How to remove fizziness from distorted guitars using a multiband compressor

Hello and welcome to this week's article!

Today we're going to tackle a problem that is typical of distorted guitars, but that can be applied to anything distorted, from a bass to a synth: the excessive high-end fizz, which often can be very bothering, especially if we're using an amp simulator with a lot of gain.

The problem with fizz, that buzzing, harsh part of the sound that hides between the presence area (2k to 8k) and the high end (10k to 12k) is the fact that it's quite hard to pinpoint exactly by doing frequency hunting, because we can can take down some notch here and there, but the fizz can remain pervasively a bit everywhere, and if we take down the whole area the tone loses presence and bite, disappearing in the mix.

How do we solve? The ideal is to change tone until we find one that gets us 80% there, so that we are happy also without doing acrobacies, but this is a privilege that not all mix engineers can have, and sometimes we're forced to work with guitar tracks which are already processed, and sounds super fizzy.

First the highest part of the fizz we can roll it off with a low pass filter set to 10-12k to taste, until we get rid only of the useless part, but then when we arrive to the part from 2k to 8/10k we need to adopt a different strategy, or we'll murder the good part of our tone trying to clean it.

Then when it's time to find the fizz in the presence area, we need to take a Multiband compressor and create just a band between 2k and 3k, just to start, and in this it would be VERY useful if we had a solo function to hear only the affected part, then we start move this band left and right listening to the band in solo until we find exactly the part in which there is the "bulk" of the harshness.

Once the area is perfectly set, we need to set the comp with a fast attack and fast release, and then just take down the threshold until we hear some gain reduction in that area; now we need to hear it in context, so listen to the tone (not just to the compressed band) and raise or lower the threshold according to how much fizziness you want to remove. 

Finally, if we have a lot of palm mutes we can also create a band between 65hz and 250hz to tame the low end recoil (thus freeing up headroom), so that we'll clean up the guitar even more with just one plugin.

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Audio Assault AHM 5050 (with video sample)

 

Hello and welcome to this week's article!

Today we're going to review a new amp simulator which emulates the most famous metal amplifier in the world: the EVH 5150, both in 6L6 and EL34 version: the Audio Assault AHM 5050!

This amp sim enters a very crowded arena, since this is the most used amp for many genres of metal (from thrash to the most extreme ones), and there are already many contenders to the throne of the best 5150 simulator, like the STL Andy James, the Peavey Revalver, the TSE X50 and the Neural DSP Nolly (although I think this one emulates a customized version).

This Audio Assault take on the legendary 5150 has some ace up its sleeve: it lets you blend between the 6L6 and el34 power tubes seamlessly with the turn of a knob, which is a very cool idea and recreates well the character of the two versions (and all the shades in between), it comes loaded with a wealthy amount of presets and impulse responses, which lets you have fun right away, it has several effects, booster, drive, gate, delay, reverb and so on, and basically the only thing missing to make it a real Swiss army knife is a chorus (in the rack section). 

Tone-wise it has its own character (to be noted that you can also switch between the standard version and the "My Amp" one, which alterates some value, because every amp sounds a little different since all electronic components have a certain tolerance), and the "my amp" function slightly alterates randomly some value, different for each version, to make each instance of the plugin unique.

How does it sound? This is one of the best sounding Audio Assault amps, because, besides the fact that the original hardware is one of the most balanced, tight and ductile amps in the world, the plugin manages to recreate that midrange, that can go easily from honky to scooped but never muddy, that tightness in the low end and the clear attack which are the trademarks of the EVH 5150.
The only thing I would still work on are the impulse responses, which sometimes sound a bit boxy and too mid rangey (in this video sample I'm using an external IR).
Impulse responses are today the single most important thing in an virtual amplifier, they can make or break a tone, and in this the competitors (especially STL Tones and Neural Dsp) are a bit forward.
Nevertheless this plugin is one of the best bang for the buck around and will give you a tons of fun, and good tones in the studio!

Thumbs up!

Specs:

- 3 channels: Clean, Crunch and Lead

- Balance Knob: it lets you dial precisely the tone between the 6L6 and the EL34 version

- 3 stompboxes: Gate, Boost and Drive

- Dual Cab Loader with numerous IRs

- FX Rack with Eq, Delay and Reverb

- Standard amp / My amp function

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What's the difference between a limiter and a clipper?

 

Hello everyone and welcome to this week's article!

Today we are going to talk about a topic that has been the center of a lot of discussions in the world of audio engineers online: is it better to use a Clipper or a Limiter?

