When Doing Things Wrong Sounds Good

It was late at night and I had spend three days reworking my mixing setup downstairs, when I accidentally went way into the deep red on my audio interface, pushing + 20dB and more. And it sounded amazing! I immediately shot this video, thinking I had discovered a hidden feature of the RME Babyface Pro. But just as I was wrapping up I discovered that there was something else at play...
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[@Hainbach]

Support my descent into test equipment madness: patreon.com/hainbach

[@MHoodFishing]

I challenge you to make cumbias rebajadas with test equipment.

[@Ojref1]

That is sick, Trent Reznor would surely approve.

[@supercompooper]

Brent Treznor as well!

[@ikjleio]

The pinging jam definitely gives me a tense action-horror score vibe

[@fus132]

Makes me wanna run for the hills honestly

[@glebpalamarchuk9087]

Mixer overdrive is actually a sound of a lot of different genres. Gabber producers used it to enhance their kicks, a lot of guitars were recorded that way without a preamp on some rock classics, jhs even made a pedal based on that premise. Although none of those sound like what you have here, absolutely amazing. Edit: oh, I see now what went differently haha

[@shannoneldridge5690]

There is a cricket in my house that was synced to the beat and mixed with the digital filth. It sounded awesome!

[@davidgoeller5843]

I love when this happens. One time I was outside listening to an Aphex Twin song and there was a bird complimenting it so well I wasn't sure if it wasn't actually part of the song for several minutes.

[@Metamerist625]

a beautiful peice of synchronicty!

[@davegesell5470]

I believe at 6:17 we see the first glimpse of a Hainbach Rock n' Roll face ever recorded.

[@Hainbach]

Had to make it the thumbnail to commemorate that moment

[@LordMarlle]

Let's rock!

[@bartektrame8801]

Love these "emerging properties" of more complex analog Setups. So impenetrable thought

[@Hainbach]

It baffles me how this happened. I have a limiter on my main mixer upstairs so I never got into this crazy territory there

[@goonfish]

Except this is all plastered through that digital feedback for that key, super-aliased... distortion stuff!

[@kevinaaronson]

Holy smokes, the last minute is pure evil. Amazing.

[@StellarWorks2023]

Such a thick, lush distortion and feedback tone. To have such hardware at your disposal must be a never-ending adventure! Also, the Hainbach "stank face" is a wondrous sight to behold 😁

[@orjis]

Feedback loops are very fun, infinite possibilities of wild soundscapes and stuff. I should mess with them again

[@tapeexperiments]

After years of audio production, I still get a thrill when I see and hear live panning like this.🙂2:15

[@regplasma7906]

6.34 My face when clearing up the cat tray !

[@Animal_lives_matter]

That piece at the end was by far the best of the lot imo

[@Hainbach]

Yeah that was the first one I actually worked on, the other were just sound tests when setting up

[@G.GordonMidi]

“Hi I’m Hainbach, and it’s good to have you bach.”

[@tl880linux]

It would be interesting to see the spectrum analysis of this. The feedback could be throwing up some stuff near or above the audible range. Maybe that's doing weird things to the antialiasing filter on the interface?

[@Hainbach]

Yeah there seems to radio frequency stuff being thrown up? Have to do a test for that indeed, will post in the community notes if I find something

[@CatFish107]

​@@Hainbach Why do I get the feeling we are about to Simon the magpie drop a video titled "I turned my old mixer into an x-ray machine"?

[@arcticrunning8370]

I had to push the volume to 15 on this video, so cool!

[@b.slocumb7763]

I don’t know if you realize this, but watching your videos is super soothing. You’re like the European Crafsman Steady Craftin’. I could watch both of you all day! 😊

[@benjaminbabb4658]

I absolutely agree! I was going through liver failure a few years ago. Hainbach was one of the few things that helped me rest well.

[@H3adcrash]

Fun stuff! It's like a modern variant of how the kick in old hardcore was done. A 909 kick fed into the mic input of a mixer or preamp, and overdriven heavily.

[@Hainbach]

Yeah, Minus the weird feedback loop that made the converters on the RME freak out

[@Rr0gu3_5uture]

In the early 90s, I made quite a few Hardcore tunes for teenagers in my local neighbourhood. I'd always do this, TR-909 kick in the mic input, gain knob set to ten, fader down low. Also used an Arion distortion pedal, and a Boss CS-2 in the channel insert, as this tightened up the kick quite a bit, if I'm remembering correctly. For some reason, distorting the kick using those old Mackie/Soundcraft mixers always sounded a lot better than just sending it directly into a pedal for some reason.

[@FRIDGEYTHEGOAT]

I love your experimentations! such unique sounds through all this amazing vintage gear.

[@GOLDENCORE78]

Great sound design. A giant step forward

[@heliumtrophy]

Had a real Pan Sonic feel to it. Of course I loved it!

