Mixing secrets by sonusman

I was going to save this for an article, but decided after some recent listening to various projects done by home recording engineers that I would "rant" this in this forum.

I get asked the questions "What frequencies should I cut or boost for this or that"? Or, "What should I use compression on"? Or, "How do I get my mix loud"?

While many books could possibly be written covering these subjects, I am going to share some thoughts about mixing right here that I think will serve most well. Believe it or not, this is not going to be that long of a post.

1- From listening to many home recorded songs, I have come to the conclusion that many are monitoring at levels far too low to mix effectively. There may be issues involved with turning it up a bit, so it is not that I am without sympathy for those reasons, but mixing at low volumes means you will have the tendency to mix too much low end into your mix. Equalizing the monitoring system is not going to solve this problem. Turn those puppies up!

I would recommend that you record a 1KHz test tone on your system, and play back that test tone through the same D/A converters you will use to monitor your mixes. With the test tone recorded at -6db digital full scale, use a dB meter and turn up your monitors until that test tone is at about 85db with a C weight on the meter. I am not kidding.

It is a good idea to do one speaker at a time so that you can see if possibly you have a bad side of your amp, a speaker that is different then the other (it can happen), or bad cabling. If there is a difference between the two sides of the amp, suspect your cabling first, either the amp or D/A converters second and third, then your speakers.

2- Your near field monitors are NOT going to have as much low end, and will have a tighter low end then home stereo speakers will. You HAVE to get used to this difference in the sound. A great way to KNOW the low end of your monitors is to listen to a lot of professionally recorded mixes using the same D/A converters and monitors. There is no other way that allows you to be as subjective. If you are recording on a DAW, find a way to digitally transfer professional mixes to your DAW so they are available to play back.

3- Blending instruments is nowhere as hard as you might think! It only requires that you pay attention to what you are doing, and sadly, I don't hear many people doing that.

Let's take for example that the hi hat and the vocal are going to have some similar places in the mix. This is not uncommon in Pop music. The sibilance of the vocal is going to be about the same as the hi hat frequency. Make sure that you don't have one or the other dominating in the mix!

A kick drum and a bass guitar pluck should have a very similar sound too. Both instruments require that you rid them of low midrange frequencies, like around 200Hz. Solo both and check to make sure that they are not killing each other. While a kick drum can get a little click sound for definition with a eq boost around 3 or 4KHz, the bass guitar will get articulation with a boost around 500-1000Hz. But both are going to have a similar 100Hz body to them, and pay very close attention to that. Also, don't get over-kill on the stuff below 100Hz. With most monitors, it is hard to hear anything below that, and you will have the tendency to boost 80Hz a lot to try to make these two instruments sound fuller. Be aware of that because a 3db eq boost on a kick drum at 80Hz is going to eat up a lot of your potential dynamic range in the mix, and it may not sound as good as you think once you start playing the song on home stereo systems

In the midrange, watch for the vocals to have harsh words that jump out at you. One of the problems many face is that they are performers too, and their midrange hearing starts to get shot, and they don't quite hear those 2-4KHz jumps in the vocal that kill your ears through other converters and play back systems. Also, the guitar is going to have a lot of it's top end in this range, and you need some room for that.

With guitars, watch those boost that are below around 250Hz. Anything below that is not worth boosting on a guitar. You once again are just eating up potential dynamic range in the mix with a boost that WILL not sound good on home stereo speakers. If your guitar sounds too bright, try cutting stuff above 5or 6KHz. I roll out a lot of 10KHz high cut filter on guitar, unless they sound very dull, in which case, you need some boost there to give them "air". At no time is a boost below about 250Hz good for your mix with guitars. Don't do it and be happy in the end!

When you are done with your mix, take a good close look at it in a .wav editor. Do you have a lot of spikes in the mixes that are 6db hotter then the rest of the song? Is your average level well below 50% of the available dynamic range? If either is the case, I assure you that your mix is not good by any means. Those 6db jumps mean that you needed some limiting on a certain instrument, or that you have a eq boost on something and it is causing the track to be super sensitive to that frequency. Say with a guitar, those big low end boosts means that when ever the instrument hits a note with that fundamental frequency you get that much more boost at that frequency. Not a good thing. Eq boosts are only really good for deficiencies in the track. I revert back to if you are trying to use eq to make something sound drastically different, then your best bet is to record the part again and get that type of sound recorded. This way you KNOW what you are getting in the sound.

