Newbie... second song -- Mother Nature Is a Serial Killer

This is good, man! Reminds me of the Cramps. Like the other, it needs more low end. Guitars sound great! What is your setup?
 
Yep more low end. Kick needs to come up, and the bass a tad.

It's definitely loud like the other one, I'll pull the limiter back a smidge.

Guitars sound good, did you hi-pass them? are you mic'ing amps?

Welcome to the clinic!
 
Can you get DropBox to "preview" the songs? Can anyone help him get that feature enabled?

I don't think your mixes are anywhere near as bad as you led on... this is good. Again, kick can come up. Bass is somewhat inaudible...but it might just be the tone of it, maybe could use some upper mids boost. ? (I noticed a parallel to Lenny Kravitz with that lead riff)

Louder vocals sound great - great vocal tone too. Glad you joined HR! This'll be cool.

Yeah, share your setup/equipment/mixing chain
 
The first thing I noticed was the mix is slammed with a limited. It holds up pretty well under all that limiting. But it doesn't breathe much.

I like the guitar sound.

Vocal is OK. I think it would sound much better if it were doubled.

Drums are way back in the mix. Especially the snare and kick.

Bass is a little low in the mix. Tone is pretty nice.

Nice guitar solo.
 
How do I do that?! Set up my Dropbox to stream rather than download, I mean? I hate having to download files to listen as well. I don't want to make you do that. I've Googled the shit out of streaming Dropbox files, and there doesn't seem to be an easy solution. I'm not paying $5 a month for Box just to throw a couple of songs out there once every few months. LOL! I will be happy to change my posting method if someone will let me know the preferred method here. Thanks!
 
Thanks for the listens and positive feedback. So many questions and suggestions! LOL!

Let's see... first off, this is my basic set up:

Guitars: (main electric guitar) ESP AX-350; I also use a Jackson PS-4 from time to time for the tremolo; my acoustic guitars are terrible for recording (sold my Taylor (110?) to my brother-in-law cheap as an Xmas present for his daughter) -- Ovation Elite TX (fantastic guitar, but terrible mic'd) and a cheap Fender FA-something
Effects: I use a POD XT for all my bass and guitar effects
Bass: ESP F-104
Keys: All VSTs triggered by an old Alesis QS6
Drums: Superior Drummer 2.0 (I've never quite mastered that software -- way too many options); triggered with a Korg PADKONTROL
Mics: Behringer B2 Pro for vox and a cheap MXL mic for acoustic guitars
DAW: Focusrite Scarlett 18i20 rack interface; Behringer Autocom rack compressor for vox and acoustic guitar inputs; Cubase 9.5 (just upgraded from 4); JBL 3 series monitors; KRK Rockit 10" powered sub.

As far as my effects chain and all that, the compressor on the vocal/acoustic inputs is the only consistent one. I vary like crazy on what software effects are used from song to song.

I do not mic amps. Fuck that. ;-) I'm way too lazy and do NOT have room for that. Not to mention that with my spare-bedroom acoustics, it would sound way worse if I mic'd an amp. I'm fine with POD XT, thank you.

I know the tunes are over-limited. I'm doing all I can to make my songs sound like... whoever... Foo Fighters, because people complain that when one of my songs comes up in shuffle, they can't hear it. I know how that sounds. It sucks. I should be able to get closer to that ideal without ruining my mixes. I don't want quiet mixes that sound good. That's not why I'm here. I want LOUD mixes that STILL sound good.

I posted my master out EQ and Maximizer settings in the other song thread. I used those on most of the new tunes because some guy on YouTube said to. :-)
 
Odd... when I click on my own Dropbox link, it opens a new tab in my browser, but it lets me play it without downloading.
 
Room acoustics are not critical for close miking guitar amps. Your spare bedroom would be fine.
 
I don't want to bug the shit out of you people, but I'll probably be a little needy for the first week or two. Sorry. I'll back off after that.

Okay... this will get posted under both tunes, just in case, but apologies (at least partially) all around. I did a little experiment while working out tonight. I listened to a couple of my songs through my Jaybird X3 bluetooth earbuds through Google Play Music and then a couple from bands that I consider "influences." Same volume. Same buds. Same app. Same settings. QOTSA had somewhat more prominent drums, but the bass was at LEAST as buried as mine. Foo Fighters bass was noticeably louder, but the drums were at LEAST as buried as mine. I don't know which is right or wrong. They were both guitar/vocal-heavy songs that came pretty close to matching my mix. HOWEVER, I also noticed that my songs were noticeably LOUDER than theirs. LOL! So I achieved my volume goal. Now I need to back off that and work on quality.

So apologies that I was incredulous about the kick/bass too low and volume too loud. You were all right. Now I need to figure out how to fix it.

Some specific questions:

Here's my drum setup for Smother Me:

SD2.png

I took off the stock compressors and EQs because they seemed to be making the drums "dip" with the limiter. I never push my faders or the main SD volume higher than -.1 db or so, because I assume it will start to distort. Should I push them higher? Or should I compress each drum or put some other effect on each drum? Like I said, I never quite mastered this software. It has SO many options, that I just don't have time to experiment with all of them. Anyone have a good SD2 NY Avatar drum setting they can send? Can you even do that in SD2? Share drum kits?