[@bazedjunkiii_tv]

the second half reminded me of some fierce underground techno basement live jams of the 90s where it was all about use and abuse. of gear, ofc.

[@axis_8]

There you have the basis for at least one album! Thanks fir sharing!

[@MoraFermi]

OW! Listening to this on headphones was a very bad idea.

[@Hainbach]

Yeah keep a hand on the volume dial 😬

[@synth-eticfantasies5683]

What a filthy yet beautiful sound! You are a master at creating unique soundscapes!

[@NicStage]

One of the coolest things about thinking something is something is when you find out it's actually not. We can add "Make a box to think outside of" to the deck of oblique strategies. :)

[@WastelandSurvival2]

*tinnitus has entered the chat* haha

[@thefantasticlaurab]

love you Hainbach :) thanks for sharing such cool stuff with me!

[@adeptusmechanicus7572]

Those effects are so cool sounding

[@Rivenworld]

Love your sounds Dude, pretty awesome and surreal, love it! Does incredible things to my ears... A bit of music with the sounds of a radio tuning sounded pretty fantastic.

[@Hainbach]

It’s wild right? I am still glowing with excitement

[@keithraney2546]

CRUNCHY GLITCHES ! great !

[@isyourguy2934]

very cool! it sounds like the test equipment is generating content way above the nyquist, which introduces aliasing. anything beyond that i'd defer to the hardcore engineers! one interesting thought though: i wonder why the mixer circuit doesn't have a low pass filter set above the nyquist in the analog signal path before the ADC? maybe there's a good reason for it, or maybe there is one but the slope is gradual enough to still let some through. the feedback would probably make that small amount extremely audible. all speculation though! 🤔 anyway, great video!

[@Hainbach]

Yeah I share your hypnothesis - it seems the most logical.

[@Alf_Kramden]

Dang it! This was too good.

[@athko]

industrial techno on text equipment? hell yess

[@athko]

i often find the most exciting sonic potentialities when i set up digital machines interacting with analog feedback loops.. the quadrantid swarm with its analog filter and wavetable oscillator is sorta built on that principle too, which ig is what is so cool about it

[@athko]

discovery happens at the margins, when you try to break apart a system you have created yet do not fully understand

[@Mad_Speed]

Reminds me of a recording I did recently where the artist wanted to have an angsty scream. We recorded one layer clean and then another layer with way too much gain going into the pre-amp (intentionally) to get a distorted layer

[@SunurEvulMorog]

just found your channel and im in love ❤️‍🔥keep doing what your doing 👍

[@lumpielump3576]

how lovely! soundpack pretty please!

[@Hainbach]

It’s on my Patreon ❤️

[@frywolny]

That was great!

[@chocomalk]

So cool!

[@JayBirdJay]

There's a brief moment at 6:45 that's just wonderful, a kind of arpeggiator vibe. The whole video is fantastic, but that was my favorite 😊

[@JayBirdJay]

Also, the thumbnail is hilarious. I love it!

[@henryhill92]

Would love to hear you do a test equipment industrial album that goes into these noisier and more distorted territories!

[@Kettupaini]

One day I got same kind of feedback with Tremolo, Noise Gate and OD pedals and it all started with AUX send to input and having those pedals connected in different ways. Audio signals are really interesting!

[@BrunoWiebelt]

danke für die tips and flips

[@celtislam]

Love it

[@edda673]

These are the kind of super fun discoveries Hainbach :-)!! At WTS I'm researching applications of passive old filters in feedback, and I guess there is something going on related to impedance (miss)matching in a sonic interesting way! Keep on doing this and wrie down the routings in block diagrams for memory and research please!! Alles liebe aus Den Bosch :-)

[@Hainbach]

Alles liebe nach Den Bosch!

[@klinkske]

Yeah feedback mixing, i recognised it instantly. It s magic combined with sounds running into each other on the mixer.

[@DasDoktorchen]

In less extreme settings converter clipping is also used in mixing/mastering for electronic music. But I never pushed it that far. Very interesting video 👍

[@CinematicLaboratory]

When you go against common wisdom, it will lead to new knowledge, which will add to common wisdom when you go against it. Wisdom is a feedback loop too :).

[@deepblack67]

Yeah, so I do that with an old RAMSA sound console where I use the 4 groups to feed effects pedals that I return to individual tracks and then mix back into each other while driving the gain and EQ, sometimes you get the bonus of phasing and amp interference. It gets weird, negative feedback, phasing in and out of master levels, raise the level and it gets quiter, lower and it gets louder. I would make that thing start to smoke. lol, fun

[@blush_response]

I support this.

[@resonance378]

Agree with many people here on the NIN/Reznor sounds etc. Would also add Death in Vegas / Richard Fearless to the mix based on that outro.

