[Ardour-Users] Using a 'clean' bus to compare

[jonetsu at teksavvy.com]

On Sat, 14 Nov 2015 14:13:10 +0100
Ralf Mardorf <ralf.mardorf at alice-dsl.net> wrote:

> Today everybody can add hundreds of effects to a single audio track,
> this was impossible in the past.
 
> When do you feel better? After drinking no or a little bit alcohol or
> after drinking hundred of bottles of alcohol?
 
> It's the same for mixing, less is more.

I play guitar.  Acoustic guitar, and acoustic bass guitar.  And I do not
have pickups, only one mic.  So I'm inherently not tempted to add
effects. I do use Robin Gareus 4-band EQ on all tracks, including
master bus.  I did not see Fons' EQ.  Where can it be gotten from ?
Robin's 4-band EQ is quite good I find, as well as the analyzer which
for me provides essential feedback on where the audio waves actually
are happening.

I do try stuff, and recently I got Overtone's reverb.  This was
triggered by a comment here somewhere or in LAU, from someone who
teaches, who did not like the Calf reverb.  And I must say, I compared
both, and the Calf sounds cold and as if it does not really have a
relation to the source.  The Overtone sounds as if it belongs to the
sound, it carries over the warmth.  And a little is just right, unless
one wants a special effect.  For a synth it might be less important,
but for acoustic guitars it makes a substantial difference.

Later, I'll tackle the topic of how to mic instruments.  I haven't
tried many things yet.
 
> If I were you, I would start with adding Fon's parametric EQ to each
> audio track and 1 post-fader aux send to share one reverb for
> all tracks by default. Try not to use any other effect, for most
> things people nowadays use a compressor, no compressor is needed, it
> could be handled by using a single instance of an EQ, such as Fon's
> parametric EQ.

In the attached screenshot we see that the first two tracks have a send
to the CleanBus after the fader (Attenuateur).  For the 3rd track the
send was created in the same way, then I moved it before the fader.
Each send to the CleanBus has a small horizontal fader (Depart).  I
woulds tend to think that these send faders would have to be to the max
so that the volume control is relegated to the main faders below.  In
this setup, only the 3rd tracks would have a send whose volume
is actually controlled by the main track fader, would it ?  I will try
it right now...  All sends would not be affected by the tracks EQ I
believe.

> Ensure that stereo mixes sound ok in mono too, canceling out
> frequencies, doubling speed of ping pong delays etc. could happen if
> stereo becomes mono.

I'll certainly keep that topic for later :)
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