It really comes down to paying attention to instruments that share certain frequency ranges. The click on a kick drum shares the same space as the upper end of guitars, and the bulk of the energy in vocals, but the kick drum is not playing continuously, so it is okay to boost that up a bit to bring it out. But boosting an guitar at that frequency, or even a vocal means a mismatch with the other instruments in that range. We are looking for balance. If you are finding that something is dominating in the mix in a certain frequency range, check to make sure that you don't have boost eq in that range that is contributing to this. If you don't have boost eq on it, then you may need to apply a little CUT eq, but just enough to mellow it out, which is usually around a 3-5db cut. Any more then that and you have a big problem with the way the track was recorded. But another consideration too is how important any instrument is in a certain frequency range. A vocal masking a guitar a little bit is okay because usually, the vocal, drums, and bass are important during vocal passages.

If you are using digital eq's, any more then a 6db cut or boost is going to sound awful! The algorithms are just not good enough to provide a smooth sound and color to a track with excessive eq, so large cuts or boosts with digital eq's should be avoided at all costs. With cheaper analog eq's, you have a similar problem. Are you catching on here? Get you tracks close to the way you want them to sound while tracking and avoid heavy eq.

Before mixing a song, it may be a good idea to run a mix where you use no effects or eq and just adjust volumes to get the best mix you can. Burn that to CD and start listening on many different systems. You may be surprised at how good it actually sounds on home stereo systems, and how much more open and unprocessed your mix is. You will certainly still have a few things you would like to fix, but now you KNOW what needs to be fixed, and are not being biased by the better sounding D/A converters and monitors your setup has.

A great way to think about blending instruments is considering the importance they play in the mix. Obviously, a vocal 99% of the time will be very important. But that doesn't mean that the vocal should over power everything else. I call this "oblique" mixing, where there is an underlying theme that stays consistent, and you have parts that build over that but don't interfere too much. If fact, if you consider what oblique means, mixing a song effectively is very similar in the dynamics. You have a very steady bottom with a little color on top. The color grows and shriks, but you still have a solid foundation that is not really effected by it. This means you really have to consider what each instrument REALLY contributes to the song. Also, "moods" of certain parts should be reflected in the dynamics too. A little guitar ditty during a verse doesn't really need to be blasting away does it? But during a build up at the end of a chorus, you may have a lead that comes in for the last measure to embellish the transition. You need to leave some sonic space for this add in, and leave enough headroom for the added volume.

In Pop tunes, the kick and snare drums are very important, and should be very articulate in the mix, along with the vocals. The bass guitar is usually the harmonic foundation, and should occupy the low end of the mix predominately. Guitars tend to sound sort of quiet in the studio, and at lower volumes. Be wary of that. But, solos should occupy the same dynamic and sonic place the vocals did in the mix.

Strive for when a instruments stops playing that your mix doesn't drop in volume much at all, if at all. Viewing RMS metering of some sort will help a lot with this. If you know how to view peak metering for the RMS value (a skill that takes awhile to learn) even better because you can also see just how often you have used up your dynamic range.

One thing I have noticed a lot is people trying to put extreme dynamics in a song that doesn't need extreme dynamics. Drummers are by far the worst about this in recording, followed closely by singers. Consistent volume levels are desired in recording. How the parts fit together, and to a certain degree, the actual notes being played will create natural sounding dynamics in Pop tunes. Also, an instrument stopping in the middle of the song for whatever reason creates a change in "perceived" dynamics, even though your metering may not show anything different.

Another thing I have been hearing a lot is either sparse or heavy reverbs. Don?t be afraid to use a nice reverb across several rhythm instruments. It is the glue that holds them all together. At the same time, big huge long reverbs all over the vocal line don't work for anything other then Whitney Houston tunes, or the Scorpions? What I have noticed about the big reverbs many people use is that they leave in a lot of high-end content in the reverb. Hey guys, try cutting everything above 3 or 4KHz on that reverb. Also, I have seldom EVER used a reverb recently where I didn't have at least 40ms of pre-delay on it. A very short decay, with a hi-cut around 3 or 4KHz and a pre-delay that is appropriate will really fatten up a track without having to resort to eq! Play with it and you will never use those huge 3 sec plates with all that 10KHz content again!!!

Use your ears AND your eyes to gauge your mix. Your ears will tell you when thing sound screwy, but viewing your mix in a .wav editor will certainly "show" you some potential problems. View a professionally recorded song in a .wav editor and you will usually see a very well developed .wav, with very consistent peaks on the kick and snare drums, and you won't see the volume jumps when the vocal comes in, and drop when it goes away. Creatively using eq can help tame dynamics a bit, and gentle compression on instruments will do the same.

Anway. Just a rant so to speak about mixing. If it helps anyone, great! If not, at least you have some more material to curse my name by?
Ed

Back to running a mix without effects and eq.