[@flowbius]

UIUIUIUI! Das geht aber heftig vorwärts's......... That's some sick beat. Sounds real good.

[@cameronscottcairney8852]

Very great! Inspiring. Now I can’t wait to see what I can do with my little Deformer 3 filters, 8 ch mixer and interface!

[@Hainbach]

Oh nice! I had the OG Little Deformer, sounded so good. Interface was a bit of a pain so I let it go

[@cameronscottcairney8852]

@@Hainbach can totally understand that. If you get the chance to borrow an LD3 with Gotharman’s filter boards I have a feeling you would unlock some beautiful worlds of sound. Great post!

[@Rehbet]

Imagine the frequencies coming from those ribbon driven headphones, dont hurt your ears with ultrasound hainbach!

[@PaulOkon1981]

Slow zoom in through a dark hall way to a slightly cracked door flowing with crimson red light

[@MrOtistetrax]

Strong Speedy J, circa Public Energy era vibes.

[@raecelta8150]

I have an MS-20 synthesizer and I will put the signal out into the external signal in and then crank the signal level and it makes the synth sound so dirty and cool.

[@corridor444]

I like the high pitched

[@DoomedMoviethon]

That fake out ending. LOL.

[@WayneLambrightIII]

Keep the great work, consider adding known noise makers of interference to the electronics, like a local spark gap tesla coil. Those snaps and pops might be lovely.

[@simoantere7283]

Sick sounds! Long live feedback howls!

[@fahrenheit1391]

6:47 analog Uptempo :)

[@pzedozmusic]

I love your videos. At this stage, I think you could play two spoons and get 1000’s of views. 😂 Thanks, you make me smile.

[@thegrimyeaper]

1:25 VERY Fischerspooner

[@pawnotdaw4559]

That was pretty cool. I'd heard of people clipping digital and thought it would sound pants but no.

[@nickmarkham3743]

I do stuff like this on my modular as well. In my case, it's just a sine wave playing just outside human hearing, intermodulating with whatever else is playing into a nonlinear mixer. (a moog cp3 clone with feedback patched from its output to an input to facilitate enough gain to clip the signal to hell and back. :3 ) Good fun! Try it out and let us know if you get similar results!

[@nickmarkham3743]

To clarify the signal flow, mix one extremely high pitched sine wave with your pinged filters, and feed the whole thing into, essentially, an overdrive. (In my case, the overdrive was a CP3 feeding back on itself, which creates a very aggressive gain boost and the mixer becomes a clipper. )

[@Guerrilla_OP]

I'm going to try this with my UFX III.

[@curtishoffmann6956]

Ooh, that IS sweet. Got some good basic beats there you can build on. VERY industrial.

[@jimorgain63]

yikes the dog whistle at the end! there are clubs in seattle people love this genre, well done

[@derigel9783]

With my Sony studioheadphones I could hear the 'swishing by a of a tentpole' at double the speed in thw beginning

[@janedagger]

Accidents and mistakes are often called genius later. Its...accepting these things that take you outside and spank you ... that are valuable

[@DTZinatbakhsh]

This would be a great dub siren

[@temporoboto]

💙

[@ajeerson]

Seeport! ❤

[@tomp1585]

off topic but I wonder if you discovered the new book Electronic Perspectives by Tom Rhea. This book is wall to wall eye candy, some amazing instruments in here, right up your alley.

[@joshuahelmeke]

I just assumed that you were familiar with the technique of no input mixing. Your discovery reminds me of that technique. Keep experimenting.

[@Hainbach]

I am familiar with that indeed, and feedback mixing has been the core of how I work for years. But I have always had limiters on the master to protect me from digital overs. Going deep red into digital was something I avoided

[@samuelgeai6306]

At the beginning, I ask myself "Why the sound is so low ?'". 5 minutes later "ah, ah, hmmm, yas !!! More!"

[@pixellordxxl1529]

Is there a way to feedback-mixing in a DAW? I gave it a try but it seems that there has to be at least one sample of delay in order to feedback, which creates a phasing sound 😢

[@johngorgis]

I tried to clip with my arturia audio fuse I would not recommend it It sounds really harsh

[@jamaharon]

Feedback aside, I don't think the "drive" that any drive comes from the babyface inputs, it seems that you mostly drive your mixer outputs. When you drive an audio interface analog input you drive the analog gain staging/butter and maybe the analog part of the converters, so what you will hear will always be "analog saturation" no digital artifacts unless you pass the 144dB 24 bit potential dynamic range of the converters digital output (or the thousands db's dynamic range of total mix = 40dB 🙂 Btw, If some overdrive comes from the babyface it will be easier to "push" without the pad. If you only hear overdrive with the pad engaged it's suggesting the saturation comes solely from the mixer.

