Hey everybody.
Welcome to Beering Gear.
Yes sir.
Glad to be actually face to face this time.
Yes, it's good.
We haven't done this since the first episode.
Yeah and honestly we don't get to be face to face near as much as I would like to.
Sure friend.
Yes.
Why don't you tell everybody what we're drinking?
Yes, we have, so I'll try to say it right, Chamei Bleu Grand Reserve.
Bleu?
Yeah, bleu.
Even though it's from Belgium.
Even though it's from Belgium, it's called bleu.
Bleu, yeah.
So this is a Trappist beer.
What that means is it's actually brewed in a monastery.
Yes.
And to qualify as a Trappist beer, it has to either be directly brewed or monitored
by the monks.
Brewing cannot be their primary function.
They actually still need to be a monk.
They can use the income from it for the upkeep of the monastery, but the vast majority of
the money is actually donated and given away.
So this is like for tax purposes?
How about that?
So what it's done for me that sent me on a spiral going, well if they're giving the money
away to people in need, should I exclusively be drinking Trappist beer?
I mean, I feel like that's the way to go.
By, I mean, I get the beer that I want to drink.
We're about to find out.
And we're helping people out.
Yeah, right.
I mean, it's a win-win.
Win-win.
Also, if I'm in need, will they just give me the beer?
That would be nice.
Now what you can do is you can actually, if you go to Belgium, there are a ton of these
and you can actually go up to the Abbey and ring the bell and wait for somebody to come
to the gate and let you in.
Yeah.
And you can actually go in and partake there locally.
And some of them even produce cheese and other things.
Oh man.
So that's so good.
And the ones that do cheese, they'll take the basically the mash or whatever's left
and feed that to the cows.
Of course.
Yeah.
And then they keep going.
Now you got beer butter.
Yes, beer butter.
There you go.
So, oh my gosh.
I was introduced to this by Jason Cork, our friend.
He had it when he was on a trip in Boston.
And so he recommended it.
So we're giving it a go.
All right.
Let's find out what we're in for here.
This is a first.
Cheers.
That's not bad at all.
That's good.
Yeah.
That's a lot.
I'd call it a brown ale.
Yeah, brown ale.
But that is not bad at all.
There's some...
There's some residual floating in there.
There's some floating.
That makes me think of going and getting a Guinness actually on tap in England.
Oh, wow.
No, I haven't done that.
You get that, some of that residual.
When were you in England?
Well, I've never been.
Oh, okay.
I mean, I speak like I've been there, but I always hear all the stories of going and
getting it on tap in the pub.
And you see all the little sediment residual that's in it.
And that's really good.
That tastes great.
Thank you, man.
That's a treasure right there.
Yeah.
Thank you, World Market.
Well done.
Only place around that has it.
And do they just have the blue?
No, they have the red, which is the premier.
And then they have the little gift pack, if you will.
It comes with an official Chamay goblet.
A goblet?
A goblet, yes.
Okay.
Well, if the monks are drinking out of a goblet...
Yeah, we need a goblet.
And we need a goblet.
And so then it comes with all four beers that they produce.
This is actually was originally a Christmas beer.
And people liked it so much, they just had to keep making it.
That's a little bit weird that the blue one is the Christmas beer.
It feels like it should be the green one or the red one.
Yes.
Come on, guys.
Yeah.
So you've got the red in there.
You've got...
Is it the green or the gold?
Let me see.
What is this?
Johnny Walker?
There we go.
So you get...
So you've got the gold, and the gold, if I remember correctly, is the actual house beer,
if you will, for these monks.
That's what they actually drink.
It's more of a golden beer, around 5%, where this is 9%.
Oh my.
Yes.
And then the other...
Where is it at?
So I can try to pronounce it.
It's Sink Scents, which is 150.
That is a...
Especially when they do...
That one's 8%.
What do you mean 150?
Well that's what the Sink Scent means.
Oh.
It's 150.
It means 150.
Okay.
So it's like, if it's $150, I'm not drinking that beer.
No, no, no, no.
So that one was brewed in 1966.
The Premier, do they indicate here?
I don't, I think that's the one that goes back to the beginning, along with...
No, the Grand Reserve was in 1948.
So.
But you get all four of those, plus the little Chamei Chalice.
So these are actually in smaller bottles.
Oh, okay.
So the bottle fits perfectly in the Chalice.