You need to know WHAT in the mix needs to be fixed before you do anything. I have seen people start eqing stuff that sounded great because that is what they normally do to that instrument. My oh my..... The idea in recording is to get as close to the sound you want while tracking. Many would be surprised to find that they got it right before a bunch of processing was done to it, thus effectively killing the original sound altogether. Also, run that mix in mono. I would say that about 80% of the music I hear is predominately mono in nature, with the effects spead out over the stereo landscape. Mono mixes that sound good will sound good on ANY system! Remember also that by panning stuff hard, if you were to get out of the stereo field, or to mono the mix, those things would disappear. By the same token, if you panned those things hard, went to mono monitoring and adjusted those things to mix right in mono, when you go back to stereo, those things would be way too loud.

Stereo is nice, and allows for some great separation in the mix, but overdone stereo means that your mixes will sound unbalanced unless the person is listening to them in an idea stereo environment. I am not saying don't use heavy panning for some things, but be carefull.

Also, many people don't balance their stereo fields very well. If you have something consistent panned to say 3 oclock in the field, you need something consistent at 9 oclock to offset it, otherwise your mix will be weighted to one side in at least a certain frequency range. This sounds very strange, and often, you will have to make some tough decisions on how to balance things in a stereo field to create a nice balance. Choose wisely friends!

I also am hearing a lot of weird stuff with people mixing sampled drums with recorded guitars and vocals, but also using like a keyboard bass. Weird indeed. Don't go applying a bunch of eq to those sampled drums, it is only going to make matters worse! Leave them flat. Keyboard bass parts are a waste of time unless you are doing Madonna sounding music. Get a real bass to work with and a nice DI box and decent pre-amp to record the bass with.

The NT1 seems to be the mic of choice for many around here. Fine. Just remember to eq out all that hyped up 4-8KHz crap that mic is famous for when mixing. A moderate bandwidth set at around 6.3KHz with a 3-5db cut will take care of the harsh nasties that many don't seem to hear. But beware! You also just lost a lot of vocal clarity, and you will probably need to possibly apply a tad high shelf eq to give the track some air, something the NT1 doesn't seem to have a lot of anyway.

Also, don't be afraid to use about up to 3db of gain reduction with a compressor when recording a vocal track to digital. Use a longer attack time, like around oh, 15-25ms, and a fairly short release time, like around 40-70ms. I would use a very light 1.5:1 ratio, and no more then a 2:1 ratio. Set the threshold to whatever gives you at the most 3db of gain reduction at the loudest part of the vocal track. If the singer (you?) is hitting more then that on the compressor, or you cannot get your vocals to set at around -10db full digital scale somewhat consistently, then your micing technique for singing sucks, or you need to learn to control your voice better (refer to my comments above about applying too much dynamics to song that don't need them.....).

So many of you are using software to record and mix. Great! Now, WHY DON'T YOU GUYS SPEND SOME TIME AND USE THOSE EDITORS THE WAY THEY WERE MEANT TO BE USED?!?!?!?!

I cannot believe that viewing a recorded kick drum on a DAW doesn't show the one kick in the middle of the song that is like 12db louder then the rest! Then when you mix, you have the whole damn mix at like -20db average because if you turn it all up, that one kick drums peaks out. USE YOUR DAMN EDITOR AND CUT AND PASTE ANOTHER KICK DRUM HIT THERE!!! OR AT LEAST HIGHLIGHT THE HIT AND TURN IT DOWN!!! I AM SHOUTING BECAUSE THIS IS HOW MUCH LOUDER YOUR MIXES WILL GET WHEN YOU DO LITTLE STUFF LIKE THAT!!!

Same with vocal parts that have nasties in it. Sheesh!!! It is only going to take MAYBE an hour to go through that track and highlight all the spots that have nasties and apply some eq cut at the appropriate frequency to tame it so that you don't have to apply that eq cut over the whole track!

I don't have ANY digital editing capabilities when I record and mix multi-track and I get a handle on that stuff using manual tweeks on the eq or volume while mixing if need be. Here and there I can fix something very short lived that sounds messed up on a mix during editing while mastering, and that sure beats the hell out of applying an eq over the whole mix to just tame a errant kick drum or snare hit, or vocal nasty. I can also apply a limiter over the mix now and raise my rms level a lot without slamming the limiter too hard, which in digital creates the most nasty sounding thing you have ever heard. Trust me, I just dealt with some crap like that where I was editing wave forms for stuff that didn't have ANY appearent loudness increase but sure in the hell managed to make the limiter do 10db of gain reduction. This sort of thing should have been dealt with during the mix, or edited before mixing.

