Hey guys! I’m new to SuperCollider, and was just learning about this incredible technology to choose which environment to use for a future livecoding and audio production project!!!
I was wondering if in addition to the live coding possibilities, it was also possible to produce tracks to publish in SC. If so, how do you approach the mixing and mastering phases for a track produced in SuperCollider? Thanks in advance
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Hi @Vinetwigs and welcome to the forum! I do use SC to make fixed pieces and soundtracks for hire as well. There are so many ways to organize your work its really hard to give specific advice! I usually just build a different setup for each project, but I would draw your attention to VSTPlugin which lets you insert mastering plugins if you don’t feel like rolling your own. You might also check out DdwMixerChannel Quark for one approach. Check out @Nathan Ho’s album Haywire Frontier | Nathan Ho for a great example of published SC tracks
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FWIW I would not try to do post-production in SC. DAWs have better plugins with better GUIs for that job; there aren’t any bonus points for keeping everything in SC.
hjh
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Point taken - although for me there is value in keeping things in SC - I like projects to be resumable and under version control for one…
I do sometimes script REAPER to have a piece remember how to export stems and build or open an appropriate .rpp file. @madskjeldgaard’s ReaCollider Quark is helpful here.
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I largely do agree with this. I had two independent discussions with students around these topics some days ago. IMO doing multiband compression in SC is probably not worth the hassle. A different thing is reverb. While it is true that SC doesn’t ship with out-of-the-box brilliantly sounding reverbs, diving into very specific reverb possibilities with SC – e.g., by experimenting with allpass chains, convolution etc. – can be very rewarding. However, in this case, it would rather not be regarded as part of post-production but an integral part of the artistic/live-coding/compositional process.
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Except JPverb 
(but mainly for Oliveros ambient tank reverbs).
Absolutely.
For me, it’s a choice between a/ spending time making fx and UIs for EQ, compression, limiting etc which are likely to sound worse and be clumsier to use than professionally developed plugins, or b/ load the SC-recorded audio files into Reaper and just do the work. I definitely don’t have time for A. (There are also considerations such as: SC’s Compander has been criticized for a long time for its relatively poor sound compared to pro plugins – come to think of it, as part of my production process, I should probably replace Compander throughout my setup with VSTPlugin instances.)
It’s definitely possible to organize multiple audio streams (with MixerChannel, even easy) – that part of production is fine. I’m mainly talking about end-stage audio tweaks, where DAWs are optimized for that use case.
hjh
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What is this though?
https://gameoflife.nl/software/
It kind of looks like a daw. Can you add your own code to it?
Maybe it could be used for a live event with lots of different monitors around? Is that what it’s meant for?
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Thank you so much, your answer was really useful to me and allowed me to get clearer ideas on the issue. You also helped me understand that SC is the right tool for my needs. I tried the plugin you talked about and I find it just phenomenal, very simple to use!
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SC can sound a bit glassy. Im going to give it a go at playing external gear. The pattern library is more powerful than any hardware sequencer.I just want it to be as rock solid as possible. Probably have to post on here how to do that.
Maybe slave to an external clock like Pamela’s workout? I don’t know.
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It would be interesting to try to evaluate that statement. Does SC doing FM sound more glassy than Pd or Max doing FM? Or vs a DX7? That is… which synthesis techniques were involved, and how were they implemented, to give a glassy impression?
In subtractive synthesis, analog-style filters introduce a lot of dirt, which RLPF or BLowPass don’t have. Mads’ PortedPlugins pack has some virtual-analog filters that bring the filth, though – I had a synth that I used to run in VCV Rack and control it by MIDI from SC, because the Vult Unstabile filter is so gloriously grimy – but Mads’ VALadder can be driven pretty hard – so I gave up the specific character of that one filter in exchange for reduced complexity in my setup (and the sound isn’t so far off in the end).
Im going to give it a go at playing external gear. The pattern library is more powerful than any hardware sequencer.I just want it to be as rock solid as possible.
MIDI → external gear won’t be sub-millisecond accurate, but it may be close enough, and its capabilities and limitations are well tested and understood.
Or do you mean CVs → Eurorack type stuff?
Maybe slave to an external clock like Pamela’s workout?
The tricky thing with SC following a remote clock is latency. If the clock pulse is being sent at the moment when sound should happen, then SC needs to respond with sound right now – but there’s always going to be a bit of latency.
For that reason, I wouldn’t recommend that approach. But SC could generate clock pulses for other gear to follow.
hjh
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I’m going to try and mix midi and cv. Expert sleepers Es8 , , I know midi has its issues with timing
I think sc sounds very clear yes, I’ve always thought that, compared to max msp. Ever since 1999.
I’m sure things can be done to make up for that, maybe high fidelity is a better term. . It’s just my ears. Who am I? Some adhd addled average joe. I do think the dx7 made by Aziz Ege Gönül, sounds exactly like a real dx7, and he made a point to dirty it up, to do so. It’s not a bad thing. Just an observation.
What synthesis techniques? All of them. Sc has a sound. If I use SmStools, that weird app sounds different than
Sc.
I think it probably is very dependent on the artist too. sc sounds amazing for certain things.
I’m just basing my thoughts on demos I hear all around from different people. Autechre have their stuff mastered so I can’t really go by their stuff, even though I know it’s all msp.
as far as solid timing, yeah that’s a tuff one. I don’t know what to do.tbh, I do believe you can hear timing like an mc-4 versus an mmt-8
It’s really all the stuff in a computer in the background mucking up the timing. I’m open to ideas on making it more solid. I prefer rock solid timing like the mc-4
Maybe recording the cv gate info into something and then quantize it? Rossum makes some cv recorders, but I don’t know if there is quantizing.