The Chalice needs...
Or the goblet, whatever you want to call it.
I mean, Chalice is pretty cool.
Yeah, it is.
Makes me think of Indiana Jones.
So there you can see the picture.
Not too shabby.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So they have, they actually have that, not that cheap though, but they have that set
there.
I saw it.
$31, get you the four beers plus your goblet slash Chalice.
Wow.
Yeah.
No, that doesn't sound...
Four beers?
Four beers.
Plus the cup.
This one was...
That's a lot for four beers, but glass is also really expensive now.
Correct.
This one was $19.99.
It's not bad.
For $750 milliliter, it looks like a wine bottle.
The Reserve was $17.99, same size, $750.
Yeah, that's not bad at all.
It's not bad at all.
Yeah, we may be...
This is my number one reason to become a monk all of a sudden.
Yes, I went to brew beer.
I'm in for making the beer and drinking the beer, and if we can get some bread and cheese
involved with that, I'm set.
Absolutely.
Maybe some sausage.
Yeah, so I actually have a couple other Trappist beers at home that I'm going to partake in.
Try them out.
Yes, and we'll see how those go.
Those may be on future shows.
Is Francis Conner a Trappist?
Because it's...
I mean, it's got the monk on the label.
I mean, it may have started that way and maybe it's not anymore.
I don't know, but like...
Dad, I can't speak to you.
I would be interested to know if anybody knows, you can just tell us while you're...
Just scream at the podcast while you're listening to it.
I found that that's the best way to converse with other podcasters.
Send us a boost.
You can give us a message.
There you go.
Yeah, so I have Orval at home.
I have the Rochefort 10 and then I have the...
I'm probably butchering some of these names.
The Westmel Trappel.
That's what I have.
So we'll see how those go.
Not too shabby.
You're going to try them out and tell me how you like them.
This Chimay is fantastic.
It's good.
I do have a...
Recommend.
Let me pull this up real quick.
I do have a PSA for people on beer.
A PSA?
A PSA, yes.
It's going to be great.
Where's that at?
Is that the PSA noise?
Yes, the official PSA noise of the podcast.
Here we go.
So in the vein of your bad experience in the last show, I tried what was the one that I
thought Drake had recommended to me.
The Samuel Smith's organic chocolate stout.
And it was like, okay, let's give it a shot.
It was horrible.
It wasn't like they brew chocolate into the beer.
It was literally chocolate flavored beer.
It was horrible.
And again, like I've had stouts that tasted like you could like catch a hint of chocolate.
It's like there's this aftertaste.
It's like, oh, that's chocolate.
The like very forward chocolate taste with beer.
It's like, what is happening right now?
Yes.
So this literally tastes like they poured milk chocolate directly into the beer.
Man, that's not good.
And the aftertaste was just rough.
So my PSA, my warning, don't do it.
Don't do it.
The one that he actually recommended is the nut brown L. So I will have to try to track
that one down and try it.
Yeah, I think, you know, that nutty flavor, that's not too bad.
Not too bad at all.
You can get away with more of that.
I feel like in beer than you can chocolate.
Yeah, not good.
Don't do it.
All right.
So jumping back into compression, yes, some of these.
It's like we're going to talk about compression.
We're going to talk about EQ.
We're going to talk about limiting.
We're going to talk about normalization.
I feel like there was another one somewhere in the middle of that.
I can't remember.
But this is this concept of how do I make, you know, I think we I think we mentioned
earlier the general rule of any sound reinforcement, any sound reinforcement system or, you know,
when you're recording somebody is you want that person to sound like themselves or you
want that instrument to sound like itself.
Yeah.
Now, you get a little bit of you get a little bit away from that in some of the newer versions
of things like when sometimes new sound, whatever, when you talk about synthesis, when you talk
about trying to synthesize a sound, when you talk about electric guitars in any kind of
distorted or I don't know even what I'm trying to say here, there are sounds that you are
trying to warp them in order to make a certain sound.
But that's kind of the point of those is that you are still like usually musically.
You're thinking of overdrive?
Like overdrive, fuzz, even, you know, hard like wah or reverb or, you know, some of the
spacey reverbs and stuff like that.
You're trying to introduce or introduce you're trying to.
What's the word you're trying to manipulate the sound in such a way that makes it.
I would hope more musical.
I mean, that you're trying to, you know, create a feel.
