did it'll be like oh man I programm drums at home but it doesn't sound like that why because you know it it runs through our our system when we don't have access to that or if we're just choosing to do something in the Box because we we like the sound of it for a given mix how we do that thing and still manage to be completely stoked on the result at the top of that rack I think is tape saturation and then a dangerous back CQ that's just very gentle filters is did you show the Machine Head so the the hardware is in that picture that's okay pull up Rick Carson's machine this is a great time to talk about that okay segue from a segue some secret sauce if Rick Carson made it I know it's gonna be good dude it's so good and he was the one who told me about this and I've been begging him to make a plugin of it forever so I can use it on my summing situation and he just made it it's not out yet it's still in beta what's it called MB Machine Head sick it's a digital tape saturation box from the early 2000s they are impossible to find and the fact that Rick turned this into a plugin is a godsend and it sounds incredible we're going to make adjustments to the to the tuus because this this was slapped on after the fact to substitute for the hardware but it's going to go through this guy it's going to go through a set of filters we have the hardware like the literal Hardware equivalent of that this is a trick that I will show later it is the only thing that we will automate on the on the master bus this is a Widener just for the choruses Eric Valentine hey Bor so let's go it's one of the only tricks that I think in the context of a rock mix Works literally every time it's better every single time I put it onut up the sides of DB on the chorus so traditionally you just bump up the volume a little bit but the problem is it doesn't always get bigger because sometimes you're digging into your compressor harder or your limiter depending on where you're doing it but this kind of bows out your sides and just you know gives you that apparent volume without really turning anything up well okay so in addition to that though Joel remember what I was talking about earlier as I mentioned bumping up of the master bus before the limiter but after the compressor so that's why it's good sometimes to have those two options because like you said yeah if you bump up the all bus which is prior to the compressor yes you're right you're going to [ __ ] up your compressor settings if if you already are hitting it pretty hard but that's again that's a workaround for that if you do want that extra volume just put your limiter on a separate bus so you have a little bit of flexibility with that and and actually I'm I'm G to put it after the compressor because I typically do in the box but I'm I'm gonna play how do we do that on analog I can't remember do we do it I do it on my print tracks we we do it before everything typically we do it before everything so it it doesn't stress out the compressor because the only thing that's giving more information is just the sides and that's typically wide guitars you know wide overheads rooms stuff like that so it's it's just more excitement we should try it on the print track cuz Joel said it was good I'm going to stick it after the SSL bus impressor so I'm I'm going to play a bit of you know last bar of the precourse leading into the chorus you fall did you get what you came did you come to war okay so I I put that in right mode just so that I could show used automation delete my squirely points and then come over here and I make sure my value is Just One DB this this awesome mixer Jeff Ellis who works at East West um and he was talking about one of the things that we kind of lose in the box is the fact that analog has imperfections between left and right channels of whatever so you get natural width but as a consequence more stereo information comes off as more mono so so doing a move like this in the box is actually going to make it feel you know more analog in the abstract because you're you're Sim simulating the width and the difference that you get from you know say a summing mixer or something where the amplifier stage is just a little bit different on the left and the right so this is something that can you know it's subtle so I'll I'll play the the automation now did it just slaps a little harder I'm going to get into nitty-gritty stuff this this soothe setting is something that we had prior to the hardware chain as we were working on it it just takes like you know super low 808s or Bass drops stuff and kind of you know keeps them in check um it's just a little little nugget that pops down wall harder you fall not much at all but you know helps in the long run bus compressor Dr Dre setting cross-eyed 30 millisecond attack and 0.1 release 4: one and then the thing that varies is the side chain filter and that's ultimately going to determine how much of your Kick Drum is pumping your entire mix or 808 or whatever you have going on so I I'll exaggerate that real fast so typically for us this lives between like 70 and 90 depends on like how subie the kick drum is and whatever but right around Yonder sounded pretty good on on this one so next in the hard chain is a set of Transformers Joel you have a pair also I do and I love them Focus right red Transformers I forget that they're in there because they're like black Transformers in the yeah they're just hanging out in the back there for those of you who don't know it's like a box with an XLR hanging off of it and it's it's just like right off the Focus right consoles you know what I mean like it's not it's it's like you literally go into your your Hardware box and you pull out the Transformer and you wire it to an XLR so thanks RI Carson thank you Bas Rick Rick Carson the closest thing that we have have come up with to to that is cck true iron which is literally just a Transformer emulation the 111c which is like a Western Electric like Sylvia Massie thing that one to my ear sounds the best on on a two bus but you can experiment with whatever the plugin rules it's very very cool to emulate the exact Hardware this is the exact setting that we had on the hardware curve Bender also so that EQ phenomenal the hardware and the plugin like wow secret weapon on guitars also but for for now it's going to live on this two bus so we are people of 50 HZ shelf and 12K shelves and then you know just ducking a little mid-range and adding some of that nicer