Neil Gilmartin Posted March 22 Share Posted March 22 Hello everyone. I just bounced down several mixes and, while most are fine, two of them have introduced a strange phasing-like quality to the drums, particularly the snare drums and hi-hats. I wonder if this is a familiar issue to anyone? It's not a case of me listening in a mono environment to a stereo bounce: I'm listening to the bounce in stereo and it was bounced down in stereo. (A secondary issue is that there is an odd mild dropping away of volume on a section of one track before it gradually rises back up, and I don't think (?) it's the work of a compressor... Again, not sure what might have happened there). The songs were recorded in 44.1KHz and are being bounced at 44.1KHz. Not sure what else to say that might be relevant. More generally, the mixes are processing-heavy, so perhaps I should bounce as many tracks in place as possible with the processing to first reduce the CPU load before doing the final bounce? Thanks for any past experience that other members have to call upon here 🙂 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
polanoid Posted March 22 Share Posted March 22 Are these drums audio recordings? Or a MIDI software instrument? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Neil Gilmartin Posted March 22 Author Share Posted March 22 Logic Drummer Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sunbrother Posted March 22 Share Posted March 22 (edited) 12 hours ago, Neil Gilmartin said: More generally, the mixes are processing-heavy, so perhaps I should bounce as many tracks in place as possible with the processing to first reduce the CPU load before doing the final bounce? It’s not something I do based on concerns of CPU power, but there have been times where I did this with Freezing as a troubleshooting method and it helped me find the real issue pretty well. In my case it led me to a Dual Mono instance of Slate MetaTune. That revealed the bug where the first bounce of Dual Mono plugins doesn’t properly account for latency if you haven’t opened the plugin GUI so far in that session. Edited March 22 by sunbrother 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
polanoid Posted March 22 Share Posted March 22 13 hours ago, Neil Gilmartin said: reduce the CPU load before doing the final bounce If you do an offline bounce, CPU load is not an issue 1 hour ago, Neil Gilmartin said: Logic Drummer Does the "phasing" affect all snare/hi-hat hits, or only some? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
polanoid Posted March 22 Share Posted March 22 Also, does converting the Drummer regions into MIDI regions change anything? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Neil Gilmartin Posted March 22 Author Share Posted March 22 Oh sorry. I just realized that I unwittingly gave you misleading information, Polanoid. While I did use Logic Drummer (Producer Kit), I completely forgot to add that I bounced down all individual track files to audio before starting mixing, so yes, I'm actually dealing with audio files. The phasing-ish sound is consistent on one mix-down but disappears on another after about 20 seconds in. I think the bounce down might have got corrupted, somehow - perhaps from some other activity going on on my laptop at the same time? I'm just engaging in pure speculation here 😂 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
polanoid Posted March 22 Share Posted March 22 9 minutes ago, Neil Gilmartin said: I bounced down all individual track files to audio before starting mixing So is the phasing sound audible already in the individual track bounce? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Neil Gilmartin Posted March 22 Author Share Posted March 22 No it’s not. It wasn’t and isn’t there when listening within the project. It just appeared in the bounce. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
polanoid Posted March 22 Share Posted March 22 Did you bounce the individual drum instruments to separate track bounces? Otherwise I wonder how only snare & hihats would exhibit this phasing issue Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Nahmani Posted March 22 Share Posted March 22 3 minutes ago, Neil Gilmartin said: No it’s not. It wasn’t and isn’t there when listening within the project. It just appeared in the bounce. You could try to do a realtime bounce, so that what you're hearing during the bounce is what you get in the bounced file. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