I love that about like overdrive and stuff like that is that like crunchiness.
The reason that that came about is, you know, you had these guitars and originally they
were all acoustic guitars.
And then they're like, how do I compete with a band while I'm playing a guitar that, you
know, only has enough sound for really me and the person sitting in front of me to hear
it?
Let's plug it in, let's put this, you know, pickup inside of this or microphone in front
of it or something like that.
They tried a bunch of different ways of doing it with transducers and all these different
things.
And so they, they come up with this, well, I'm going to put it on this or coming out
of this speaker for itself.
Like the whole band isn't coming through speakers.
They're just playing their brass and, you know, woodwind and it's louder and it kind
of cuts through everything.
And the guitar is chunking back here, but it's, it's not as big as a piano to be able
to really push sound or even the bass guitars or bass guitars, the basses that they used
to use those stand up basses.
That's a huge, like that's a furniture, a piece of furniture that's, you know, emanating
the sound and you really need that for that low end.
But guitars, they were trying to push them with these speakers and originally, you know,
they tried to get these big speakers that would push that sound really with, I guess,
closer fidelity to what they were hearing.
And then this thing happens where they, they get a smaller speaker and they push it harder
than they should.
And what you hear is this distortion in the sound.
You start to hear this, the beginnings of the electric guitar, like crunch, the electric
guitar rasp, whatever sound you want to, you know, equate that to, but it's the first distortion
and it's called overdrive because you are overdriving the speaker.
You are trying to push it harder than it should.
And you've all heard this one, a speaker like blows, or I don't know if you have or not,
but when a speaker blows, you hear distortion all the time because the speaker is not reproducing
the sound the way that it's supposed to.
But before that happens, there's this sound that's introduced to the original sound that
makes it sound a certain way.
So like all the way down that path to talk about like, yes, there are some ways that
we're not trying to produce the original sound.
We're trying to force it to sound different in one way or another.
But for the huge majority of things, and especially when it comes to speaking and most singing
and stuff like that, you're trying to be as true to the sound as you can.
How do you have that fidelity of sound when you got all these different sources and you're
trying to hear certain things inside of you?
I meant to say this on the first show.
It's like when you're watching something on an actual stage and you're like, what am I
supposed to be looking at?
And then somebody shines a spotlight on the person that you're supposed to be looking
at.
There's light all around the stage, but there's a person who is obviously the center of attention
and they usually shine a spotlight on that person.
And that's kind of what compression does audiologically.
Audiologically?
Audio-wise.
Take a brief pause.
But you're trying to come up with a way to...
Now I have lost it.
Audiologically.
Yeah, but what...
You just referenced being on stage in the spotlight.
So in the same way that you would shine a spotlight on a stage to show, then you're
going to shine a spotlight on the sound with compression.
Yes.
All right, here's where we can start.
So you've got this idea that you have all of these different things to look at or hear,
and there's certain things that you want to pay closer attention to.
Now if you really want...
I'm trying to think of like in a photo, you really want to pull a subject out of a photo,
right?
So one of the things that camera people...
Photographers...
There you go.
Photographers will do is use a long lens, something with a long focal length or whatever
that's called.
They're going to use a long lens and they're going to use a really fast aperture, and they're
going to try to get separation between the background of the image and the foreground.
So they're going to bring into focus the subject of the image, and they are going to let every
thing else kind of fuzz.
And so that's kind of the idea inside of compression.
That's kind of the idea inside of EQ as well.
So compression and EQ work hand in hand.
Compression works across the entire band of frequency range of the sound that you're replicating.
EQs are specific.
EQs you may have seen like...
Or you have seen probably like on a pretty old...
I mean they're all old now, but like the analog mixers that we used to have would have generally
a three band EQ on them.
Yes, you would have a high range or a high EQ.
You would have a middle and you would have a low.
And basically if you take the spectrum of the whole spectrum of what you're hearing,
which is somewhere in the range...
I mean I think they go lower.
The EQs usually are like zero to like 25 or something like that.
You're really only hearing 20 to 20 if you've got good hearing.
Normal hearing, 20 Hz to 20 kHz.
So you take that entire range and if you split it into thirds, you got that low end, you
got the middle end and you got the high end.
And so what those knobs would do is you can increase the volume of each of those sections.
But now if you add in to the middle range usually is where they would start adding this,
they would add a sweep knob.
