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losthighway wrote: Wed Mar 27, 2024 9:28 pm real sub, synth type stuff is a little more guess work/ counting on mastering to cover my ass.

ME's quietly cover A LOT of asses in the sub department.

MoreSpaceEcho wrote: Thu Mar 28, 2024 10:33 am

losthighway wrote: Wed Mar 27, 2024 9:28 pm real sub, synth type stuff is a little more guess work/ counting on mastering to cover my ass.

ME's quietly cover A LOT of asses in the sub department.

Unless it's a purely electronic project, I don't know why everyone doesn't run synths thru a speaker or emulator/plugin. Those low end (and extreme upper freq stuff too) surprises are never a good thing in other contexts.

penningtron wrote: Thu Mar 28, 2024 10:46 am

MoreSpaceEcho wrote: Thu Mar 28, 2024 10:33 am

losthighway wrote: Wed Mar 27, 2024 9:28 pm real sub, synth type stuff is a little more guess work/ counting on mastering to cover my ass.

ME's quietly cover A LOT of asses in the sub department.

Unless it's a purely electronic project, I don't know why everyone doesn't run synths thru a speaker or emulator/plugin. Those low end (and extreme upper freq stuff too) surprises are never a good thing in other contexts.

Totally. Or even lazier, just high pass filter at like 60hz or something conservative.

Even an octave down from that would help. Low shelves are your friend too.

I'm not much of a synth dude, but I've noticed it's not uncommon for softsynths to have a TON of crazy sub info that just doesn't need to be there at all.

penningtron wrote: Thu Mar 28, 2024 10:46 am

MoreSpaceEcho wrote: Thu Mar 28, 2024 10:33 am

losthighway wrote: Wed Mar 27, 2024 9:28 pm real sub, synth type stuff is a little more guess work/ counting on mastering to cover my ass.

ME's quietly cover A LOT of asses in the sub department.

Unless it's a purely electronic project, I don't know why everyone doesn't run synths thru a speaker or emulator/plugin. Those low end (and extreme upper freq stuff too) surprises are never a good thing in other contexts.

I almost always run a saturator or something like an amp sim in parallel to the dry track. Takes the shimmer off the Vsti. I also have a little Adam Sub 7 on a foot switch for the Sub lows if I feel like i really need to hear whats down there. It is set up so that if it is on, it just extends the low end peek of my mid/highs down 1 octave without boosting any lowend... just extension. It's barely on at all. 2 volume clicks up from off.

losthighway wrote: Thu Mar 28, 2024 11:05 am

penningtron wrote: Thu Mar 28, 2024 10:46 am

MoreSpaceEcho wrote: Thu Mar 28, 2024 10:33 am

ME's quietly cover A LOT of asses in the sub department.

Unless it's a purely electronic project, I don't know why everyone doesn't run synths thru a speaker or emulator/plugin. Those low end (and extreme upper freq stuff too) surprises are never a good thing in other contexts.

Totally. Or even lazier, just high pass filter at like 60hz or something conservative.

Guilty as charged.

penningtron wrote: Thu Mar 28, 2024 10:46 am

MoreSpaceEcho wrote: Thu Mar 28, 2024 10:33 am

losthighway wrote: Wed Mar 27, 2024 9:28 pm real sub, synth type stuff is a little more guess work/ counting on mastering to cover my ass.

ME's quietly cover A LOT of asses in the sub department.

Unless it's a purely electronic project, I don't know why everyone doesn't run synths thru a speaker or emulator/plugin. Those low end (and extreme upper freq stuff too) surprises are never a good thing in other contexts.

It almost always makes them more interesting imho too

TylerDeadPine wrote: Thu Mar 28, 2024 11:09 pm

penningtron wrote: Thu Mar 28, 2024 10:46 am Unless it's a purely electronic project, I don't know why everyone doesn't run synths thru a speaker or emulator/plugin. Those low end (and extreme upper freq stuff too) surprises are never a good thing in other contexts.

It almost always makes them more interesting imho too

Yep. In addition to playing better with other sounds, it's a way to put your individual stamp on things.. "your sound". Otherwise you're getting the same Korg sounds or whatever as every other band plugging straight in. Or as Lars puts it, it sounds STOCK.

penningtron wrote: Fri Mar 29, 2024 10:24 am

TylerDeadPine wrote: Thu Mar 28, 2024 11:09 pm

penningtron wrote: Thu Mar 28, 2024 10:46 am Unless it's a purely electronic project, I don't know why everyone doesn't run synths thru a speaker or emulator/plugin. Those low end (and extreme upper freq stuff too) surprises are never a good thing in other contexts.

It almost always makes them more interesting imho too

Yep. In addition to playing better with other sounds, it's a way to put your individual stamp on things.. "your sound". Otherwise you're getting the same Korg sounds or whatever as every other band plugging straight in. Or as Lars puts it, it sounds STOCK.

So fucking stock. My synth player plays through a Memory man, juno chorus, GK400 into an EV15L and as soon as I had that signal chain in a model it sounded 'right' going direct - it's really satisfying. I think synths don't get their due as an instrument to be amplified independently... or... or sound guys hate me.

TylerDeadPine wrote: Fri Mar 29, 2024 5:17 pm I think synths don't get their due as an instrument to be amplified independently... or... or sound guys hate me.

So as a sound guy I am occasionally sensitive to remarks like this. Bands need to understand sound techs (usually) don't hate anyone. They're working under challenging conditions and often times venues are providing them with the cheapest, shittiest tools to get their job done. So they're looking for the easy button when it comes to getting a band to sound as good as they can in the 15 minutes of line check or whatever. They're trying to manage the expectations of their employer, the band on stage, and the audience and they don't often align (especially when it comes to this crew that generally espouses the loud everything over everything else philosophy (which ya know, I do happen to agree with)).

Anyway DI isn't ever meant as a slight, it's someone doing their best to make you sound as good as they can when they probably don't know anything about you. It's the "safe" route and not the "most interesting sound" route. Please remember that while your band is special and precious to you and you have invested a ton of time and labor and money into getting the sound you want, you are one band out of the dozen or more that the sound person has to work with that week and probably one of 3-5 just that day and manage those expectations accordingly.

Best advice is that if you have a sound you're after and is important to your performance, try to clearly communicate this to the sound person (preferably ahead of time through the venue booking agent/talent buyer whatever). Sometimes this is obvious if you think of touring organ players who lump around a B3 or Rhodes players bringing out Twin Reverbs etc. So yeah if this aspect is important to you, you should consider helping to facilitate this by bringing your own kit - like a DI that does some level of speaker emulation. One suggestion might be some variety of sansamp maybe. It won't be exactly perfect, but might get you close and that's a reasonable expectation for a live show and 100 pounds < a dedicated amp. I think most sound people would be amenable to this, with the one or two exceptions being the assholes that make the rest of sound techs look bad and create an adversarial relationship from the jump.

Anyway, this was pretty eye-opening in general so I appreciate this being brought up - for whatever reason I hadn't considered any of this when recording synth even though I've never loved the ultra-clean di sound. Going to try treating it like a bass next time and do a blend of amp + DI. I have done this w/ drum machines as per the Justin Foley method and ended up being pretty underwhelmed (like that was a lot of fuss w/ minimal ROI for me) but I could see this being more impactful for keys.