Also guys, start using mutes! If on a DAW, spend some time on tracks and silence parts that have no music on them. When you do bring the part back in from silence, apply a Expotential Fade In to it, and not a full on silence to full volume thing. I have heard enough of that, and it sounds terrible because the part seems to rise out of nowhere and slam you in the face. If you are using an 8 buss console, and your song has a break in it where maybe all but one instrument stops, assign all the other instruments to a stereo subgroup and mute the subgroup during the break and unmute right before they come back in. This may take a little practice to time just right, but it will sure make that break sound much better by not have amp noises, tom overring, etc....happening behind it. Also, the hiss from the mixer channel will not be present. Sure, one channel of hiss will not make much difference, but 14 channels creates a lot of noise!

With DAW's, there is just NO excuse for having ANY noise happening on a track when there is no music present on that track. Laziness is the only thing holding many people back from much better resolution in their recordings.

Slow Attack, Fast Release.

Vocals swells develope much slower then something like a snare drum does. With a vocal, you have the initial part of the sound, sort of the percussive part, then a growing part of the sound that is mostly the lower end stuff, and happens to be where most of the energy of the vocal is.

When you are peaking meters on a word, it is not the attack of the voice that is peaking, it is the body of the voice, the stuff that happens after maybe 10ms. While compressing to tape, you don't want to kill the attack of the voice, you only want to tame to swell from killing your meters.


Kick and snare drums. Fast attack, slow release. If it starts sounding too boomy, quicken the release, but always you want a fast attack on the compressor.

Bass guitar. Can go either way depending upon how the track sounds and what they are playing. For a Funk bass line with a lot of percussive stuff going on, you don't want to kill the attack, unless it got recorded with too much attack. See what I mean?

Slow attacks leave more transients in the sound. Fast attacks tame transients.

Fast release tends to thin the sound a bit and make it punchier. Slow release sort of bloats the sound and makes it a little more rounder sounding. A long release time is a way to add a little beef to a track with no eq being applied. Usefull for bass, kick drums, snares, thin acoustic guitars.

Think of attack and release as independent functions because they are. Attack controls transients or leaves them alone. Release controls resonance or leave it alone. The ratio says how much you want the difference to be for anything above the threshold. A big difference means a higher ratio. A small difference means a lower ratio. Threshold is basically a way to control the Knee of what you are doing, or to what degree you are doing that. Once again, sort of an oblique thing here. I have found no good ways to describe the interaction, or "color" of the controls on a compressor because each control is interactive with another, sometimes is dramatic ways.

When recording vocals to analog, you would mostly be crazy to use compression, unless it is a cassette based analog format. Wide fast moving tape will provide mostly all the compression you need for a vocal. If you need a little control for a certain part where the singer either belts it too much, or doesn't give enough, a little cut/boost on the preamp will take care of it.

I make a point to listen everywhere I go.

I like warm sounding rooms. I try to emulate those rooms when setting up a reverb. Most music produced in the last 5 years does not use those phoney sounding plate reverbs. They have a place in music, just not a prominate one.

Room reverbs will serve you well. Chamber reverbs will serve you well. Medium to small rooms and chambers for medium to up tempo stuff. Big rooms and chambers for slower stuff.

Three settings on a reverb that will make all the difference.

Pre-delay - This will allow the original signal develope before the onset of reverb. There may be times where you want to wash out the original sound, and will not have very much pre-delay at all, but not very often.

Hi-Cut Filters. This will mellow out the reverb, and make it sound like real rooms you will be in. Seldom do I have this set above 4KHz. You just don't normally need reverb content above 4KHz.

Diffusion - Lower settings creates reverbs that are more distinct. If you want a more subtle reverb that is not very noticable, raise the value. It should seldom be above 20%. It can go as low as 7% to sound cool.

Another setting that will make the reverb develope in interesting ways is the X Bass setting. It may be labeled Hi Filter too, but basically, it is a multiplier for the low end of a reverb. A 1X value is the algorythym as it was coded. If the values run 1-10 like on most Yamaha reverbs, you are on your own to figure out what they wanted to be the original algorythym. I would normally just say DON'T use Yamaha reverbs at all, because they are some of the most garbage can sounding things I have ever heard in my life. I find that .8X works most of the time. Here and there, you may go up to 2X, but usually only for reverbs assigned to very bright sounding instruments.

Spend a lot of time on developing natural sounding reverbs and save those to use later. You will find yourself using a lot of the same 2 or 3 reverbs in most stuff you mix. Really. Don't settle for factory presets. Get into the unit and play around a lot and find reverbs that sound like rooms you have been in before. These are the most desirable ones to use.

Here and there you are going to create special reverbs that are very intentional effects. Use these sparingly over the course of a whole CD of several songs. Overuse numbs the user to the effect.