And what that does is it allows you to more dial in where in that middle range you're
adjusting the volume.
That makes sense.
All the way up to like each...
You got some of these big old EQs that have a massive number, 20 band EQ that has 20 different
sections, 20 different frequencies that you are either pushing the volume on or pulling
it back.
Now why is this important?
When you are taking the signal that's being sent to you and you're trying to make it clearer
because what we're hearing in our headphones, through the microphone, all of these, through
the preamp, through all of this different processing that's going on is a manipulated
sound.
You don't need to get it back to zero what it sounds like when I'm just talking to you
in front of me.
Or even better than that, if I can make it a little more clear, if I can make it a little
more clear, I am manipulating the EQ in order to bring certain ranges down.
Now you can hear like when I say certain, there's a sharpness to those aspirations or
sibilance, is the other word for it.
You can really hear it.
I got it right that time.
Sibilance.
Yes.
And you can hear like as I'm really hissing into this microphone, almost whistling into
the microphone, you can hear like that sharpness inside of it.
Well, that's unpleasant for a long period of time to keep hearing that over and over
and over again.
So what you would do is you would take, you would find that frequency on the high end
of your spectrum and you would locate that and you would bring it down just a little
bit because that's a little too sharp.
So some of that is just, you know, when someone talks into a microphone, you're judging how
far away you should be from the microphone based on what you're hearing in your ears.
But say they're not listening, they're just talking.
That's all the audio engineer is doing is listening to it and trying to make it sound
better.
The other side of that spectrum, the low end and a lot of times radio broadcasters really
like to have that low end.
Yeah, get up there.
The ladies, man.
But that if you get closer to the microphone, you're going to hear some of that on a lot
of mics.
I think this RE 320 that we have over here next to us, it doesn't have as much of that
proximity effect.
That's that is something to play with, well then also on the EQ, you can decide whether
or not that low end is going to be present or not.
Well, just like on the high end, you want some of that.
You want some of that high end, some of that brilliance or clarity is sometimes what it's
called.
I mean, there's there's different words.
And it's so funny, like all of these words have nothing to do with sound, but they like
muddy.
I've heard it referred to as crisp.
Crisp.
It's almost like you can take the sound and break it like a cracker.
Yes.
So that that that sound like it's really nice because it really helps you understand the
beginning and the end of a sound.
That crispness helps there to be separation.
Yes.
Between things on the low end, you can see that it's kind of flubby and feels muddy,
round and bouncy.
And I mean, bouncing may not be the right word for it, but like real flowy and like
there isn't a separation because it kind of goes in and out.
Yes.
But it helps with with gravity.
And it helps with that.
Like like this is this is a thing.
Gravitas.
I almost feel like I could hold this sound in my hands.
Yeah.
But the the problem with the bottom end is a lot of lower plosives like that.
Actually I've got a lot of it cut out so you can't even like that's not a that if I didn't
have this EQed right, then that would sound horrible what I just did into the microphone.
But that that same like low end can be really hard to listen to as well.
So you've got to find those in equalization.
What you're doing is finding those bands of sound and you're tweaking them each individually
and saying I need this a little bit up and I need this a little bit down.
Now we've all been the guy in the I don't know, this doesn't seem to be a thing anymore.
But you remember the old the old days with the old cassette players.
Yeah.
And one of them would have the EQ kind of in the middle and it's like a five band.
Yeah, it was four or five band and you would make the little smile.
Oh, I almost knocked over my beer.
You would make the little smiley face.
Yes, you would.
Or you would raise the low end a little bit to get that thump and then you would raise
the high end a little bit to get that presence and then you would push down on the middle.
So it'd be like this smiley face.
Yeah.
And what you're doing is a mid cut, which is pretty normal actually, because our ears
hear mid range really well.
That's that's the last part of your range to go in your hearing is you'll lose some
of the low end, you'll lose a lot of the high end, especially if you have earwax build up.
So watch out for that.
Yes.
But that mid range kind of stays there and that makes it really muddy.
What happens when it's really muddy, the sound is really muddy is you have the you can't
you don't hear definition and you actually lose a lot of the volume as well.
So it just sounds like I mean, you know, like you're not you're not hearing anything very
well.
So because that's part of our ears that we can we can actually hear really well in, it
makes it hard to understand if that's all you're hearing.
Correct.
So what's the difference then?
