ProTools: ghosts! what th' ... ?

[woodman]

i'm getting bleedthrough on PT tracks that's got me baffled ...

backstory: i obtained the raw tracks and PT 5 rig that spawned the last Stragglers album. two key guys have left the band since, and i'm laying down new tracks over the existing ones to reflect our current lineup.

one song requires singing in another key (transposed from F to A). i thought i could use the drum tracks and start from the bottom up retracking the other instruments. but i'm getting lead vocal and steel bleedthrough. (ironically, those are the two guys who've left the band.) at first i thought maybe the studio was leaking sound when we put down the bed tracks, but then i remembered the lead vocal was tracked weeks after the drum tracks went down. hmmm ...

so where the hell is it coming from? i haven't noticed it in the other three album songs i've worked up for redub, but since they're still in the same keys, it's hasn't been intrusive. ... the buses check out clean, but a few channels (chiefly the overheads and hi-hat) are picking it up.

my objective is do produce a decent current demo on the cheap by using the existing tracks and plugging in the new personnel. but i'm wondering if i oughta gamble on this drum track ... the bleed isn't dominant, just enough to be annoying when soloed. anyone else worked through a problem like this?

[getbent]

Anyone? Hey, EVERYONE! Unless you have complete isolation or do one track at a time... you end up with some bleed.

If it is just a demo, I'd leave it. If it is fo' real, I'd see if I could get the guy to recut the track.

[Astro1176]

I have never had pro tools tracks 'bleed' - but if the session is compicated, there may be prefade busses feeding reverbs, and solo-defeated reverbs.

Step 1: show all tracks - make sure there are no hidden tracks which are playing.
Step 2: deactivate all the unused tracks especially vocals and so on - leaving only the drum tracks. Not just mute them - make them grey'd out.
Step 3 (for sanity and absolute certainty) deactivate or remove all the sends and plugins so you can hear the audio in its rawest state.

Now is there still bleed? If so, since the drums were recorded at a different time to the vocals - maybe the audio you have is some comp or bounce of the drums where bleed may have occured, or might include a comp or bounced reverb which had a vocal sent to it.

Listen to each track - is spill on all the tracks?

If you can still hear spill, for a sanity check I would be tempted to import the audio into another wav editor or DAW (just the drum tracks, or one drum track at a time) and see if you can hear the bleed there too.

[woodman]

Originally Posted by getbent

Anyone? Hey, EVERYONE! Unless you have complete isolation or do one track at a time... you end up with some bleed.

so ... i'm not having flashbacks???

Originally Posted by getbent

If it is just a demo, I'd leave it.

that's my inclination, although completing this tune would be heavy lifting ... see if it gets buried in the mix enough to satisfy promoters and clubowners.

Originally Posted by getbent

If it is fo' real, I'd see if I could get the guy to recut the track.

nah, it's unlikely this will ever see the market. besides, i couldn't mike up a drumkit in the Woodshed anywaze — it ain't but 8' by 15'!

[getbent]

Originally Posted by Astro1176

I have never had pro tools tracks 'bleed' - but if the session is compicated, there may be prefade busses feeding reverbs, and solo-defeated reverbs.

Step 1: show all tracks - make sure there are no hidden tracks which are playing.
Step 2: deactivate all the unused tracks especially vocals and so on - leaving only the drum tracks. Not just mute them - make them grey'd out.
Step 3 (for sanity and absolute certainty) deactivate or remove all the sends and plugins so you can hear the audio in its rawest state.

Now is there still bleed? If so, since the drums were recorded at a different time to the vocals - maybe the audio you have is some comp or bounce of the drums where bleed may have occured, or might include a comp or bounced reverb which had a vocal sent to it.

Listen to each track - is spill on all the tracks?

If you can still hear spill, for a sanity check I would be tempted to import the audio into another wav editor or DAW (just the drum tracks, or one drum track at a time) and see if you can hear the bleed there too.

I don't think he means that the software is malfunctioning... I think he means that his drum mics picked up the rest of the band during the original recording. If I'm wrong, my apologies...