Whether you assign a channel Pre or Post EQ to the reverbs really depends on what you want the frequency to be accentuated with reverb. You may have some cut eq on a snare drum at around 2KHz, but you may want that to be where your snare reverb to reside. It would make sense in this case to use a Pre EQ aux send to feed the reverb. If however you are boosting like 400Hz to get the snare to have a little body because it was tracked a little thin sounding, a Post EQ aux send may serve you better because a Pre EQ aux send in this case will not have enough low end content to excite the reverb in the way you want. Think it through, and when in doubt, try both ways.

Also, Pre and Post Fader aux sends can be usefull when assigning a track to a reverb send. Sometimes, I have a whole bunch of snare in the overheads, and I am depending upon that overhead track to supply most of the snare sound. Now, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to feed the overhead mics to a reverb, so how do you get a snare to excite a reverb? Easy, you assign a Pre Fader aux send to the reverb and just keep the fader down on the snare track, but turn the Pre Fader Aux send up on the snare channel. Cool eh?

People getting timid about trying things because they don't know if it will work!
 
This is just audio guys, and you ain't going to set off a global nuclear alert by experimenting.... Really. Trust me, I have all those buttons right here!

I blow through so many disks when I am working on a project. I burn a CD of every mix to play in other systems. In fact, even on involved mixes (ones that are going to take 10 hours) I will burn a disk every 2 or 3 hours and go play it on other systems just to get a feel for what is going on. You would not beleive how revealing this is. It can stop you cold from continuing down sonic roads that will disappoint you the next day. You know the story....."It sounded great last night in the control room. Why is there so much bass in the mix today?".

Experiment! Run a lot of different versions of the mix. At least a version with the vocal up a couple db, and one with the vocal down a couple db. Maybe one with the bass and kick drum up a bit too. Maybe one with the solo turned up. You never know which of those mixes is going to be what excites you two weeks later at the mastering house. I have shared this story in one of my articles on the main page, but here it is again. On The Heavy Brothers CD I worked months and months on, when we got to mastering, we wanted to use one of the last mixes we did of a particular song. There were about 10 mixes of it, and this one just had the right stuff, except for one thing! The guitar solo was really mushy. The other producer wanted to make the guitar more wet with effects, and I disagreed all the way with doing this. He said "Burn it that way", so I did. So, the solo section sucked bad. The tone sucked bad, and he realized it a week later when we were reviewing the mixes before going to the mastering house.

We did find however that a mix that was a few mixes before it had exactly the guitar tone and effects we wanted, but the rest of the song was not mixed quite like what we wanted. No problem! At mastering ,we flew in both mixes and splice in the guitar solo part from one mix into the other mix. The changes in and out of the guitar solo were so big that you could not hear the edit at all, and the different mix on the rest of the instruments during the solo made a nice change overall in the song. All of us, including the mastering engineer, who never stated his opinions no matter how many times I would ask him to, thought it was killer!

So, burn a lot of different versions of the mix! If you are going to master yourself, you can play around with spicing together a combination of mixes if you are not happy with one in particular. This is what Editors are for!!!

But experimenting is what audio is all about guys. It is not about Roger Nichols says do this, or sonusman says to do that, it is about taking all that with a grain of salt, or as things to try if the situation is right, but continuing on to find WHAT WORKS FOR THAT MIX THAT DAY! You will never know if a drastic eq change on something will work unless you try it.

Great work is not done overnight or in a hurry. The big boys spend usually far more time then many around here on production, and they have the best equipment and loads of experience too. You will easily spend a couple of days mixing a song if you have an ear towards getting the mix to sound right. You are cheating your song with any less time investment.

Experiment! Use up some disks! CDR are down to about $.30 each if you buy 50 at a time. Blow through those so you can hear your progress. You will learns a lot from it.

Few of the professional engineers on BBS's think like a newbie to recording. Few of them really had to learn it on their own too.

Many newbies to recording are far from knowing enough about audio production to understand that I didn't share even one "secret" earlier in this thread. But to the inexperienced engineer, they sure seem like secrets revealed when they try them eh?

This is not a slam on either professionals of newbies. This is just the way I am seeing in on the boards. I titled this thread the way I did to generate interest, not because I feel any of the info I shared was "secret". So, you pro's out their, cut me a little slack! I managed to get some good info in about 4000 words, in a manner and style that newbies could understand, out to several hundred people or more. While that makes me feel good, it certainly doesn't make me feel like I know more then other professionals, or am sharing "trade secrets". Just that I could articulate it well enough for a newbie to understand it.

I invited Tom Cram, via email, to share some links to BBS's and titles of books that cover this stuff. I thank you Tom for taking the time to do so. THAT is the type of information people need if they are looking for more advanced stuff.