The difference between like limiting and compression and EQ is that EQ is taking individual sections
of the sound and making them higher or lower.
EQ and limiting, those are taking the entire band and saying this needs to be less dynamic
or this just needs to be capped on in the case of limiting this needs to be capped and
we don't need to go as as loud as this was before.
In either case, they're they're limiting the dynamic range of the entire band of sound.
Correct.
Yes, that was a lot.
Do you have any questions?
This is my way of taking a breath.
So tell us what the actual differences between what compression is doing and what normalization
is doing because there are actually two two different things and then a second question
would be, should I normalize first or should I compress first?
Or do I even need normalization at all?
That's good.
I would I would say okay, so first the difference between the two normalization, audio normalization
is when you you bring the high the you bring the gain of the entire sound.
Again, this is this is the entire spectrum.
This is an EQ.
The entire spectrum you're bringing the entire the the gain of the end by gain.
I mean like raw volume of the entire sound up to or down to the level that you want it
to be.
Now you got to be careful with normalization because you're not taking the like it's not
compression normalization is is taking like the the amplitude of the entire recording
to a level that you have said this is what I want it to be.
Now we were talking about this before so I already have this ready.
There's a thing called there's a unit of measurement.
We've talked about decibels already.
There's a unit of measurement that is a perceived loudness measurement and that's called luffs.
And usually like if you're if you're putting a podcast out you're aiming for around negative
20 to negative 16 luffs.
And again now that's that's a perceived sound but it's a loudness measurement that you really
want to ensure that that that is the that's going to put you in the same range as everybody
else I guess.
But you can tell like and and I would say like on a in in decibels like we're we're
talking about like zero and just below unity and just below is probably the the area that
would you would want to be in.
I would say I would probably say negative negative five to zero.
Now every this is a little bit weird because every three decibel change is like a is like
a doubling the volume.
So that's not a small like range.
Correct.
It sounds like a small range because you talk about going all the way to negative infinity
which is nothing up to you know plus 20.
That's that's a huge range of decibels.
But every time you increase the decibels by about three dB you're doubling the sound every
when you step if you've got a speaker that's 50 feet away from you when you step up to
25 feet from it you're going to be about three dB louder louder.
So that's a little bit strange.
It's not I don't I wouldn't say that that's like that makes sense to our brains.
When you're talking about normalization you're trying to take the overall sound and bring
it to a certain level.
Now the reason that I would do compression before normalization is because compression
is going to make things sound louder.
Compression is going to and again this kind of in that perceived range when you when you
compress a sound you're you're not you're not actually making the the high end the amplitude
of of your most your loudest rank or your loudest loudest peak peak or anything like
you're not making that louder necessarily.
You are bringing the high end and the or the highest part and the lowest part closer together.
And when you do that everything sounds louder because again you're you if we're just out
in you know the middle of you know the woods or I'm trying to think let's let's go to
the city in our minds right.
You're in the city and you're hearing cars you know drive by you you're you may be hearing
a jackhammer or some sort of construction sound or some beeping of like a trash truck
backing up or whatever your brain is still able to hear the person standing next to you
talking in the midst of all of that different sound and your brain is making sense of that.
Sound is helping to make sense of the thing that you are supposed to be hearing in a mix.
It's it's helping to bring that into a in an into an area that you're you can really
hear the difference between the highs and the lows.
And so if you bring that that spotlight on to the sound and then you normalize it then
you push it to the you're not only pushing the high end anymore to where you want it
to be you're also bringing up the low end.
So a lot of compressors will actually have this they'll have like an output gain or something
like that where they they will say like you want compression but then you want it to be
pushed a little bit harder after it's been compressed.
And so that that type of gain on the back end does help with that.
But normalization is different than compression in that in that way.
How it's manipulating the sound.
It's not normalization is almost like the I would put it at the very end of everything.
Like you you want to you want to limit I would put limiting man that's OK.
So compression and EQ let's talk about that real quick when it comes to like order of
things.
If you are trying to get like a warmer sound then you should if you're trying to get like
a warmer sound then I would you would EQ first.
Is that right?
Yeah if you're trying to get like a warmer sound then I would then I would EQ first and
then compress.
And then if you want to get like super clear clean sound then I would compress and then
EQ.
Yeah that's I'm trying to get it right in my head because it's one of those like it's
really easy to say this the wrong way.
So there's there's a reason to do each one of those I think first.
