Cold & COBA
COBA
I just spent an hour trying to coax the perfect snare timbre out of an old analog synth—feel like it almost whispered back.
Cold
Did you tweak the envelope's attack? What about the filter cutoff? And where’s the mic—too close or too far?
COBA
Yeah, cranked the attack a touch sharper to let that little click bite into the beat, then eased the filter cutoff to catch the low‑end punch. For the mic, I finally settled on a sweet spot about a foot out—close enough to feel the synth’s soul, but far enough to keep that natural room vibe. It’s the only place I don’t lose the track.
Cold
Did you log the exact distance and room acoustics? How will you verify that the click stays sharp over different tempos?
COBA
Honestly, I never made a spreadsheet of the mic distance and the room's impulse response—lost the file in the shuffle. For the click, I’ll run a quick BPM sweep and bounce the clip through a transient shaper, then just listen for the bite. If it drops off, I’ll tweak the envelope attack a bit more and maybe dial the filter back up. Sound good?
Cold
Run the BPM sweep, note the click decay, then set a threshold on the envelope attack. If the decay crosses the threshold, adjust. Keep a log—no room for guesswork.
COBA
Run it, note the click decay at each tempo, set a threshold on the attack curve, tweak if it crosses, and then log it—just don’t let that file slip into the night‑shift chaos again.