But, like I explained to Tom in another email, you have to consider the audience. Once again, this is not a slam on the many fine people who post on this site, but many just don't understand even the basic of sound propagation, or signal path. Many of those books Tom listed I have read, and few of them explained things in a way a newbie could understand. Many of those websites would chase off the people posting on this site with the most basic questions they ask here. That is why I seldom link to sites like that, or recommend books like those. I would say that most audio related books ARE NOT geared towards unassisted learning. They would make excellent study books for people going to school for audio, but most on these boards are not too interested in spending that kind of money to learn how to record their bands demo's. Thus, site's like this exist, and hopefully, all these sites have solid professional engineers who have an eye towards being helpful to newbies, and can articulate complex audio concepts in a way that newbies can understand. I believe this website does that FAR better then any other BBS I have seen on the net.

Why does everything HAVE to be so damn loud!?!?!?!?!?!?

I have pre-mastered mixes that are fully 3dB RMS LOUDER than most anything I have ever heard out of the 70's and through the mid 80's! More recent stuff by selected artists still have very low average volume and just sound killer! I have a friend in Atlanta who is doing beautiful sounding work and this stuff NEVER hits 0dB on a digital Peak meter. NEVER.

Ask yourself if you are sacrificing a great sound to gain a couple of dB in the mix. Did all of a sudder, because your recording isn't as loud as Everclear, you start to lose a rich tone? Did all of a sudden the "space" around instruments disappear? Did certain things start to take on an edge that sort of hurts when you hear it?

Loud is not always good! With some of the recordings I hear, professional and otherwise, I can't even listen to the whole CD without fatique. I CANNOT imagine having to actually spend a month in the studio working like that!

I recently did some work with a band, re-mixing a few songs, and recording a cover for them that was LOUD!!! I finally had to force the issue. We re-mixed a song that was going on a compilation of Portland bands that an ex Capitol A&R guy is putting together, and I just didn't give the band a copy of the pre-mastered mix, nor the post "mastered" mix that the guitar player wanted to squash the shit out of and add MORE high end! I made them wait 2 weeks, even though they reminded me every other day that I need to get them a master to send to this guy. I finally gave it to them, both the pre-mastered and post mastered mixes. They thought the post-mastered that they were in on sucked bad, but they didn't know which was which. I just made them pick the one they thought sounded best. They picked a no EQ, but slightly volume increased mix, which I still didn't think was all that great sounding in comparison to the original mix. This thing is a "bit" loud, but still quieter than a lot of stuff being put out on the market. The one that had eq and was really squashed sounded about as loud as other stuff, but they agreed the song just didn't sound that good that loud. I think they might have learned a lesson. I HOPE they learned a lesson. Loud is not always so good.

Can you imagine what some of this stuff you hear on the radio sounded like before the evil labels told the mastering engineers to make as loud as the other crap out there? I can. I have heard some. I indeed heard some of the better qualities the mastering engineer added, but also heard the uniqueness of the bands recording get killed in the pursuit of LOUD. It was a shame. It was also hard to listen to the post mastered product.

I am not saying that mastering a bit louder is necessarily bad. I am not saying that changing a bit of eq is bad. I am just suggesting that most music does not suffer so badly in the mixing that it only needs to have 3dB of dynamics!!! Things don't HAVE to be "everything, all the time"! It is okay to have seperation and dynamics! Really, it is okay.

Maybe some of this stems from the amount of live sound work I have done lately. I have mixed the good, the bad, and the ugly. What continues to impress me though is that live, you are at the mercy of the performance and little else. Try to squash the mix of a loud band in a 36X52' room when the guitars on stage are blasting at 95dB on there own. It just isn't going to work.... But where this becomes relevent in what I am talking about is that when the band finally decides to tone down a bit for a certain part or whatever, the dynamics are simply amazing. Very REAL. Of course, what can you expect from a live performance eh?

I don't mind mind having to turn up the volume of a playback device if the mix is a bit more quiet than the last bands thing. I REALLY like how different bands sound very different on tape. I don't see the need to make everything all one volume, or with similar EQ characteristics. I have found that older recordings had many more differences in the overall sound than newer ones do. This is the folly of a lot of questions that people are asking these days about mixing and mastering. They all want "someones" sound, rather than dealing with "there" sound. This is further amazing because seldomly do these people sound like who they want to sound like!

I posted in another thread once that "this is MUSIC, it is supposed to have dynamics". All of these "everything, all the time" recordings are a total bore to listen to because they lack meaningful dynamics. They lack meaningful space between all the intrumentation. They lack meaningful color to each sound. It is as though the sounds were picked because they didn't make the meters jump up when that instrument came in.

Mix to sound good! Bottom line is that who cares how loud it is. It does not take too long to start realizing when you are starting to push a mix to that point where extra volume means giving up tone. If the damn mix sounds better a bit quieter, who is to argue with that? Who cares if it is not as loud as the next guys stuff, does it sound good?