But again that has to do with are you trying to get like you get the sound the way that
you want it and then you compress everything or do you compress everything and then manipulate
the way that it sounds.
And you can really if you if you compress everything first and then manipulate the way
that it sounds you can really bring out more of a difference between like certain areas
of of the sound.
And then after or I would actually probably limit unless you really want like some like
if there's there's like a distorted like gritty sound that you're going after I would limit
before those.
Okay.
You can limit at the very end if you want like you want some of that break up or some
of that gravelly sound inside of it that makes it it sounds real.
I would say when things kind of distort a little bit when when you hear somebody's voice
start to get a little raspy that sounds more real than like the angel clarity thing that's
going on.
Sure.
So again there's there's a lot of tastes involved with this but then if you're if you do all
of that if you if you shape that sound and then you make it and then you limit it or
limit it and then normalize it like you're you're you're taking all of that overall processing
after the fact.
Man that was a lot.
Yeah.
See I would have thought so tired EQ first to get the frequencies where you want.
Then compress and I would have just thought that would have just been a natural order.
Yeah because I want to manipulate the real sound of what I'm hearing.
So like you talked about if you want to get those S's out pull those S's out.
Yeah.
If that if you've got somebody that's got a ton of low then high pass filter right bass
roll off.
Yeah.
So you would essentially pass filter allows the high in that you got to there's low cut
and high pass.
Same thing.
So high pass is letting the highs pass through the low cut is cutting the lows out.
Same thing with high cut and low pass.
Correct.
So if you had somebody with a really bassy voice you want to start rolling away some
of those lower frequencies to remove some of that muddiness and then once you had that
then I would have thought okay now let's compress to get the highest in the lows together but
you just gave examples there of why you would compress first and then do the EQ.
Yeah I would say you it's which one this may not be the right way to say it so please forgive
me but I would say which one of these do you want to hear the biggest change from.
That's the one that I'm going to put actually second.
Okay.
Because if you if you use the EQ first and then you compress everything you're actually
taking away some of the work that you just did in in that and that's where I would say
it makes it warmer because it brings that compression is then bringing everything closer
together.
The the the difference between everything is getting squished and so you you have this
again because our ears I would say because our ears naturally hear that mid-range better
if you compress everything after you've already EQ'd it then you are naturally going to hear
that mid-range a little bit louder than if you had left it without compression.
Fair enough.
Whereas if you compress it first you bring everything close together and then you EQ
it and say like I'm gonna spike here a little bit to to really get some clarity.
I mean you could you could compress everything and then you could boost the mid-range and
then it would just sound terrible but it would be like super warm I guess but all you're
gonna hear is mud at that point or you could boost the low end harder afterwards or you
but most of the time when people are going to compress first and then EQ they're really
looking to dial in that clarity they're trying to like push those those areas outside of
the rest of the range and again again to use the spotlight idea really let your brain focus
on those peak areas that they're they're pushing or parts that aren't being cut.
I think we I don't remember if we talked about when you are EQing as well the general rule
is to cut narrow and then gain wide.
Now I don't actually know all of the reason why that's the case but when I say narrow
and wide I'm talking about the span of frequencies that you are cutting or gaining so that that's
usually called Q.
I'm trying to think if there's another word for it that I've seen I'm sure that there
is but the Q of an EQ is is how how wide the like if you if you picture that smiley face
like how how wide is that dip yeah you can make it super narrow like where it's only
a few frequencies or you can make it really wide.
Now the danger of cutting really wide is you cut out a lot of things that you don't want
to cut.
I know that correct I don't I don't fully understand why when you when you boost you
want to boost wide I think it's probably because it's more forgiving and generally makes it
sound more natural because you don't usually see like those huge like when you when your
ear hears something a certain range like spike that's usually like when you're like ow I
don't like that so that's probably probably the reason but I can't say that for sure.
And we're all learning this as we go right yep but the other part of it that I would
say is a general rule when EQing is to cut before you boost and that has to do more with
you want to actually show people again naturally what is actually there as opposed to adding
something boosting is adding free frequency amplitude to something that's not actually
there.
So cut first then boost cut narrow and boost wide.
Yeah okay that's I mean that's a lot that's a lot of of I guess and and this is really
the work that I would say most sound engineers are are you know it there's an element of
this being super basic what we're talking about and there's an element of it's so foundational
like you you have to be able to hear and then do this if you want to be able to have a sound
that people are going to want to listen to.
