Kristal Audio Engine

Quick Tutorial

This is a brief tutorial to get you started using the mixing aspects of Kristal Audio Engine. The software can also be used as a recorder, however, our purpose here is to get you started mixing a song that has been recorded using other means.

The software is available for free, here: http://www.kreatives.org/kristal/

Once you have the software installed and a folder created that contains your unmixed wave files (maybe a wave with drums, another with a bass part, guitars, keyboards and/or vocals, etc.) we can begin the tutorial.

When you open the program, you will see windows that look something like this:

There are three windows visible within the main window: (1) The Waver Window, (4) The Transport Panel and (6) The Mixer Window.

Loading Your Un-Mixed Wave Files

The place to start is in the Waver window. There is an ‘open folder’ icon (2). This is where you load your wave files into Kristal. Press the icon, navigate to your Wave Folder and ‘load in’ one of your wave files. I usually put the drums on track one.

When you’ve loaded the drums, a graphic will appear similar to the one that (3) points to. This is what your wave file looks like to Kristal.

Repeat the process for each wave that you want in your song, moving down the Waver window for each new file. When you’re done, you should have a few files showing that you will begin to mix.

Start The Player

Next, move to the transport panel:

For now, we’ll ignore (9). Press (8), the play button, to start the player. At this point, you should hear the wave files you selected playing in unison with each other. Of course, nothing really has been done to them yet, so they may sound okay, but they may not.

At some point during the process, you’ll obviously reach the end of the song. When that happens, use the transport panel to ‘rewind’ the tune and press play again.

Mixing The Waves

Move to the Mixer window (6). Each track has its own fader and a few other nifty things to adjust to make your song sound good:

First things first: Use the faders (H) that appear on each track to balance the volume of the song’s tracks. All you really want, at this point, is to be able to hear each instrument.

Now the fun can begin. The line near letter (G) is the panning control (believe it or not!). Slide this back and forth, using your mouse, to place your instruments where you want them in the stereo field. Experiment to see where each instrument sounds best. Generally, though, bass, vocals and most lead instruments tend to stay towards the center. Incidental instruments can be panned as desired.

If you click on the area marked (C), a list of Kristal’s four built-in effects will come up and you can choose to add reverb, chorus and a number of other effects to change the sound of your song. Each track contains two slots (FX1 & FX2) where effects can be applied and these effects are applied ONLY to the selected track.

Below them is the EQ (equalizer) section. By pressing the ‘e’ next to ‘EQ’, you can call up the parametric equalizer that is available for each track. Experiment with these, too.

The button marked (D) above tells you whether or not the particular effect or EQ is actually active. Make sure it is lit if you want that effect to be applied.

The last two buttons (F) are Mute and Solo. Mute removes that track from the mix and Solo removes everything except the selected track. These can be helpful when trying to locate a problem or when trying to refine the sound of a particular instrument.

Mastering Your Song

Once you have the mix you like, it’s time to make some final adjustments. Shift your attention to the far right side of the Mixer window and you’ll find the Mastering section:

In this section, you’ll find three more slots for effects (J). The difference, though, is that these effects are applied to the entire song, every track. You’ll want to be a bit careful here as changes can make a very big difference in the overall sound, for better OR worse. Generally, I would use these ONLY for a reverb, limiter or a final equalizer, but experiment and find what YOU like.

The stereo pair of faders (K) determine the overall volume of your song. Generally, you want these to be as loud as possible with clipping. (Clipping is a scratchy noise that comes from driving the electronics too hard. There is a graphic that shows when a track is clipping, so pay attention to it!)

Final Mixdown

So, now we’ve brought our files in, mixed them appropriately, added effects as desired and adjusted the volume of the overall track. Now we want to create a new file with our masterpiece of music and production.

There is one last thing that needs to be done before we can export our song. We have to tell Kristal exactly what to include in the mix, time-wise. As it stands now, Kristal doesn’t know when to start the mix and when to end it.

Look at the top of the Waver window and you’ll see a ‘time-line’ (L):

Using the Control key, plus a right or left click, adjust the little triangles until the blue area of the timeline starts at 0:00 and goes to the end of your song.

At this point, it’s a good idea to save the Kristal File so you can come back to it another time if you need to make correction.

In the main window, click on ‘File’ and ‘Save Project’. This doesn’t save a mixdown, it saves the entire Kristal environment.

Now, go to the main window again and click ‘File’, ‘Export Mixdown’. Kristal will create a new wave file that is the results of your efforts in mixing the song.

And that’s it! Your song is done!

But here are some more cool features:

In the Waver window, you can make some ‘pre-adjustments’ to your raw wave files. If your file is too loud or too soft, grab the box (B) with your mouse and raise or lower it as needed.

If you want a particular track to fade in or out, grab one of the triangles (A) and move it left or right and your track will act accordingly.

Looping Your Song

There are times when you want the song (or a part of it) to loop, especially when you’re trying to narrow in on a perfect mix.

Using the timeline (L) and the little triangles, select a portion of your song. Then go back to the transport window and press the looping button (9). Now, when you press ‘play’ (8), your song will loop forever. Pretty cool.

VST’s

VST is the type of plug-in that Kristal uses for effects. The built-in ones are VST’s and you can download many free VST’s from the Internet. Just do a search and you will find virtually any kind of effect you might desire. After downloading the file, un-zip or otherwise unpack it and find the .dll file.

Move the .dll file into the ‘plug-in’s’ folder you will find on your hard drive in a location similar to this: C:\program files\ Kreatives.org\Kristal Audio Engine\Plugins. The next time you open Kristal, you will have more effects available to you.

I recommend the following free VST’s:

My favorite: Luxonix’s LFX-1310. Amazing multi-effects:

http://www.luxonix.com/home/en/downloads.html?id=main

Kjaerhus Audio’s Classic Master Limiter:

http://www.kjaerhusaudio.com/classic-master-limiter.php

Baxxpander… gives real thump to your bass:

http://www.freesoundeditor.com/incageneng.html?VSTFiltereng.htm~main

Feel free to e-mail me with questions:

Mikewich(at)optonline.com