That is the ultimate question you should always ask yourself when making decisions about the mixes Peak volume. Sure, it is okay for the song to eventually achieve 0 or -1dB on the meters at it's loudest point, but you don't HAVE to have the mix hovering around -4dB for 75% of the time.

Break from the norm boys! Don't fall for the game of being louder than the next guy. Mix and master to SOUND GOOD and forget the rest.

The one CD I have mixed that I feel very good about is also one that I mastered. It was my first mastering job where I was actually paid.... I can play it over and over again and not get fatigued from listening. What is funny is that it is really not too much quieter than many modern recordings are, yet, it has a LOT of dynamics. This CD earned me another shot, this time in the tracking stage too on the bands next CD. Everybody likes it. Of course the songs are good, but the production is very natural, and like I said, far more attention was placed on making it sound good rather than making it sound like something else (which would have been unachievable really. This band sounds like they do, and that is that.....) This band get old people at their shows and these old farts like the more "retro"? sound of the CD. The young people just say it sounds really good and unique. Not ONE person has ever complained that it wasn't loud enough, or that the eq was very different from other stuff in their collection. Most just think it sounds good.

I learned a lesson from this that I hope to carry into every production I ever work on again where the artist will step back and listen to the recording from the stand point of sounding good for WHAT it is, rather than what they think it should sound like.

I hope some you will follow your own sound too and forget trying to compete with the Jone's next door.

How daring and imaginative you are VOXVENDER for following the norm!

Think through the whole thing. A Led Zeppelin recording does not sound any "quieter" on the radio than most anything new coming out does. But it sure sounds a LOT closer to the CD than newer stuff does, and it outright sounds better when comparing the CD's!

Think it through guys. Maybe one out of 10,000 of you even need to worry about your product being compared on a radio station! I can assure you that if it was, and your post mastered mix was 3 or 4 dB quieter than other stuff out their, nobody would even notice on the radio.

Please make a point next time that actually makes sense. This "louder to keep up" nonsense is hysteria realized!

Not sure what more I CAN add here. My past posts have covered a bit of ground, and without actually getting into specific stuff that is usually only pertinent to the mix one would be currently working on, anything else is just "you could do this, you could do that", and I could never cover ALL the things one "could" do in a mix.

Maybe I can talk about "crowding the mix" a bit here. This has been foremost on my mind lately because of some stuff I have worked on in the last 6 months, where the client wanted the "wall of sound". They felt that having 6 guitar tracks, snare durm samples layered 4 deep, and vocals doubled and sometimes tripled would make the sound bigger, deeper, and more intense.

I have found just the OPPOSIT! It is usually the "minimalist" approach that seems to bring forth the biggest, loudest, deepest mixes I have done. 16 tracks or less usually!

For the "less is more" trick to work, I feel it is important that you start out with tracks that stand on their own very well. Many people it would seem start double tracking because they don't get the kind of power and depth out of 1 track of something, so they feel that doing 2 or 3 of the same thing will increase the "presence" and "power" of the sound. I have seen many cases where layering has actually made the sound more distant and less powerful! There are many reasons why. One can be that a poorly "doubled" track, meaning one that is slightly out of tune and not dead on in timing can cause a comb filtering effect which will rob the track of it's power. Two, that the actual tone might be really messed up, and occupying a very big sonic space in the overall sound, thus, at mix, you are cutting a lot of "meat" out of the sound to make it fit in a dense mix.

When tracking, it is a good idea to have a VERY CLEAR idea of your production. Meaning, you should know what kind of sound you are after, and how many tracks you are going to dedicate to getting that sound. If you anticipate a very dense mix, you are going to want the sound while tracking to be very specific in it's range. You will need to concentrate on making that track sound in a very specific way. If you plan a more "sparse" mix, you can then track the instruments to occupy a much bigger sonic range. You will NEED for the instruments to occupy a broader sonic range in this case, otherwise you will be digging into using a lot of "tricks" with reverb and delay to make the sounds sort of bigger.

Really, tracking sort of "sparse" and "thin sounding" works out well. If the tracks wind up not being "big enough" for you, you at least have a lot of control using "tricks" at mix to make them bigger. Once you learn some of these tricks, they will come easily to you and you won't waste a whole lot of time implementing them.

Tracking "big and lush" can be problematic. I prefer tracking this way though with stuff like vocal and acoustic guitar stuff (folk music, and jazz/blues stuff). But again, you really got to get the sound RIGHT while tracking because ensuing EQ and "tricks" in the mix tend to not work out so well at mix time. "Big and lush" should probably be avoided unless you have a very good control room to monitor in. The reason why is that what you THINK is big and lush could be the result of phase cancellation and/or coupling in a poorly tuned control room. Your initial sounds were "colored" by the control room, and you find out later that the sound weren't as cool when you play your mix elsewhere. Sound confusing? It isn't really. Think about it for a bit.

