I am sending this tune off so I canāt do that but down the road post release I can for sure. Happy to answer any questions or do screen shots for nowā¦etc.
I can say that this method doesnāt kill the vibe, only enhances it. The reasons are because when I sit down with the DT I use it in standalone. I will be in the studio with it or lounging in my chair with headphones. But I get the track sounding good in the DT and I donāt worry about the DAW or anything else. My #1 goal is to make the tune sound good inside that little black box. This is far more enjoyable since I use the DT effects and compressor without worrying about Post production in the DAW and really get a vibe going.
I then treat the arrangement like it is a live 2 track recording. So for that, once I dial in what I like, I typically make a few quick notes on what I want to do in each pattern, pretty much like being in a band and throwing the chords and progression up on a board so everyone can see. I do not use song mode because that is a vibe killer. Because then you are pre planning the pattern changes and I would rather let that happen by feel.
I just go with the flow and manually change patterns - I find that yields the best arrangements by far. For me it is the best way to arrange because it is live and organic. I typically nail it in 2-3 takes so thatās less than 20 minutes for a complete arrangement done. Many people spend days in their DAW moving blocks around, I am all about speed and being in the moment.
So this brought me to when I made my topic. My mix out of the DT L/R honestly sounded quite good but I want flexibility because a label may ask for a short mix or even say āhat or kick is a bit loudā and little tweaks like that. So ideally Iād like to be able to fix that without relying on eqing a stereo mix.
So with the audio dragged into Ableton (I multitrack in the overbridge standalone app. Much faster and easier this way for me) I select all the tracks and just boost the gain up. +12 seems to work quite well. I already have mixed the levels on the DT, which I also recommend because each pattern can have different levels. So it is very easy to bring up or down the energy by boosting a few sounds in volume.
At this point I have the gain of the stems all at a good reference level. The mix is still the exact same, just no compressor or effects. And obviously the magic of the DT is what that master comp does plus what the FX can do. So I basically copied the setup - a compressor across the master and then 2 FX busses set up with delay and reverb. The best solution to get that reveb sound I found was to ping the DT with Ableton IR plugin. It has a sweep option that lets you capture the sound of that exact reverb and setting in the DT.
I basically use the external mixer on the DT in stereo mode and set the reverb to max and then let the IR maker do itās thing. It makes a L and R file for the verb and then I drop those into the IR pro reverb plugin. That really helped a ton since the reverb is such a big part of the sound.
For the delay I like the Echo since it can feed into reverb like the DTās and has all the same settings. It is not the exact same but it is close enough.
The final thing is the master bus compressor. I will keep messing with different ones, but main thing I do is hit the mix fairly hard like I did inside the DT. I mimic the attack and release settings and ratio. I also have the DT stereo mix on a separate track so I can level match both and compare them that way.
Main thing to note is I have yet to touch the individual tracks besides boosting the gain in all of them the same amount. No busses or EQā¦nothing.
Then I just listen to the mix and once it sounds as glued and punchy as the DT, i then do some small tweaks to the individual tracks (like panning ). For example I lowered the hi hat volume a little and I do some dynamic EQ to a few sounds. I think I added a flange to the hat, mixed in pretty low. I added mild phaser to a chord stab. I also lightly compress sounds that jumped a bit in volume from pattern to pattern, just to keep them more controlled. I also put trackspacer on the Bass and that really glues it to the kick. The most drastic thing I have done is inserted a second delay to a lead sound, so I can do some modulations there as well.
But all of that took like 30 minutes since the imported stems were already pretty well leveled out from the DT, I had done a lot of filter movement, added some OD and bitcrushingā¦all those little details were done on the DT, where itās super fast and easy. So instead of building the mix from scratch, I am mainly just processing it on the master buss with compression and dropping the 2 effects that sound likeDT reverb/delay on the FX sends.
Last thing I do which is personal is I put Sketch cassette on after the compressor on the master and I tweak the default mode to taste. I find it wamrs up the mix and adds some thickness and lofi vibe. That is just what I like though. I also did the same thing to the DT stereo mix.
Sorry for the long post but that details everything I have done so far. It has been far more successful (and faster without losing the vibe) than trying to rebuild the mix from scratch like I was trying to do when I started this thread
That is the combo I aspire to have one day. I feel like adding the DN would really be the perfect match to sync to the DT.
Yeah I agree with your findings. May want to mess around with my technique above and see how you like it. Itās WAY faster and the results are a lot better.