I just re read it again.. hmmm, the only time I've seen that happen is when someone left the monitors on in an open room or when someone's headphones were up super loud.

[woodman]

Originally Posted by Astro1176

I have never had pro tools tracks 'bleed' - but if the session is compicated, there may be prefade busses feeding reverbs, and solo-defeated reverbs.

it was a complicated session — 22 tracks in PT LE 5 on a G4 under System 9 ... the engineer was a stalwart soul, squeezing every note he could out of it. (that's the machine i'm now working the tracks on.) gobs of plugins, and a few tracks he apparently bounced to ADAT (if i'm reading his tracks correctly).

Originally Posted by Astro1176

Step 1: show all tracks - make sure there are no hidden tracks which are playing.
Step 2: deactivate all the unused tracks especially vocals and so on - leaving only the drum tracks. Not just mute them - make them grey'd out.
Step 3 (for sanity and absolute certainty) deactivate or remove all the sends and plugins so you can hear the audio in its rawest state.

no hidden tracks. before i bounced, i killed (deleted) all the other tracks except the drums and saved as a new session. i tried deactivating the sends and bypassing the plugins, and it made no difference.

Originally Posted by Astro1176

Now is there still bleed? If so, since the drums were recorded at a different time to the vocals - maybe the audio you have is some comp or bounce of the drums where bleed may have occured, or might include a comp or bounced reverb which had a vocal sent to it.

this seems the most likely theory ... there was a lot of fancy footwork going on to conserve processor power. i'm fuzzy on the details, because that was my first PT session and i had only a tenuous grasp on specifics.

Originally Posted by Astro1176

Listen to each track - is spill on all the tracks?

the worst offenders are the overhead pair, plus a little in the hi-hat and the faintest bit in the toms pair. the snare and kick are clean.

Originally Posted by Astro1176

If you can still hear spill, for a sanity check I would be tempted to import the audio into another wav editor or DAW (just the drum tracks, or one drum track at a time) and see if you can hear the bleed there too.

the best i could do was to bounce to AIFF, burn a CD and dump it into Garageband on my Intel Mac ... i couldn't hear as much of the leakage, but it was still there. my hope is that it'll be buried when i get the other parts on.

[Astro1176]

Hmmm it does sound as if the bleed occured during a bounce (possibly vocals were sharing the drum reverb) - or the other possibility is maybe there was some guide vocals or the drummer was singing along as he played?

It is always hard to predict what will get lost in a mix and what will cut through, you might never know it was there or it might even add an ethereal harmony!

[woodman]

oddball solution: went back into the original session file, isolated the drums again and inverted the phase on one of the overheads ... instant frequency cancellation! the cymbals don't seem to be affected, but the vocal/steel bleeds were reduced from a muted cry to a faint whisper. i think the track will work fine now.

[octatonic]

Originally Posted by woodman

oddball solution: went back into the original session file, isolated the drums again and inverted the phase on one of the overheads ... instant frequency cancellation! the cymbals don't seem to be affected, but the vocal/steel bleeds were reduced from a muted cry to a faint whisper. i think the track will work fine now.

Nice one.

This will mess with mono-compatibility but that shouldn't bother you unless you have a huge market in AM radio.
Be careful of phase issues in the mix.

Jim

[Astro1176]

Originally Posted by woodman

oddball solution: went back into the original session file, isolated the drums again and inverted the phase on one of the overheads ... instant frequency cancellation! the cymbals don't seem to be affected, but the vocal/steel bleeds were reduced from a muted cry to a faint whisper. i think the track will work fine now.

ouch - I am very scared! Out of phase stuff drives me nuts.

[woodman]

Originally Posted by Astro1176

ouch - I am very scared! Out of phase stuff drives me nuts.

it was the only solution i could think of at the time. but after careful examination, it didn't make enough difference to be worthwhile, since it changed the overall sound of the drums. so i reverted to the original track, leakage and all. as i've begun to lay down the other tracks, i don't think it's gonna come through enough to notice.