The limiter as we know works as a Compressor, only with extreme settings (a fast attack and a ratio of 20:1 up to infinity): the part of the wave that surpasses the threshold is dragged down, producing the classic "squashed" tone.

The Clipper instead doesn't drag the sound down, it choppes it off like it used to do (unwanted) when back in the hardware era a signal was hitting an analog-to-digital converter too hard.
This as we have seen in our article about clippers creates a double edge sword: it doesn't sound as squashed and it allows us usually to raise the volume more than with a limiter, but one single 0.1% too much and it will create aliasing and distortion so bad that we will be sorely missing the limiter.

Using a clipper on a master allows us to raise the volume more than with a limiter, because this "shaving off" part of the tone forces the converter to overshoot and try to recreate the missing part of the sound, and if it's reasonably small, it manages.

My opinion is that if we have our dynamic range under control (meaning that there are no instruments that randomly peak like 6db above the rest here and there through the track), for example we have been good with clip gain, buss compression etc, it's better to use a clipper, it will allow us to reach the same levels of volume of a limiter if not more, avoiding the usual squashed effect.
If instead we have a quite dynamic mix and we want to preserve the dynamic excursion maybe it's better to go for a limiter, because the eventual peaks will be brought down without introducing heavy crackling.

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Review: VTarAmps Proto Four (with video sample and download link)

 

Hello and welcome to this week's article!

Today we're going to review a very good, free amp simulator by VTarAmps: P.R.O.T.O. Four!

This amp sim is a new version of  MegaFuzzieMKIV by Vadim Taranov, a virtual version of the overdrive channel of a Mesa Boogie Mark IV and it adds many new functions to the original one.

The interface looks like the one of a Mesa Boogie Dual Rectifier, but the tone is the one of a Mark IV, and the amp offers, besides the usual gain knob, also two separate controls to dial the gain for the low and the high frequencies, plus the two sections (preamp and power amp) are bypassable individually.

On the top of the amp there is also the fuzziness control, which lets you add fuzz to the tone and to control the fuzz character, from dark to bright; there is also a fizz control, which sets the "acidness" of the amp.
All these functions give the Proto an impressive versatility: the amp allows you to achieve a very wide range of tones, from crunch to any type of fuzz, up to the extreme metal without problems, also because an eq section with a very wide excursion: with the mid knob it's possible to obtain a very scooped sound already at 11'. 

The amp sim sounds very well, as you can hear from the sample: the interface is cool and pretty intuitive, and it's easy to achieve a good tone: the only thing I can do is to suggest you to download it and try it for yourself!

To be noted also that I see in the interface (and the manual) also the Ugritone logo, which is the evolution of a software house we used to know (and review) under the name "It Might Get Loud": I suspect something is cooking, can't wait to see how this collaboration will pan out!

Thumbs up!

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Impose yourself a deadline when writing a song

 

Hello everyone and welcome to this week's article!

Today I would like to explore a topic that has been on my mind since long time, which concerns how long to be working on a song.
I have been mumbling about this question because the first conclusion could be "as long as necessary: sometimes a piece of art can take years to complete", but then I've seen situations like a friend of mine sending me the demo of a great song, then, 2 months after another demo with same the song radically changed, and then again after 2 months and so on... Eventually 2 years later the band broke up, they never finished that song and the latest iteration was way worse than the original one.
They had just come to hate the song and lost completely any objectivity about it.

The conclusion is that yes, it's important to refine all the details of the song like it's a painting, as much as needed (yes, even if you do the rawest punk rock), but it's equally important that the first intuition, the first burst of creativity when we write a song usually is the least mediated by our reason, and usually it's the best part, so it's probably a good idea of writing down and preserving these more "inspired" parts and to limit the "craftmasnhip" side as little as possible, only to fill the gaps between the quick ideas, otherwise we will come up with an overcooked piece of music that taste like nothing.

The aim should be to get to know the right time to "let a song go", meaning to consider it finished and publish it, so we can focus on other songs, and this is sometimes a hard task for a perfectionist, therefore some songwriter came up with the idea of setting yourself a deadline: "I'm going to work on this song for (for example) 4 sessions, and one month from now I will consider it finished".

This can be a good exercise: one can actually work on the song for example on the weekends for one month, and keep the other days of the week for listening to it with fresh ears, in order to understand what is there to correct, or whether the song is bad and needs to be scrapped, and then at the end of the month the song should have received enough "debug" to take a final form.
If the final form is still not 100% satisfying, it's time to demolish the song, salvage the usable riffs and put them in the warehouse in case we need to complete another song.
For someone the 1 month deadline can be even too long, so they can prefer a 15 days deadline, or a 7 days one, it all really depends on you and your creative output.

