample is one track 2 and the accappella is on track 3. All my stuff as been recorded live into one track. Is that a BIG NO NO?

I just record it like live, I guess how you did yours, as one track!! that's because I'm too impatient but I think the mix suffers because of it, I don't really mind that though I just like the immediacy of getting an idea and recording it rather than messing around with stuff for ages, guess it depends on how much control you want over mixing the final track!

[JOHNSONDONTSURF]

asha c,

Do you use a interface when recording into daws? I thinking of going back to just recording into fruity loops just recording in the mic jack via a rca to aux cable.

[asha c]

I use a roland ua 25ex into reaper but i used to just go straight in the mic input until i bought studio speakers, dont see why you cant just go straight into FL

[ryba]

OK.
I think it should be like this:
When recording to DAW eg. a whole rock band

record separate tracks for each sound:
Kick
Snare top
Snare bottom
hi tom
low tom
floor tom
hi-hat
left overhead
right overhead
bass guitar
first guitar
second guitar
keyboards (in stereo)
voice
etc.

use compression on each track/instrument if you like (specially for drums), equalizer, reverb etc.
set volume of each track to make no clipping output
set volume of master (all tracks together) to make no clipping

(so, with sampler, you can/should do almost whole work with samples on your sampler till this point)

then:

mixdown tracks (or record whole track from sampler to PC) with some mastering effects and reverb

then use volume maximizer for your result