[@edgeeffect]

The final section was giving me huge "Forbidden Planet" vibes. :)

[@jonlork1937]

This needs to get put into some Dark Techno or Downtempo Stuff

[@bombfog1]

I have to say around 1:50 I was getting anxiety from the sounds, like the sounds you were making would be perfect in a horror game.

[@Hainbach]

Yeah it’s strange what these high pitched tones can release - I have learned to love them

[@doctorc-ton1099]

I am certain that you experienced the "mixer-as-a-synth" episode from Simon (The Magpie)? I felt you had a feedback thing going on as you were playing. Believe it or not, I didn't know that I was already doing that when i wired my guitar amp into itself and playing it's EQ knobs getting weird noises back in the very late 1900's, and recording it to my Teac A-3440. Cheers!

[@Poly_0000]

I feel like I hear this kind of effect a lot on SNDs work

[@jominhas]

Hey! Quick question -- I hope you see this: I'm interested in the sample pack that comes with the Noises plugin, but not necessarily in the plugin itself. Are those same samples available elsewhere -- on Patreon, for instance? That way I could support you more directly and perhaps save a little. If not, guess I'll just have to buy the plugin! 🤷‍♂️ Cheers!

[@Hainbach]

There are a lot of different samples on the Patreon, but not the ones on Noises. Those I composed more to work together, while Patreon is more of mine to dig in

[@jominhas]

@@Hainbach I see, thanks for the insight! I'll definitely consider supporting you there. Meanwhile, I'll grab the plugin -- I really fell in love with the sample selection. 😍

[@stefanherzog]

And the 2024-Q1 Award in the category Best Thumbnail Stankface goes to...

[@kevindewinter8235]

Nice!! Revor in 32bit float as a test Please

[@chambre466]

I hope those headphones do more than just sound, considering the shape :)))

[@Hainbach]

Oh they are stupidly fantastic. Enable me to mix almost like upstairs.

[@bitegoatie]

I have to imagine nothing good about the sound came from pushing the RME. It's a great interface - the fact that you could do what you did without a horrendous noise or some failure or other speaks to its being a very well-made audio interface. But overdrive at those levels from digital converters is unpredictable at best and deeply unpleasant in the more-common worst cases. Of course, that small window of unpredictability could bring some good sound or other. Even then, however, you might not get another good sound over a long period of experimentation with different combinations. It made much more sense when you realized you were dealing with a feedback channel that was making the evocative, vocal-like noises. Not that the interface couldn't do it, in principle, just by odd circumstance. It is just so unlikely, and so much else in the set-up makes nonlinear craziness as a matter of course. In any case, thanks for sharing the result and the inspection of the means to the end.

[@henrymcintosh3]

That was delicious. Which mixer is that?

[@Hainbach]

That is a Seem Seeport

[@henrymcintosh3]

@@Hainbach ✌️

[@SoundsMick]

Have also experienced this with my Babyface. Tho at the time I thought YUCK, but this likely what I was accidentally sending into it, this does sound very characterful, will experiment with different inputs! Feedback patch just before the edge was cool, startling metal clangs.

[@Hainbach]

I am guessing the passive filter acts as an antenna and throws up radio frequencies, which trigger those sounds? Maybe try that? Curious what you will find

[@SoundsMick]

@@Hainbach Yeah I think you're right, the ping is a very pure and gently 'dusty' sound. Complex sounds probably sound very nasty. I will experiment.

[@baltimoreluke]

wow. that sound is like bit crushed, bleached of tone, 1990s DOD thrasher pedal...wait was this track on Broken?

[@RegebroRepairs]

Is it overdriving the RME that makes those aliasing beeps? I mean ouch. 😀

[@Hainbach]

I think it’s related to the high frequency stuff the Tiefpass throws up and blows open the filters on the RME DAC on high gain

[@eyesintheskies]

I heard Hainbach made his washing machine into a rotary speaker controls it with his microwave midi controller 🤔

[@amphitheatre]

totalmix is a feedback monster when you use the loopback feature but ignore the step that says use an open track. AYOR.

[@tru7hhimself]

at first i turned the volume up a bit because it was very quiet, then i had to turn it all the way down because the high pitched noise was unbearaby loud (it was fine again at the very end). please for the sake of your own ears, don't play this patch again with headphones, better play on speakers while your kids are in the room and turn it off if they run away screaming. or alternatively capture it on tape and only listen at half speed. my presonus has a warm analogue-sounding overdrive/soft-clipping if you drive it into the red a bit. i've never gone further than that.

[@v1sq]

had to double check if my tinnitus came back lmao

[@JonMurray]

Love it dude! Although are my ears broken if it hurt when you pushed it hard? :( 1:50

[@Hainbach]

Na it’s extreme frequencies- can hurt or cause discomfort

[@JonMurray]

@@Hainbach awesome. I’m not turning into a bat.

[@smusic-vm1zd]

If you like these sounds, especially those around 6:15, I can heartily recommend the artist Container :)