Hello from a newbie

karuzo

New member
Hello,

Newbie here. Hope to get ton of info from you all. Please forgive some of my jargon as I may not use the correct terms for what I try to describe.
I started with mixing as a hobby and really like it. Watched countless videos and began messing with mixing. As a starter I chose Auria Pro on iPad, as I want this to be a mobile option. If this gets more serious for me, I’ll probably switch to a desktop station.

I have few questions, and will have more.

-I need to be able to mix with headphones almost exclusively due to nature of my home environment. Is it at all possible and reliable? If yes, can you recommend one? I don’t mind spending the money on it. I just played around the other with mixing drums to my liking on the headphones, just to hear it differently in my car’s speakers.

-I think I got the basics of understanding of compressors, EQ, etc… One question I have regarding EQ -at least for a beginner, I’d like to add a graphical EQ, showing all the frequencies ‘in motion’. I’ve seen online using EQ showing several instruments so you can adjust and balance the right zone for each. I assume they were all sub-grouped, and the EQ applied to that, as this seems to be the only way to show frequency of several instruments frequencies. Is typically the workflow to then apply changes to the EQ on the sub-group, or do you use that only for visualization, and then apply EQ on each separate track? Hope this question makes sense.

-to start mixing a project, it seems as everyone has their approach (start with vocals, or bass, or whatever). But, to see if I understand correctly, is the concept basically to set gain of one track/channel close to 0db, start with volume (fader) at -10db on master to give headroom, and then start blending in other tracks?

-is it correct to gain each channel to close to its 0db level before mixing?


Thank you for all the assistance.

Doron
 
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"is it correct to gain each channel to close to its 0db level before mixing?"

No! I am sure a 'mixing' person will be along in the fullness to tackle the rest of your post.

Dave.
 
Hello,

Newbie here. Hope to get ton of info from you all. Please forgive some of my jargon as I may not use the correct terms for what I try to describe.
I started with mixing as a hobby and really like it. Watched countless videos and began messing with mixing. As a starter I chose Auria Pro on iPad, as I want this to be a mobile option. If this gets more serious for me, I’ll probably switch to a desktop station.

Go with a laptop. It will out weight a desk top for remote recording a hundred fold.

I have few questions, and will have more.

-I need to be able to mix with headphones almost exclusively due to nature of my home environment. Is it at all possible and reliable? If yes, can you recommend one? I don’t mind spending the money on it. I just played around the other with mixing drums to my liking on the headphones, just to hear it differently in my car’s speakers.

These are a good choice for open backed headphones. HD 650

-I think I got the basics of understanding of compressors, EQ, etc… One question I have regarding EQ -at least for a beginner, I’d like to add a graphical EQ, showing all the frequencies ‘in motion’. I’ve seen online using EQ showing several instruments so you can adjust and balance the right zone for each.

Compression as well as eq'ing take most years of practice to get them right. Most of it will do with training your ear. You can assign an eq to each instrument in most professional DAWs. If you want to select several instruments to one eq then you would create a eq buss and route those tracks to your buss track. You can do the same for compression.

I assume they were all sub-grouped, and the EQ applied to that, as this seems to be the only way to show frequency of several instruments frequencies. Is typically the workflow to then apply changes to the EQ on the sub-group, or do you use that only for visualization, and then apply EQ on each separate track? Hope this question makes sense.

You really want to see each instrument individually. By grouping them all together, it is going to be very hard to separate them via a freq analyzer. Think about it like this. If you hear two people talking, no big deal. If you hear 100 people talking it will be harder to pin point who is saying what.

-to start mixing a project, it seems as everyone has their approach (start with vocals, or bass, or whatever). But, to see if I understand correctly, is the concept basically to set gain of one track/channel close to 0db, start with volume (fader) at -10db on master to give headroom, and then start blending in other tracks? -is it correct to gain each channel to close to its 0db level before mixing? Thank you for all the assistance. Doron

There have been several books written concerning your last question and this is the readers digest version. You can start with anything that will be in your mix, it is up to you. Your input level into your DAW or recorder needs to be between a -12 and -18dbs. Depending on where you will place your audio, will determine your output level. We will use YT as our example.

Since YT streams at a -13dbs, we will normalize our tracks to a -15 to -16dbs. This will leave us 2 to 3 dbs of head room when we start to mix and master. After we set our levels for each track to blend into the mix using our faders and we have finished adding any effects, we then bring the entire mix up to a -13dbs with a -1 or -0.1 for our dbTP. TP = Total Peak. We never want out audio to go over 0dbs as this will cause distortion.
 
You've been given some great advice so far but a couple of things...

First, yes you can mix on headphones but it takes longer to "learn the sound" that it does with monitor speakers in an acoustically treated environment. The tricks are to, first, get headphones that sound neutral rather than "good". You want to hear your recordings warts and all. Second, start by doing a mix and playing it back on as many different systems as you can. Take note of what you like and don't like, then go back and make a second mix bearing this in mind. Do this until you're happy with the results on a wide range of playback devices. Note that you need to do the same thing to "learn" speakers but it tends to be easier because headphones interact rather differently with your ears than sound in clear air. If you're interested there are lots of scholarly papers about this effect.

Second, I have to jump on the bandwagon and say you DON'T want individual tracks as near 0dB as possible. Mixing is an additive function and every time you add one the overall level goes up. Two 0dB tracks added together make +3dB, i.e. into clipping. Add another one and it goes up again and so on. Yes, you can pull down the faders on your DAW but that's a pointless excercise. Keep your level reasonable and only bring them up to whatever level you need when you have the final mix.

Finally, in terms of the order of doing things, there is no single right answer. Read lots of books and play a lot!
 
Thanks for all the replies. I think I get most of it. Though just to clarify about the EQ as maybe I was not clear -all I really want is to be able to view graphically all tracks together, just to assist in assessing each area occupied. I think the only way to be able to view them all at once will be to group, or buss them into a track and apply the EQ there, or simply apply EQ to the master to view that, then go back to each track individually and adjust EQ there to liking. Hope this makes sense.

Thanks,

Doron
 
Thanks for all the replies. I think I get most of it. Though just to clarify about the EQ as maybe I was not clear -all I really want is to be able to view graphically all tracks together, just to assist in assessing each area occupied. I think the only way to be able to view them all at once will be to group, or buss them into a track and apply the EQ there, or simply apply EQ to the master to view that, then go back to each track individually and adjust EQ there to liking. Hope this makes sense.

Thanks,

Doron

Yes, just put the analyzer as the last plugin on your master channel. This will show you everything that is going through the mix. I hope you update this thread with some pics. I have been doing this for over 40 years and IMHO, it is much easier to isolate every track and make sure it is 100% before I go to the next one. However, I am not to old to change my ways when a better mouse trap has been built and it makes sense to me.
 
Yes, just put the analyzer as the last plugin on your master channel. This will show you everything that is going through the mix. I hope you update this thread with some pics. I have been doing this for over 40 years and IMHO, it is much easier to isolate every track and make sure it is 100% before I go to the next one. However, I am not to old to change my ways when a better mouse trap has been built and it makes sense to me.

Thanks Mack. I'm in the process of downloading some practice tracks tog get started. I assume it would be okay to update this thread with more questions as I go? Or maybe my findings/understandings as I progress?

Best,

Doron
 
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