Also, do I PUT an overall EQ on the master output? I want all the songs to sound like they're from the same studio. If so, is there a different setting I should be using. I was also always told never to push an EQ fader over the mid-line, but this was a stock setting in Cubase, so I assumed it must be okay.

LIke I said... I have no idea what I'm doing.
 
Robus said:
Room acoustics are not critical for close miking guitar amps. Your spare bedroom would be fine.
Click to expand...

LOL! No, but another mic and mic stand are, and my amp in my tiny studio, and more inputs and cables and more fiddling with stuff. I work ridiculous hours (should be logged on right now, honestly) and want to just come in, plug in and record. POD XT makes that easy. It may not be for the purists, but I'm not a purist.
 
Wow, kind of surprised to see that you run Superior Drummer that hot. I think the default setting is like -4.0 if I remember right. Even that is too loud for me. I usually back it off to around the -10.0 range for tracking/mixing.
 
Ha ha! Well, that helps explain a couple of things. One, why your mixes sound twice as professional as mine -- and Two, why my mixes sound twice as loud as yours. I want to find that sweet spot between squashing the crap out of everything and bordering on distortion -- and not having people NOT listen to my music because it's so much quieter than all the other stuff in their "shuffle" playlist. I've literally had people tell me they stopped listening to my songs in the past because they had to crank the volume every time one of them came on.

This is the unfortunate new world where sound quality is less important to listeners than how a song sounds in their playlist compared to others they listen to. I feel like there HAS to be a way to find a middle ground. I'm searching for it like the holy grail.

IS there a way to get louder drums to match the levels of the other instruments (that I know I need to back off a bit) without making my mixes too quiet? SD2 compression/effects? Lately I've been using the maximizer (I know, "groan") on the audio output channel of SD2 to bump them up outside of the SD2 interface.

I'm grasping at straws, obviously.

Again, I'm deeply appreciative of all the comments and help. You've all been amazing already. I don't want to wear out my welcome, but I'm desperate to find a solution. Like I said, I'll back off after I get a few ideas to try and get some remixes up. Any suggestions are welcome -- other than "just pull all your tracks down by 10 db." LOL!
 
Final mixes can always be brought up- limiters, compression; you definitely don't need to be worrying about that during the tracking phase. I try to be peaking around -6.0 to -8.0, and averaging between -16 and -20. Doesnt always happen perfectly, but I try to.
 
When I load Superior Drummer 3, I keep its own gain output, but I lower the instrument channel in the DAW to around -10. It's super loud if I don't, and I'll get off to a bad start with the mix if I try and work around that hot of a signal. You're better off starting low and adding it in near the end than starting off hot. Keep it quiet(er) and mix without smashing the master or its limiter. After the mix is done, worry later about bringing the volume into play.
 
Final mixes can always be brought up- limiters, compression; you definitely don't need to be worrying about that during the tracking phase. I try to be peaking around -6.0 to -8.0, and averaging between -16 and -20. Doesnt always happen perfectly, but I try to.

Do you master from Pro Tools, or do you use a separate app after you export a mix? Like WaveLab or something? I kinda track and master all at once, because I don't know any other way. I record all the tracks and then start mixing/mastering them once all the tracks are done. Which pretty much just means adding an EQ and the maximizer (compressor/limiter?) on the master output and maybe the occasional EQ/reverb/maximizer/compression on individual tracks or group tracks as necessary.

I route all my vocals to group tracks (usually a lead vocal group and left/right background vocal groups) and put most of my mastering effects on those so they all sound similar. Is that good or bad?
 
I always have a Submix track that feeds into the Master Fader. This is where I do almost all of my Master Fader processing. The Master Fader itself just has the limiter, which I never engage until the mix is very close to being finished.

My Submix track contains all the other Master Bus processing. It can vary from song to song, but it's usually some form of this:

-Slate VCC (Virtual Console Collection)
-Slate VTC (Virtual Tube Collection)
-Slate Custom Lift
-Slate Revival
-Waves Scheps73 EQ (set on 'Mid/Side', usually a db or two of 12k on the sides, and 1db of 60 in the middle)
-Slate Grey (SSL Bus Compressor, sometimes I use a different compressor, sometimes even two, but gravitate to this one most times)
-Slate VTM (Virtual Tape Machine, set to 1/2" Mastering tape here)
 
Break it down for an idiot. That "submix" track... is that just a group track with all of your individual tracks routed to it? I'm not sure I understand. What's the difference between that and just using your master output as the "mastering channel"? What's the advantage of having a "middle-man" channel instead of just putting all your mastering effects on the main output?

I use Cubase, so I don't have ANY of those plug-ins or effects. What do each of those things do? That seems like a lot of... stuff. I don't know what the equivalents are in Cubase. Are those EQs? Compressors? Wideners? Maximizers? Limiters?

Sorry. I know you probably hate me already, but I'm really, really trying to learn here and appreciate anything you can do to help. I started remixing Smother Me tonight and just gave up in despair. I wish I could pay someone to just come to my house and set all my settings and say, "Use these. It'll sound great." LOL!

Feel free to throw up your hands in frustration and tell me to f**k off. I wouldn't blame you.
 
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