But it's also I mean we as we talked about before at the very beginning manipulating
that sound and making it sound different is also one of the things I mean you know it's
like Picasso nobody looks at Picasso and is like you know what I bet that the dude he
was drawing had a nose on the side of his head or two eyes that were I mean nobody looks
at that and goes yeah that's that's exactly what that sounded like.
That's a lot with with sound if somebody is manipulating the sound if somebody is is really
pushing or driving or making there be distortion or or doing this they're trying to evoke some
sort of feeling inside of it and like I always laugh when I talk to Chad our friend Chad
he he really likes like when he listens to music by himself he wants the volume all the
way up to where it's like hurting his jaw like his he wants to feel it yeah and like
you think about the ways that people like to listen to music whether it's really loud
or really soft or really warm or really like sharp or you know I really like rock music
because of that distortion and you know usually those are the angry people right.
Are you saying I'm angry?
I'm not saying you're angry I'm saying you've got some repressed feelings over there but
it's that like you you kind of hear inside of the music that people are listening to
those those you understand I think pretty naturally what that music is trying to convey
yes and sometimes people do it against itself in order to make a point and some people most
of the time people are doing it like with that what that sound means in order to encourage
that point in order to make that more pointed I guess.
Anyway there's a lot.
It is good stuff though.
You got any other questions?
I think we kind of covered a lot more in depth in what those pieces are and in the last show
we kind of talked about what the compressor is actually the the various functions that
it's doing how it's compressing at the ratio the threshold that it would have to hit in
order to do that.
There is some of the makeup gain in there as well I think we hit that pretty good.
I guess the biggest thing that I'm hearing is I've got some adjustments that I need to
make when I'm producing the audio of the show because it sounds like I'm doing some things
in reverse order.
Well not necessarily.
So I should try tweaking it.
You know it's one of those things that you got to know I guess the other part is to know
your signal path.
Know where these tools lie inside of your signal path.
So on a soundboard it is mostly for a soundboard it is decided for you what's going to come
first.
You know you have gain at the very top of that.
And then EQ is going to be actually further down the list and compression is going to
be higher up on the list or higher up on the more primary in the chain.
I say higher up because that's the way that the soundboard works so please forgive me.
But from top to bottom you're like you know you've got gain and you've got compression
and you've got EQ and sometimes if you've got some flip inside of that if you're able
to change those you know it may that's one of the things that you want to know why you're
doing that.
I guess is the best way I can do it.
Really small book by Nathan Nyquist that I would recommend to everybody is just the EQ
and compression formula.
I've got a copy of this that you can take with you.
But I would recommend it to anybody that's just wanting to understand all of this better.
It's a really small book it doesn't take long to read and I think he breaks down everything
really well.
He's got like that's part of a whole like series of books that he's written that I think
do a great job of explaining you know what compression bus compression is and mastering
and I don't remember what all the other books are in that series.
He's got the three delay framework, three delay, the bus compression framework, three
space reverb framework, mastering multi band compression and then the EQ and compression
formula.
So I would say definitely read the EQ and compression formula if you want to get further
into some of these other ones that I think there's he does a good job I would say.
Other books that I've read that have been really helpful Yamaha has an old book that
it was actually the first sound book that I read was the sound reinforcement handbook
which is awesome but that's produced by Yamaha.
There's another one I can't remember off the top of my head what it was but there's a lot
of good books out there and it's kind of funny to be recommending almost like a textbook
to somebody but that's kind of what we're talking about here.
So I guess one other question asking for a friend.
There's this guy I know.
There's this guy I know that doesn't know audio.
He's got a weird spot on his arm.
You're talking about the luffs.
So the RODECaster gives you the ability to pick that when you're exporting your show
or your recording.
Would you recommend hitting that in that frequency and then bringing it in and doing EQ compression
or do you think leave it alone let it export as is then manipulate the EQ and the compression
and the other pieces?
What I would say is if you don't feel confident with your so the RODECaster when it's giving
you that normalization option at the end it is assuming that you've already done all the
EQing on each individual channel all the compression that you want.
It's assuming and that's one of the great things I would say about the RODECaster is
that it gives you so much the ability to dial in so much before you even record and that's
a really cool thing that they've done with this product.
They're saying at the end of that if you just want to take it off of this and immediately
drop it into your podcast you can set the luffs right now.
