17 February 2013

During the recent mixing session of Matshidiso Mohajane, there was a small noise that printed on the lead vocal track on one of the song.
I usually do either: cut the audio region, dip with the volume automation, use pencil tool in Pro Tools to smooth it up, or swap the audio from another bit of the song, but neither of them worked very well. Then I remembered reading about iZotope RX2 in a magazine recently, so I decided to have a go with the demo version. It said fully functioning for 10 days (apart from saving the project). Had a quick look at their website's tutorial video, and imported the problematic vocal track into RX2.

Please take a look at the screenshot, I probably didn't do very neat, nor artistic work but I did manage to eliminate the offending noise around 1.5kHz-3kHz without affecting her voice! (see the red circle)

It is an impressive piece of program, but the standard version £215.00, the advanced version £749.00, umm...very expensive.

12 February 2013

For the past few weeks, I've been working on a new project from Matshidiso Mohajane. It consists of 4 beautiful songs.
I have just received a confirmation from both, Matsy and our producer 'D-Boy' to go ahead with the mastering process.
Here is the screenshot of a track called 'Running' which I've just finished doing some final adjustments, and have bounced down to a stereo WAV file.
Those plug-ins were heavily involved in this project. I particularly liked the Midnight compressor from Focusrite. Very smooth, and very musical especially on Matsy's vocal track. Massey's CT4 is my all-time favorite, I also have CT5 but I much prefer CT4. Massey's TD5 is a beautiful tape delay emulator. After using demo for nearly 3 years, I've finally purchased the full version. It's great that now Pro Tools keeps the setting everytime I re-open the session!

Let's give a little break to my ears a bit...