One final note: we have talked about deadlines for individual songs but this doesn't mean that we can be working on 2, 5, 10 songs at the same time, each one with its own specific deadlines!

Did you ever try this technique? Let us know in the comments below!

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Review: Seymour Duncan P90 Stack

 

Hello and welcome to this week's article!

Today we're going to review a legendary pickup, the Seymour Duncan P90 Stack!

Let's start off with some history: P90s were pickups created originally by Gibson for their guitars in the second half of the '40s, and they are single coil pickups built in a slightly different way from the Fender single coil ones;
the P90 has the wires wider and shorter than the typical Fender pickups, and this made the sound warmer and less bright, a bit closer to the tone that later Gibson developed into the humbucking pickups.

The main difference with the humbuckers was, in facts, the hum, a background noise typical of single coil pickups that also the P90 had, until many aftermarket producers (and Gibson itself) started producing noise canceling versions of this pickup, which retain the tonal characteristics of the original one but without the noise.

The one we are reviewing today is the Seymour Duncan P90 Stack, but the brand actually produces a wide range of P90 pickups, some more vintage sounding, some more hot, and out of them all, this is the one that is the closest to the original Gibson S90 tone.

Look-wise this pickup is quite similar to the original one: a soapbar that fits a humbucking slot, but with only one line of poles, and sound wise it's a very good sounding pickup, the type of pickup that you could hear at home in any classic rock, punk, blues, jazz, alternative or country record, and it's been used by countless musicians, from Green Day to John Lennon, from The Who to Muse, from Black Sabbath to Bon Jovi.

This Seymour Duncan version of the P90 sounds every bit as good as the original Gibson one: tone-wise it's the perfect halfway between a single coil and a humbucker, giving clarity, note separation and definition when needed, but also being warm and extremely pleasant with distortions too, because it smoothes the edges of the distortions making the tone always pleasant, and because it doesn't have the typical razorblade tone of the distorted single coils.
To be noted that also some metal musician likes to use it, especially in the neck position, because it allows to obtain beautiful, saturated clean tones which can sometimes be too muddy with a neck humbucker.

All I can say is that this is a great rock pickup, and one of the best to be put in the neck position in general. Thumbs up!

Specs taken from the website:

- DCR: Bridge 31.6k

- Magnet: Alnico 5

- Cable: 4c Shielded

- Type: Passive

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What is a sustainer? (with free VST plugins)

 

Hello and welcome to this week's article!

Today we're going to talk about a type of guitar effect which is often overlooked, but that in some genre can make the difference: the Sustainer!

Let's start with the basics: the sustain is one of the four parts of a sound (click here for a dedicated article), meaning for example with the guitar, how long it passes between when you pluck a string and when the volume goes back to zero.

If we're playing the clean channel of an amp, the cleaner it is the shorter in theory the sustain is, while at the opposite, adding gain adds also compression, which keeps audible also the quieter parts for longer, with the result that the tone has more sustain.

Sustain can be added either by adding gain, distortion, tube saturation or directly by using a compressor, and the original, beloved sustain was actually a product of the signal overdriving the guitar amp tubes, which were not (voluntarily) distorting the tone, but producing a saturated clean channel which provided sustain, and made playing solos more easy.

By adding stages of gain and distortions, reverbs and delays, the guitarits have found many ways to add sustain, but all those methods change dramatically the tone, and sometimes this is not what the guitarist needs:

Sometimes what a guitarist need is a tone that is clean or just slightly distorted, but with an incredibly long sustain, so that all the nuances of the solo are audible and the beauty of the guitar tone can arrive to the listener without being completely disfigured by the other effects, as you can hear for example in the solos by David Gilmour of Pink Floyd. 

This is where compressors comes into play: a compressor, if set in a way in which it boost the lower part of the signal without affecting too much the rest of the tone, can offer an alternative to the high volume tube compression of a saturated amp, and this has been the success of stompboxes such as the Boss Compressor/Sustainer.

Today in studio there is not even anymore the need of using a hardware sustainer, it is sufficient to have a VST one, and usually the guitar amp suites have some sort of compressor/sustainer bundled, but if you don't happen to have one, you can try one of these 2:

7amp Peak Sustainer - a free sustainer plugin

Hornet HCS1 (demo) - a paid compressor/sustainer

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