I would not set the luff or normalize it.
I would not normalize it and then go back and EQ everything.
I think that you'll lose like you lose it's like I will equate this again to use a photography
analogy.
I would equate this to doing like trying to if you take instead of taking the raw image
from a digital camera and then EQ or not EQing it but doing all of your color grading and
all of that stuff all of that stuff afterward this would be more like taking a JPEG out
of the camera and then trying to do it.
It's not that you can't do anything with a JPEG it's not like you couldn't manipulate
a JPEG to look a different way after you have you know exported it but there's a level of
compression that's happening inside of that image to make it a smaller file size that
you lose some of the ability to do that more dialed in version of editing after you've
already done normalization.
So I would wait on normalization again until the end of the process.
Okay.
Yeah.
Good.
Well my friend has at least been doing that part right.
I love it.
Yes.
Did I just snort?
I think I snorted.
That's okay.
Man this beer was good.
It was.
Thank you Chris.
Well I guess if that's all we've got then we do have a Boostergram.
Oh Boostergram.
Yeah we do.
Boostergram.
Again from our friend Jason.
Jason.
Yes.
The original was Row of Ducks 2222.
2222.
Yes.
Row of Ducks.
Numerology.
So he I forget which episode he I guess it was from Ann We're Back.
Okay.
And he gave me a little feedback on that jingle.
I guess it hit a little bit harder than I expected.
Oh gosh.
So I was going for shock and awe if you will.
Did it knock him out of his seat?
Yeah he wasn't quite prepared for it.
Nice.
So I guess we had mentioned some oh yeah because we gave the or I gave the lead in to like
hey people that I work with I'm gonna be sharing some stuff I'm not talking about you.
You're all good people.
Right.
Don't be offended.
So his comment was I'm offended but only because you asked me to be.
T-file.
Only because you asked me not to be?
Not I'm sorry.
Yeah he says to be but no he isn't right.
Not to be.
Right.
So that was funny.
Nice.
Yes.
Thank you Jason.
Yeah thank you man.
You're at least the one person for sure that we know that's listening.
Yeah right.
Everybody else is a bot.
Until you boost a grandma so I'm just assuming you're a bot.
Yeah boost or it didn't happen.
So a couple other quick things to throw out.
This is a kind of a big deal if you will.
Yeah.
This is episode number 10.
Episode 10.
We made it to the double digits.
There are a ton of podcasts out there that have one maybe three and if you go out to
podcastindex.org and start poking around at some of those those single episodes are somebody
going poop fart fizzle.
That's all it is.
It's like three minutes of them just saying stuff and giggling.
Yeah that's not OK.
Yeah that's not a podcast.
But to kind of put some perspective there they do have four million ninety three thousand
different podcasts in the index.
That's a lot of shows.
A lot of different poop shows.
Yes.
So but with that just to kind of put some perspective in the last 90 days four hundred
and forty nine thousand of those are the ones that have actually posted a new show.
So we've had two or three in that range.
Yeah.
So that puts us in some fairly rarefied air.
Far as I'm concerned.
Yeah I like it.
We're in there with the big guys.
So not bad.
Post and stuff.
That's right.
Post and stuff.
That's right.
And we also passed our major 300th download.
300th download.
There you go.
But we still need an Aussie.
There's got to be an Aussie out there somewhere.
That's the only continent we don't have that they track.
We really would like for one of you you know or maybe a Kiwi just somebody.
I take it.
That's close enough.
Somebody over there just download.
One download.
Just one.
That's all we need.
You know like 10 minutes it's fine.
You don't even have to listen just download.
I just need the download.
I'm trying to complete my bingo.
Yeah I'm trying to complete the set.
Give me a download and we've got every continent.
I love it.
So there's just some fun stuff that's out there.
So I think it was a good show.
Yeah always good to hang out with you brother and thanks for bringing me here.
Absolutely yes.
Yeah we'll have to try some more of the Chamei.
Yeah man.
They're really good.
Yes.
I'm gonna remember that.
Maybe next time we'll get the reserve.
Yeah.
Give that a go and then I'll see how some of these other Trappist beers that I have.
Taste.
Yeah taste and potentially bring some of those back for the show.
I'm all about it.
Let's try them out.
So all right well thank you everybody.
Yeah thanks for listening.
We appreciate you.
Yep.
Hey everybody.
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