Mixing Techniques

[ohmicide]

so i've been working on getting my mixes to sound as professional as i can. i've read a lot about compression, eq, limiting, etc. ive also read about some of the tricks the pros use to get things to sound nice, warm and loud (saturation, bus compression, tube coloring, etc)

there's something ive been wondering though

if you're mastering your own tracks, is it better to get everything to be as loud as possible with compression and then only doing slight saturation, compression and limiting on the master or to mix everything at a moderate level and get everything to be as loud as possible on the master?

also, the same goes if you're getting your tracks mastered professionaly

[Seafroggys]

No........

[Massive Master]

Headroom. All the time, at every possible stage.

Never do anything for the sake of loudness until the very last possible step.

Track too loud? Forget it. Overcompress individual elements? Forget it. Mix too hot? Forget it. Anything you do for the sake of volume will almost always come back to haunt you later.

Concentrate on making a good mix.

[ohmicide]

Originally Posted by Massive Master

Never do anything for the sake of loudness until the very last possible step.

so after i have my track mixed down and i've got everything sounding right, how do i go about with the loudness? i know it's always good to glue everything together with very light bus compression (low ratio, long attack and long release). but what about the limiting?

[NL5]

Originally Posted by ohmicide

but what about the limiting?

Put it on 11.

[Jaticus]

Originally Posted by Massive Master

Headroom. All the time, at every possible stage.

Never do anything for the sake of loudness until the very last possible step.

Track too loud? Forget it. Overcompress individual elements? Forget it. Mix too hot? Forget it. Anything you do for the sake of volume will almost always come back to haunt you later.

Concentrate on making a good mix.

I'll remember that, cheers for posting

[Christopher_xo]

What I normally do is.... I'll put my main sound...usually the vocals... i'll put them on a defualt volume....then the other sounds... i'll mix around that... and not jjust pump everything up... i think a controlled sound is better than a blarring sound....try it.... it works magick for me !!!