Can't hear my K's, Please help me!

[doc7string]

Hey everyone,

Hoping all had a great Thanksgiving. I just finished recording the lead vocal track on a Country tune that I've been working on, and noticed that I am having trouble hearing the K sounds (and T's to a lesser extent). Even with the vocal turned up a couple dB higher than I would like, those consonants just don't articulate well in the mix. When listening to the soloed track I can clearly hear them (clearly annunciated well without exaggeration on the track). The song is a fairly bare bones tune [vocal, acoustic guitar, clean telecaster, drums (played with brushes), bass, and BG vocals on the chorus only]. I did use master works compression on the lead vocals with the following settings.

Cutoff between lo and mid 500Hz
Cutoff between mid and hi 4000Hz
Hi threshold -19 dB
ratio 2.12
makeup gain 3.9 dB
attack 26.10ms
release 0.01sec
Mid threshold -17
ratio 1.10
makeup gain 2.3
attack 25.37
release 0.01
Hi threshold -20
ratio 1.49
makeup gain 4.3
attack 14.39
release 0.48

My input and output are both set at 0.

Before anyone cringes too much over my settings, you're right, I don't know what the hell I am doing. After hours of tweaking this is the best my novice engineering butt could come up with. For completeness sake, I am using a Blue Bluebird mic through my 828 mkII direct to DP 6.

I appreciate any help you can give!

Paul

[doc7string]

Darn. Jjust realized I posted this in general mac instead of general recording. Could an administrator please move this to the right place for me? Thanks!

Paul

[mikehalloran]

>Before anyone cringes too much over my settings, you're right, I don't know what the hell I am doing<

Well, I am not going to argue that.

Neither Masterworks, Ozone nor any other such processor can be slapped onto a mix and instantly make it good. You need to do that before you apply a finalizer. Such programs are designed to make dynamic mixes more radio friendly - if you can hear them working, it's way too much.

Get the file sounding as good as you can without Masterworks. Pay close attention to your vocal - ride the gain before you apply compression. If using a de-esser, back it off a bit.

Some of your frequency tweaks occur in the range where certain vocal sounds are made. If you don't understand how eq affects the human voice, then you need to play with your vocal track alone. Isolate it, apply all your effects individually and together - get an understanding of what you are doing.

When it comes to Masterworks, try some presets, apply gently. The goal is to increase the perception of loudness, not smash your mix with a brick.

Unless you are mixing for K-LOVE - then smash away. To get the signal to be heard on their 10W station network, they squeeze the signal as flat as possible. Knowing this, you need to engineer your mix to survive that amount of brick-wall limiting and still come out so that it doesn't suck too badly.

[doc7string]

Thanks for the advice. I guess I have to play with the faders to even out the variations on volume of the voice during the performance. I will try that rather than my hopes for a shortcut. Just for my own knowledge, is the amout of compression really "crushing levels". The voice still sounds natural, and honestly I didn't notice too much difference in the T or K sounds with or without compression. Maybe if I correct volume throughout, the differences will be more evident. Sounds like a project for tonight. Thanks again.

[Frodo]

Losing consonants can happen when some other transient coincides with it. Mike offered some great advice on how to squash, but I've also found that moving consonants a touch earlier can help if additional first aid is required. Also, locating whatever other transient is washing out the K's and ducking those at the right places can reduce the sonic competition.

I went through this on a project where some of the S's got lost. It turned out that those S's coincided with the hi-hat at about the same frequency. In that case, adding more S wasn't the answer, but grafting on a little bit of S in the vocals a littler earlier and ducking the hat here and there helped in addition with the careful squash technique.

[mikebeckmotu]

You could try using a plugin to enhance transients, but that might cause other problems, since all the transients will be affected, unless you use a lot of automation (bypass it on everything but the "K" sounds).
Flux Bittersweet is a freeware plugin you could try:
http://www.fluxhome.com/products/Freewares/bittersweet2" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[doc7string]

Thanks for all the great advice. I fixed the problem in an archaic, it just isn't right kind of way (though I'm sure it will lead to other issues. I created a new audio track and taked myself making a K sound on that track I turned up that track as needed and viola. Looking back I took all compression off of the vocal and soloed it. Seems to me I just didn't articulate the consonants strongly enough. Between my novice recording skills and poor diction I created a headache for myself. On the other hand I have other recordings where my S's die in the mix and are clearly audible when soloed. I think I now have the answer to those mixes thanks to you guys. Have a great day, and thanks as always for helping me out. Without this forum I would still be struggling with inputs/outputs and just about everything else.
Now if you could only fix my spelling and typing skills 8^)


Paul

[1nput0utput]

I fixed the problem in an archaic, it just isn't right kind of way (though I'm sure it will lead to other issues. I created a new audio track and taked myself making a K sound on that track I turned up that track as needed and viola.

That's an interesting solution. If it works, use it. If it sounds good, it is good.