Please Critique

[gcapel]

Here's a sample mix I made. I'm just trying to get better at this like everyone else. Let me know if there is anything missing.

Is it loud enough?

What is a good compression ratio in mastering?

http://users.vnet.net/garrock/Track 1.mp3

rythem guitar (senn 421 + sm57)
lead guitar (senn 421 + sm57)
bass guitar direct
syth direct
Reason drum track
Thanks, Garrett

[gcapel]

Oh yea you have to copy the entire link and paste it in your browser because of the space.

[mshilarious]

What is a Rural Exciter? Does it involve sheep?

OK, seriously, your track is bassy and a little dull. Rolloff the lows, and add some highs (above 8kHz) on the cymbal. It's already pretty compressed, the EQ changes open it up, I wouldn't squash it back. It's a nice mellow track

[SouthSIDE Glen]

I basically agree with mshilarious (once again, he has stolen my thunder ). The bass is a taste on the loose or muddy side; not only a LF roll off, but perhaps some notching in the 200-400Hz area to tighten it up a bit. And agreed that the cymbal and air could stand to come forward a bit.

As far as the compression question, there is no good single answer to that. I will say from looking the waveform that your envelope is already rather dense, probably do to the excess of resonant mud in the bass. That combined with the nature of the music itself, I wouldn't recommend squashing the dynamics any further than you already have. However, you do still have plenty of headroom in that your highest peak is at -4.4dBFS.

Clean the bass up a bit and sharpen the high frequency stuff and see what you have as far as peak levels. From there an overall volume gain or standard peak normalization just to take advantage of the unused headroom and you should have plenty of volume and dynamics for that mix and style, I would think.

G.

[gcapel]

Thanks guys for your honest opinion. I will do a thero remix and master.