I enjoy playing around with sc, that’s my one requirement for any instrument, then sound.
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I’d push back on that slightly and say it depends on your goals and workflow. I think you’re right that doing mixing and mastering of a professional nature in SC might not be as conducive to quick, effective work as in a DAW. But I think it’s also possible that doing your mixing (and mastering? but I know less about this) in SC might lead you to make certain creative decisions that you wouldn’t have made otherwise, and that’s cool, as long as it doesn’t cost you a well-paying gig…
All that said, I haven’t ever actually done this in my own work, so my argument is theoretical rather than empirical and could be taken with a few grains of salt.
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“Mastering” of course originally referred to the creation of a vinyl master by a transfer engineer. The limitations of lathes were specific challenges that recording engineers didn’t need to know or understand. And then there were the loudness wars where people were trying to get a competitive advantage by getting as much loudness out of physical media.In the absence of physical media mastering is largely a mystification. If we are transferring old master tapes, or making compilations of material from disparate sources, or adapting material from one reference listening level (film or TV) to another, we may need to do compression and eq (mastering) to get consistency sure but…
Hi Vinetwigs,
I produced an entire album in SC. I sent it to a friend (who is a mastering enginner) and he said it needed no mastering. However I did do some small cut in the high end and a tiny bit of limiting in Logic.
So, in my case, yes. But the music is not something that would get played in a nightclub or on commercial radio.
I think given the level of control you have over sound in SC, it’s easier to get to a sound that needs little to no processing than if you were using a DAW with plugins. In fact, I don’t really like even thinking in those terms anymore, of piano rolls and plugins, it just feels much more constrained. Obviously, that’s quite a personal thing.
One person whose sound design I really like is Eli Fieldsteel. Some of the sounds he makes on his tutorials sound really enticing to me.
I hope you enjoy SC a lot. I’m by no means its greatest practitioner, but I have found it a deeply rewarding experience to work with.
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I guess I see a distinction between audio production and audio engineering. These overlap considerably, but I think they’re not quite the same: if production is primarily about art, then audio engineering is primarily about science, and as such, I think when it comes to audio engineering, “creative decisions that you wouldn’t have made otherwise” have a higher likelihood of just being incorrect (or, more accurately, sub-optimal – but who wants their mix to sound sub-optimal?). I’d be skeptical of making creative decisions in the production phase so that later, erm, “unusual” engineering decisions would be justified. (E.g., I just heard Suzanne Ciani in concert, and then heard complaints online about the engineering work by the sound crew. None of that is mainstream music, but poor engineering did have an adverse effect on some listeners’ experience.)
In any case, I’m just reporting what works for me – I can’t, and don’t want to, force anyone to do the same. There’s a difference between disagreement and coercion. Please do things your own way, and don’t do anything just because of an opinion I stated in a forum post 
hjh
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A few pointers about mixing and mastering:
Thankfully the loudness war is over. 25 years ago we made albums absurdly loud with a dynamic range of 10, 8 or even somethings 6 db. Now all streaming platforms perform loudness compensations (with a few non important exceptions) which is a blessing. I use https://www.loudnesspenalty.com/ to check my masters and aim to be a little bit louder than Spotify, so that if anything, they turn my master down 0.x db instead of turning it up into a limiter which I have no control over. For a lot of electronic stuff it is not hard make it loud enough, ie. around -16 - -14 LUFS, without compression.
The most important thing about choosing to mix in SC or go external is automation in my opinion. If you can control the internal level of sounds on a note-by-note or event-by-event basis in the creation process then you can stay in SC. If, on the other hand you are doing sound experimentation stuff, crazy on-the-fly tweaks, live input of some sorts etc. then you really need automation of levels and sometimes EQs, which is so much easier handled in a DAW. The stuff I do fall in this category. I also love analog both for the sound and the hands on performance element with hard-to-do-recalls, so I often run SC stuff through my Studer mixer and an analog mastering chain with a lot of goodies. But that is just me and because I am fortunate enough to have the gear.
If I was to mix SC in the box I would probably use some VST plugins via the VSTPlugin extension, but as the work of @nathan and others show, you don’t necessarily need it.
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I understand compression isn’t need for controlling unwieldy audio in sc, I never use compression for that. I’m mostly in the analog world and a good compressor with a fat transformer can do amazing things to a drum part or a whole track, it can make a track into something else. Transform a drum machine into something else and give it a groove it could never have . There is a story about the Raspberries, they couldn’t get Go all the way to feel like a hit, until someone run the whole track thru an api 2500 pumping at the same tempo of the track, made it a whole new song, the Beatles used compression on everything , excessively, and thank god for it. I’m sure this will be an unpopular post. But I like to look at other forms of music, not just navel gaze into the electronic enclave.
Autechre said in an interview that supercollider sounded finished, that it didn’t need mastering.
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For compression and brickwall limiting on the master (if needed) I would use VST plugins or bounce to stems and mix in a DAW.
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I agree however I have a project where I am obligated to use sc for music production and specifically for recreating a music piece. However since I am a newbie in algorithmic music I really can’t understand how to analyze a song so that the frequency and all the other details work to recreate a song in an 8bit audio style. Do you have any suggestions?
Even better, overdrive a r2r 1/4 tape. Or use a plug-in that does that, it might sound more pleasant. I dont use plugins do I don’t know what’s out there. Neve makes a tape saturation 500 rack