Another thing to think about is WHAT will be big in the mix, and what should be small. You can't have everything "balls to the walls" in a mix and expect good results. If you want big guitars and vocals, that is usually at the expense of the drums. If you want big drums, that is usually at the expense of the other instruments, etc......Yes, you can have a few things "big" in the mix, you just can't have EVERYTHING big in the mix. Not possible! Listen to your favorite recordings with an ear towards what is big and small in the mix. It will become very evident in a hurry when you actually listen for it.

Trying to make everything big usually has the reverse effect. You just plainly have too much stuff fighting for attention! This causes your mix to sound quiet, small, and flat. Making everything sound great while "solo'ed" does NOT translate into everything blending together for a nice, big, lush mix! Not by a long shot. When determining what you want big and small in the mix, you must do this with EVERYTHING YOU WILL HAVE IN THE MIX turned up. The reason I recommend doing a mix with just "faders up" before you get into anything else is because you can then hear what instruments, and more specifically , what PART of an instruments sound is "masking" important elements in the mix. Once you have determined that, you can then worked toward removing unwanted frequencies from specific instruments so it doesn't mask other instruments. This I feel is the first "need to do" in mixing. Skip this vital step, find yourself eventually doing it at some point (if you wind up with a good mix that is... ).

What I can't help anybody with though is telling them what is important to a mix. I think truly, this is the "art" of mixing, KNOWING what instruments to make big and small in the mix to make that mix the best it can be! Sometimes you pick based upon performances. Sometimes you pick based upon what is really cool about the song. Mostly, it is a combination of both! The skill of doing this well is not easily learned, and only the person mixing can really learn it. I cannot teach people how to be intuitive.

Some people work well with certain styles of music better than others. For example, I don't consider myself to be all that hot with modern rock stuff. But, give me a funk tune and I will mix the crap out of it!!! But, I get many rock bands who want me to mix based on other stuff they have heard me mix in their genre that they liked. I am saying that I don't feel as comfortable with the rock stuff as I do with funk. So, I relax much faster, and can do much quicker work with funk than rock. I can mix rock well, but it takes me longer. Hell, I have seen engineers that can get the same good mix in rock as I can in half the time because they are more comfortable in it than I am. This is a consideration when I bid job for clients, how long it will take to get acceptable results. So, I guess what I am saying is that you may be trying to mix stuff that you are not good at mixing! Self honesty is important you know!

So, to wrap it all up, it is probably better to track thin if you are doing dense productions, or are in a badly tuned acoustic space. Track big if it is a sparse production, and/or you have a good acoustic space. But ALWAYS have a PRODUCTION GOAL. Without that, you are whistling in the dark!

When determining what you want big and small in the mix, you must do this with EVERYTHING YOU WILL HAVE IN THE MIX turned up. The reason I recommend doing a mix with just "faders up" before you get into anything else is because you can then hear what instruments, and more specifically , what PART of an instruments sound is "masking" important elements in the mix. Once you have determined that, you can then worked toward removing unwanted frequencies from specific instruments so it doesn't mask other instruments. This I feel is the first "need to do" in mixing.


Could you explain all of the above so I can understand it?

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Dethska
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Posted: Fri Nov 19, 2004 4:45 pm Post subject:

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L J Max wrote:
Chris_Harris wrote:
I was going to save this for an article, but decided after some recent listening to various projects done by home recording engineers that I would "rant" this in this forum.
 
I grabbed and saved that post the last time someone was able to dig it up and put it out there for us...
Great stuff...
 
God bless ya, Ed

Especially the business about letting the instruments breathe and interact with one another. And especially the whole "loud" thing. Everyone wants "loud" but nobody has ever told me that my uncompressed acoustic band recordings aren't loud enough. Go figure.
 
Er ... are you sure this is Ed? Won't he be pretty pissed that Dragon got a copy of one of his articles back online?
 
This website is fun when there are arguments. In the absence of anything useful on it, I guess the arguments are better than boredom.
 
noisedude said:
This website is fun when there are arguments. In the absence of anything useful on it, I guess the arguments are better than boredom.

How else would we build our post count?
 
UB802 said:
And all from my own head. UNLIKE your "mixing" article. Talk about plagiarism!
Sorry - nope... all my OWN product as well.... (and I credited the charts appropriately, asswipe....)

As to the rest - I haven't heard you produce ANYTHING worthwhile in years, troll, so much like your character, you're full of shit.
 
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