Mixing process question

[BilltheCat]

I started this in the newbie section, but no one bit. Perhaps it belongs here. If not, please let me know and I'll move it. The question surrounds the "proper" steps and procedures for adding effects to tracks. I'm not talking about how to make it sound good--I'm talking about the best use of resources and the technical procedure to making it work. Let's work with an example: Say I've recorded my bass (mono), drums (in stereo) and keys (piano in stereo). I'd rather record only the dry signal and THEN compress the bass and drums (but at different settings), and eq the piano.

In the VST environment, how would I do this? Do I need to deal with global effects and bounce the tracks one at a time, or can I set up three different effects to three different "busses" (is that the right word) and listen to everything at once, before mixing down? What is required vs. optimal vs. smart? I've read thru the Cubasis and EMU manuals 2 times each and not clued in on it. It points out how to do it for ONE instrument, but not 3 simeoultaneously.

Thanks in advance,

[Raw-Tracks]

If I understand your question, you can EQ each track individually in the mixer window of you application. Each track has a mixer channel. On that mixer channel you will find EQ controls. These controls will only affect the track that is associated with that channel. When it comes to compression, your appllication may have a "dynamics" section on the channel. That is where you will find the compressor. You might also use a compressor plug-in on the channel's "insert".

In all of the above, you do not need to bounce the effect to a track. Your software will process that in real time on playback.

Hope that helps.

[DDev]

It appears that you don't have a clear understanding of mixing in general. If I'm wrong, I apologize up front, but your question is really contradictory. So, that being said, here is a process you can follow to do what I think you want to do.

1. Generally you will want to eq and compress your individual tracks. Cubase allows you to insert VST effects for each channel, tailored to each channel. For instance, take your bass track. In your channel section you will see a little "e" that can be selected. If you click on that you will open up the channel insert dialog box. In the center section is a column of blank spaces (at least, this is how it appears in SL; I don't have Cubasis but I think they are similar). If you click in the top blank space a list of all your VST effects will open up. Scroll down to the VST DYNAMICS item and click on it. This will open up the VST DYNAMICS dialog box. The pop-down at the top gives you options of which dynamics processes to select. Select COMPRESSOR. Then you can choose to use the default compressor setting or adjust as you see fit. When done, click OK to close the dialog box. Likewise you can use the EQ or apply any other effect desired from this screen. Close the screen to return to the main screen.

2. If there are special things you want to do to a group of tracks (ie. all drum tracks, for instance) you can do this a couple of different ways. You can assign all desired tracks to a new sub-group, which will add a new fader in the mixer window. You will do your group stuff from the sub-group fader the same as described above (but only after you have done step 1 for the individual tracks first). Now, I don't know if Cubasis will do this or not. If not, then what you do is create a submix as a recorded mixdown that gets placed on 2 blank tracks. To do this you MUTE all unnecessary tracks and leave un-muted only the tracks you want to sub-mix. You want to be sure that you actually listen to this mix before committing it to your tracks. Once you have done the mixdown process and placed the new stereo tracks in your tracklist, you can do effects and eq processing as mentioned in step 1.

I hope this is not too ambiguous. You don't usually do very much with global effects, but rather treat each individual track to tailor the mix. Not to say you can't do global stuff, but that is typically a mastering step that can actually screw up a good mix if not done correctly.

Good luck,
Darryl.....