polanoid Posted March 22 Share Posted March 22 Just now, David Nahmani said: You could try to do a realtime bounce, so that what you're hearing during the bounce is what you get in the bounced file. Yes but that way we'll never get to the bottom of this issue 😉 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Neil Gilmartin Posted March 22 Author Share Posted March 22 I’d rather side-step the issue and walk away, frankly 😆 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sunbrother Posted March 22 Share Posted March 22 (edited) 1 hour ago, Neil Gilmartin said: perhaps from some other activity going on on my laptop at the same time? It’s usually not stuff like that. are you automating any bypasses? This latency doesn’t (always?) get re-compensated during bounces so it could cause phasing for part of a song I suppose. are you using Flex Time at all? This can be problematic with drum multitracks sometimes. Edited March 22 by sunbrother Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wonshu Posted March 22 Share Posted March 22 I hope you're not playing both the exported and the MIDI drums at the same time... that would easily explain the phasing... 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Neil Gilmartin Posted March 23 Author Share Posted March 23 (edited) Wonshu, this is a very good question! It wouldn't be the first time I was caught out by this, especially after hiding the original MIDI drums and forgetting to turn off the DKD plug-in 😂 sunbrother, yes I am automating some bypasses. I've now changed the way I'm doing this. Originally, I was bypassing using the 'Main' option, but I'm now bypassing by going directly to the plug-in automation parameters directly and selecting the internal bypass. I'll bounce down another file later (using David's live approach) and see what the end result is this time. I'm not using Flex Time, no. One of the benefits of MIDI drummers - fantastic timing and always available for a session - and they never complain. What a great forum we Logic Pro users have! Thanks for your input, everyone. Edited March 23 by Neil Gilmartin 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Neil Gilmartin Posted March 23 Author Share Posted March 23 So I just tried doing a real-time bounce. When I got to the most processing-heavy section....the dreaded System Overload message 😂 I'll try another offline bounce for now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Nahmani Posted March 23 Share Posted March 23 7 hours ago, Neil Gilmartin said: Wonshu, this is a very good question! It wouldn't be the first time I was caught out by this, especially after hiding the original MIDI drums and forgetting to turn off the DKD plug-in 😂 Yes indeed that's the first thing to double check and it would explain the phasing you're hearing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sunbrother Posted March 23 Share Posted March 23 11 hours ago, Neil Gilmartin said: sunbrother, yes I am automating some bypasses. I've now changed the way I'm doing this. Originally, I was bypassing using the 'Main' option, but I'm now bypassing by going directly to the plug-in automation parameters directly and selecting the internal bypass. Automating the internal bypass parameters is a much better choice. My money's on this or leaving the original drums on. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SoSpiro Posted March 23 Share Posted March 23 11 hours ago, Neil Gilmartin said: Wonshu, this is a very good question! It wouldn't be the first time I was caught out by this, especially after hiding the original MIDI drums and forgetting to turn off the DKD plug-in 😂 sunbrother, yes I am automating some bypasses. I've now changed the way I'm doing this. Originally, I was bypassing using the 'Main' option, but I'm now bypassing by going directly to the plug-in automation parameters directly and selecting the internal bypass. I'll bounce down another file later (using David's live approach) and see what the end result is this time. I'm not using Flex Time, no. One of the benefits of MIDI drummers - fantastic timing and always available for a session - and they never complain. What a great forum we Logic Pro users have! Thanks for your input, everyone. I assume automating the bypass of plug-ins saves cpu? But when I do this, I get audible clicks during playback when automating the bypass and it's also rarely accurate when cpu gets high. This leads me to just automating the mix parameter and just leaving the plug-in on the whole time. I do experience the same issues you speak of with bouncing (and even playback) not being accurate, but all of these issues only happen when cpu gets weird. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wonshu Posted March 23 Share Posted March 23 Perhaps using Bounce-In-Place more can help you in your workflow. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Neil Gilmartin Posted March 23 Author Share Posted March 23 (edited) Yeah, wonshu, you're probably right. I mean, when I'm at the production phase, I do use bounce-in-place all the time to bake in sounds that I know I want to keep, but with mixing, I hadn't thought I'd be needing it. But now I think I probably do. It's likely the use of these new-fangled AI plug-ins... SoSpiro, my CPU is getting weird consistently - always telling me to go away at the same point in certain songs. Perhaps I need to go back to using Logic stock plug-ins more. I've got FabFilter in the mix, a large dose of SoundToys, some Izotope, a generous serving of NI vintage compressors, a dash of Gulfoss, even a cheeky sprinkling of Valhalla - it's a 3rd-party party. (And some Logic, of course, because the stock plug-ins are pretty awesome, too). Yeah, the CPU is not very happy - and it's not like it's not powerful. Also, SoSpiro, I only get audible clicks when I use the Logic 'bypass' under 'Main' in the automation menu, but not when I instead go to the plug-in controls and bypass there (assuming the plug-in has this option. If not, I instead use the Mix dial and set it to 0% - a tip I got from another user on this forum). David, I didn't make it clear in my initial response to wonshu that hidden MIDI Drummer playing simultaneously is not the problem. I bounced the track offline again and the phasing / thin drum sound is still there. I'll have to investigate further. I've got Logic Drummer on all the bounces, but it's only with one track where, for some reason yet unknown to me, it sounds thin. Edited March 23 by Neil Gilmartin Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sunbrother Posted March 23 Share Posted March 23 43 minutes ago, SoSpiro said: assume automating the bypass of plug-ins saves cpu? But when I do this, I get audible clicks during playback That’s a reason to do it sparingly, but the bigger one for me is the latency can’t/won’t be re-compensated so it will go out of sync. I do it with zero latency plugins only, and only when there’s no better way to bypass the effect. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Neil Gilmartin Posted March 23 Author Share Posted March 23 I just got a clean bounce! What did I do differently, I hear nobody ask. Nothing! I think my computer is just in a good mood this evening. It's the only plausible explanation. Tell a lie. There was one thing I did differently, and only one: I re-arranged the tracks. This was the only song where I had drums as the last in the sequence, not first, so I rearranged everything. Could this have made a difference? I find it hard to believe... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SoSpiro Posted March 23 Share Posted March 23 (edited) 3 hours ago, Neil Gilmartin said: I just got a clean bounce! What did I do differently, I hear nobody ask. Nothing! I think my computer is just in a good mood this evening. It's the only plausible explanation. Tell a lie. There was one thing I did differently, and only one: I re-arranged the tracks. This was the only song where I had drums as the last in the sequence, not first, so I rearranged everything. Could this have made a difference? I find it hard to believe... The music gods were trying to make your music as they saw fit... Edited March 23 by SoSpiro Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sunbrother Posted March 23 Share Posted March 23 3 hours ago, Neil Gilmartin said: What did I do differently, I hear nobody ask. Nothing! I think my computer is just in a good mood this evening. It's the only plausible explanation. Didn't you say you stopped automating the bypasses? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Solution Neil Gilmartin Posted March 24 Author Solution Share Posted March 24 (edited) Hi sunbrother. You're right that I did stop automating the bypasses via the 'Main' option, yes. And this solved the problem of clicks in the audio in the bounce down. But it didn't solve the phasing issue, unfortunately. I think the phasing issue may simply have been bad luck with the timing of the bounce: the CPU, for whatever reason, was underperforming and that led to artifacts. Now there was actually one more thing I did: that project has a snare-attack aux channel, and I changed the Logic Enveloper lookahead time from 2ms to 1ms. After bouncing down, the phasing was gone - so I thought perhaps the lookahead time had been the culprit. However, to check this, I did another bounce and reverted the lookahead back to 2ms, and still I had just as clean a bounce, so I don't think that was it. (And, in any case, lookahead settings might account for phasing on the snare, but not the whole kit - and it was the whole kit that sounded unnaturally thin, not just the snare). The only difference, therefore, was moving the sequencing of channel strips around to conform with all the other projects I'm working on, but this seems very unlikely as the deciding factor. But you never know! Complex software creates all kinds of unforeseen relationships between seemingly unrelated things, so I thought I'd mention it anyway. Cheers for all your input on this issue, sunbrother. I appreciate it. And you have persuaded me to no approach 'bypass' on my plug-ins with caution and instead look for alternatives such as 0% on the mix settings. A great tip (a tip of the hat to SoSpiro here, too) 🙂 Edited March 24 by Neil Gilmartin Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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