mid-range than 500 we don't have an A&M prototype mastering EQ plug-in version but we have the S which is arguably better definitely this is you mean better than the& mq it's hard to say yeah it there different but for my money this is the greatest plugin equalizer ever made AG this this thing is another Rick Carson invention development the setting on the A&M EQ is a Shelf at 50 and a Shelf at 12 also so we're just getting more of that it's just a different curve it's a different Q it has a a different quality but it's just a little bit of weight and a little bit of that sparkly stuff another thing that has kind of allowed us to transition more in the box is this guy the God particle the Jason Joshua by Cradle audio yeah very very cool plugin if you hit the meters the way that you're supposed to it will reward you it's doing some multiband stuff it's doing a lot of stuff under the hood if this is at 100% it's doing quite a bit of SSL style compression anyway yeah which you don't need yeah so so we we keep it closer to 50% sometimes less because we're already getting the pumpy quality that we want off of this that plugin is really designed to sort of be like a one trick P like just put one plugin on your master bus that would be the one that kind of thing so you got to be real careful with it cuz it does get heavy-handed if you're already saucing your stuff up yeah and it's worth mentioning the limiter is cool for you know 808 based music um we typically don't for rock music but there's exceptions to that also we'll get into limiter stuff as as we approach the end of this session I'm going to play armix and and then I'm going to play what we submitted to Chris Athens for mastering did you get me did you come [Music] [Applause] [Music] to pretty close it's it's a little different you know we we could we could finesse things to get it closer if that's the true objective is to match something that we've already done but to my ear the in the box mix sounds very good so it's it's like they're going to be different there's a little there's a little bit of stereo quality stuff that that only can really be done I think with well okay so there's also something one thing that we haven't talked about which is on the master bus which is a big part of the sound actually is the silk knob yes on the which is a Jensen style Transformer on the need 5060 over there right there I don't know if you guys can see that or not there's they make five they make 500 series of this and but yeah it's I mean it's just basically just you know a Transformer with a with a drive knob on it essentially and there's two different or is it two different ones there's two different ones yeah there there's a red and a blue the red and a blue the red one is the ne proprietary one I found we used to use that we definitely use the red one on this mix because since then I've decided the blue is a little bit softer and better but the red one's a little bit more forward sounding it's a little more aggressive maybe which I thought was cool at for a long time but the more I do it I'm more the more I prefer the the geranium Jensen transformer yeah and for reference that knob will live anywhere between noon and like 3 o'clock yep for us so so it you know saturating and then saturating and then saturating through Transformers through silk Transformers through the output stage of the 5060 it's it's getting hit a whole bunch of different times that's been the that's been sort of Theo I think is is not hitting any one compressor or limiter or Transformer too hard and just real subtle stuff in because some people will look at my master bus and be like dude this that's so many plugins and it's like it's really not doing a whole lot you know yeah I mean if if we look the son is doing like a half DB a before and after where you bu bypass all the inserts it's worth mentioning we will never listen to this song like this because we have on all the time well we have most of it all the time not not sometimes I'll turn the eqs off sometime definitely turn the limiters off sometimes we don't even have any mastering limiters on there but that's right sometimes we'll turn like but but almost always like a lot I know a lot of times when I'm starting the mix I'll turn off the all the EQ stuff and but it almost always has the Machine Head box on or the whatever vinyl plug-in we're trying to use and then an SSL compressor I actually don't know what this is going to sound like but like [ __ ] probably yeah it's not bad and here it comes [Music] did I mean it's worth mentioning though that this song was already like kind of dense and already this is one of those records that just like already sounds good I guess just tracks up with nothing on it so because we don't have the the limiting stages on this pleasantly surprised there's not a huge level difference between the two it's just like a a tighter version of it you know there there's compression gluing things together and then then after it's glued together it's kind of inflated again on on either side with the the lowend that you can lose from from that kind of thing the only thing kind of left to dial is this tape plugin which is very very cool I'm going to make sure that I'm hitting the meters at a reasonable level wall the harder you fall did you get what you came did you come to [Music] war did you get what you G for those the same settings we have on the hardware um they're not but the gain staging is is different let me see if you can dial it in the same way that we have it set down there this thing doesn't sound like tape it doesn't like at all it does something completely different it's made to ba tape simulator but the thing that it does to the highend it just makes it sound expensive and awesome there's also a little bit at this setting there's a little bit of low compression like low in compression that happens and it's very subtle it's like a 0.5 DB like 60 htz or something um Rick was telling me about it but it's it does something to the low end that then gives the aliasing of the high end to sort of the Alias harmonics more room to breathe did what you came in did you come to start War [Music] this yeah I mean they're similar yeah can hear a difference I think I you know do still prefer the hardware version but the difference between having did a great job yeah of having this and not having it like I I I will praise Rick and his team let's hear it without it completely yeahp it on y yeah all day all day all day