Getting that "Justice" sound live w/ no laptop

The Lounge General Discussion
#1

Yes, I know. It would be 1,000,000 times easier to just set up all the Justice-style cascading sidechaining and crazy dynamics effects in Ableton and use a laptop…but let’s just say I’d prefer to stay all-hardware.

My current setup which technically DOES allow this is that I run all my machines into a Behringer X32 Rack digital mixer. This has more than enough mix busses, dynamics processors, and sidechain routing to do the trick but it’s cumbersome–I’m not big on setting the mixer up for each song with my iPad.

Has anyone used the A&H QuPac and really used it as a full mixdown engine to get productions sounding mastering-ready - so that when you play live you’ve got a polished sound which sits well in an evening full of DJs?

The other option here is to go full analog and have a mini-eurorack setup just for dynamics processing, mixing, and grouping, but it would have to be sort of stuck in a single preset, and all differences in the mix from song to song would be occurring when the drum machines and synths loaded up their presets and respective volume settings.

God why am I making this so complicated?

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#2

Indeed.

Use the tools for the jobs they’re good at. If Ableton is the best tool…you get where this is going.

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#3
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#4

Ive got no idea who they are or what they sound like. But pretending to play a midi controller at a gig is about as sad as it gets.

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#5

I love Justice. They are like French house with hard rock and classical.

I’m talking Across the Universe days.

The latest stuff is too soft.

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#6

A friend once played Stress to me, found that pretty cool actually. Checked out some other tracks, but didn’t like any of it – never really bothered with them again.

But I still have Stress running occasionally.

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#7

If staying all hardware is of cardinal importance, then you mixer can do what you need, but it will require more skill tahn a DAW because you can’t flip between different flavors of processors.

That’s a hang-up that’s probably worth getting over, if remaining all-hardware is important to you.

The Qu-Pac isn’t materially different from the Behringer in this sense. It’s a tool with the facilities to do side-chain and parallel compression over several busses, but you need the skill to get there. If you’ve come really close to the sound you want with the mixer you have, and that you are otherwise happy with, and then feel that the mixer is your main limitation, then go ahead and try another mixer.

That sounds very counter-productive, un-flexible, heavy and expensive.

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#8

Great responses everyone! Thank you! I often need to be pushed out of these mental trenches I get myself in…wayyyyy too much thinking, not enough experimenting and trying what works and what doesn’t.

heheh please disregard the guys themselves, their look, their “live” show, etc etc etc…

This SONG blew my mind when I first heard it. Plenty of imitators…but as the song develops, they just get that signature pumping and sucking sound going…this sort of neck snapping thing going. Yeah, all that was mixed in the box (Cubase if I’m not mistaken). I mean, uggghhhhhh, from not even hearing the term “sidechain” to one day, hearing these pull-backs and pops starting around 0:55… I’ve been wanting that sound but never really going for it cause of the commitment to a suicidally complicated setup, hardware-wise.

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#9

I appreciate the straight-up talk. Seriously.

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#10

I would say Daft punk popularized the pumping side chain effect, and is definitely an huge influence on Justice.

I love the them so much. The look and everything from that time. They are the reason I got into production, and Across the Universe helped me through a very dark time in my life.

As for the fakery during live shows, who cares. It’s a performance. And as long as the music bangs, who cares how it gets to you.

I would love to see them perform again. But I think they broke up, or at least went separate ways. One of them put out a solo album. But nothing compares to AtU.

Once you get this sorted, please post up the results, I would love to hear your interpretation of them.

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#11

Alright, I’ve got a system which uses the OTO Boum for squashing. This allows me to continue to have certain chunks of my hardware come into one side of DJ mixer and certain elements go into other. The way I’ve played for almost 20 years.

Rytm > X32 Mixer
Radias > X32 Mixer
Other synths > X32 Mixer
Maschine+ > X32 Mixer

Maschine+ always comes out of X32 output bus 1,2 > going directly to DJ mixer input 1 (left side of crossfader)

All other machines/sources are summed and can come out of either:

  1. X32 Output pair 3,4 “Clean bus” > going into passive analog summing box (Art SplitMix)
  2. X32 Output pair 5,6 “Squashed bus” > going into OTO Boum then > into passive summing box (Art SplitMix)

Art SplitMix sums the clean and squashed elements and goes to DJ mixer input 2 (crossfader right side)

Sidechain key signal:
Maschine+ headphone out goes to OTO Boum sidechain input. Any sound on Maschine+ can be shunted out the headphone out as the sidechain key (white noise, kick, etc) independent of it’s mix level in Maschine…but usually will just be a copy of the main kick or any other “squashing” elements.

Result: This allows full control and presetting of all volumes and the OTO Boum can stay untouched and provide extreme sucking and ducking of whichever song elements I want coming from my hardware. There is also a straight through path for clean, unsquashed sounds should I want them.

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#12

Love Justice, and they are one of the best acts I’ve seen live. They had a very intense articulated light rig on one of their tours which really stood out. A bit of a shame if none of the music is really live though!

I don’t think they’ve broken up. One just did a solo album; quite typical with a long-standing act.

Lots of great French music coming out of Ed Banger records.

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#13

I’m a big fan of edm, so I don’t necessarily need too much love playing. It’s worth the price to hear it on a pro sound system.

I wish to see them live. Hopefully.

#14

Guy says he plugged it back in, apparently there are photos to show that. Maybe it’s bullshit, but also maybe we should give him the benefit of the doubt? Shitting on people on the internet is - in my opinion - as sad as it gets.

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#15

How does the Boum’s “pump” compare to other compressors you’ve tried?

#16

I mean I’ve seen footage of them playing concerts live where they play a wrong note on a synth or come in at the wrong time with a sound or have a synth set up not quite right. They definitely do play some instruments live, but I’ve also seen them just trigger tracks in Ableton to play long pre-planed samples and stuff. There’s only so much you can do with two people live.

I think they do what they can do, but to give the kind of show that they do some stuff has to be pre planned and synced, especially with the light show and everything. They also play very different versions of some of their songs live compared to the album versions. It’s definitely not just playing the recordings of their songs off the album, but to give the best live performance they can some compromises have to be made.

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#17

:joy: I remember that “scandal” at the time it happened.
Shows how big they were back in 2008 in the proper heyday of MySpace, Ed Banger and nu-rave, that someone would think this worthy of a story. A lot of fun was had at those parties.
Waters of Nazareth was a ripper. Phantom wasn’t bad either, but they never quite lived up to my expectations after that with any of their follow ups.
Sorry OP, never tried to recreate that sound so I don’t really have any tips.

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#18

this kind of 4/4 electro has never really been my thing, but this set really impressed me…

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#19

That’s the first thought it came to my mind when reading this thread… So I guess that if you would like to sound like them, probably prepare/prebake your stuff, and forget to plug the midi controller in :slight_smile:

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#20

Also love Justice - if you haven’t seen it, Iris a Space Opera is a visual feast. Their last live show was amazing.

They did a Mix with The Masters video during lockdown where they talked about recording new material, hopefully releasing next year.

In terms of their sound… they’ve just released an anniversary version of Cross with some demos at the end. Feels like the engineers at Ed Banger really polished those original tracks, I think Sebastian was involved.

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