fix the mix or the master?

N

nonovice

New member
I am currently working on a project and looking for some advice. The sound i am going for is a realitviely bright mix for example (nine inch nails "pretty hate machine" or tools "lateralus") I have come pretty close to emulating the sounds of those productions using multiband compression in the mastering stage. However I was wondering if any one could suggest another way to control the lower mid frequency in the mixing stage without the superflous use of eq. So in conclusion how would any of you craft such a soundscape, bearing in mind that i have been saving this for the mastering stage becuase i am already using much of my computers processing power on verbs and sheer volume of audio tracks etc.
 
90% is the recorded tracks. Maul-the-Band compression should only be used when necessary (but so many people abuse it at this point, I feel like I've been speaking to an empty room for the last 10 years).

If the tracks weren't recorded with the highs you were looking for, try to find out what you can get away with at the mixing stage - Mastering should be the icing - not the cake.
 
I appreciate your post but it isn't helpful. The quality of my audio is great I am merely looking for a better way to acheive a stylised mix. Getting more presence and less mudd so to speak. if i were to record my source in this manner i would be sacrificng the warmth I have captured. This being said I would greatly appreciate any advice you may have.
 
Try to define in more quantitative terms the difference between "warmth" and "mudd". Basically, what you recorded from your instruments is what I call "what you did". When people ask how to get a mix sounding a certain way, I always ask them to review "what you did" to see if it's in line with the desired effect. If "what you did" doesn't sound like what you want, you might be better off going back and fixing "what you did".

Ideally, EQ in mixing should be used to smooth out the mix, not to drastically change the sound of the recorded instrument.
 
Basiclly what Im stating is it would seem far easier to take a good thing and subtract negative elements from it to make it better as opposed to the adverse. I am just looking for advice as to how maybe some of the records I had mentioned achieved their timbre as they sound wholly unnatural as opposed to other more traditional rock recordings.
 
If you want your songs to be bright sounding--record and mix it to sound bright.

Generally speaking, mastering isn't the time to start looking for a "sound" of a project.
 
well, I did a project with the same problem and I fugged it up. So I'll tell you what I did so you can not do that (or shit; maybe it will work for you; who knows). I recorded to tape using dolby (C I think) and on mixdown; when I compared to other CDs (like fugazi) I noticed I was lacking all of these highs (next time I'll use GP9 and skip the NR). What I finally came up with was to blast the high shelf on the overheads. worked pretty damn good...it was a room recording and so boosting the overheads actually gave a little more "presence" to all of the instruments in the mix.

now, when It came down to mastering, and I began comparing my mix in the car to the radio....

I don't know why I thought of this but in my studio I took a commercial mix and raised the volume on the monitors to pretty fucking loud. I wanted to see how loud I could get it before my ears hurt. Then I did the same with my mix, and I could'nt get it nearly as loud....the low mids were freakin honking!! It was painful. And that's how I figured out that I had too much low mids. So I cut that during mastering. Actually I cut some low mids, some around maybe 40 hz, some in the highs (to reduce snare rattle and also to flatten out all of that boosting I did during mixdown), but I cut the low mids the most.

I got a much flatter mix. cutting the low mids actually brought out the highs somewhat. but what made the highs sound the nicest was cutting out the ones that were in the way. yeah, I cut highs, and it brought out the highs. I did this in the lows too.

Looking back I probably shouldn't have cut any of the lows. and maybe I could have done some of this in mixdown, not mastering.
 
Thanks thats kind of what i have been doing Falken except instead of eq i've been using multi-band compression to retain some of the low mid umph while increasing the clarity of the mix. i guess im just worried about low end mudd while still trying to preserve the microdynamics in that frequency range? any one? am i even using micro dynamics correctly? damn im fried is anyone getting me yet?
 
Well, and I'm just going out on a limb here. But, I like spewing ideas so far-fetched they border on absurd. Why not add additional instrumentation into your song to possibly bring out the brightness you're looking for. I'm sure there's something quite that wouldn't change the tonality too much, ease your processor a bit, and allow you to keep the sounds you have already and love so much. Just thinking outside the box here.
 
Thanks everbody but I seem to be acheiveing good results with a mixture of equing the offending frequencies and using a bit of upward expansion for retention of lost dynamics. It seems to thin out the lower mids but keep the impact of the drums, bringing out the presence and punch that was captured in the original tracks and not completely changing the sound of the recorded audio.
Anyone else had luck with similar techniques? or can offer better ones? This the longest labor day ever ZZZZZzzzzZZZzz.........
 
I don't know but to me it seems like a LOT of multi band comp use :eek: I have never used a MBC to get those kind of results. Hey, it may be me. I, as others have stated go for the sound up front, ie. bright, warm,big bottom or whatever. :)
 
"So in conclusion how would any of you craft such a soundscape, bearing in mind that i have been saving this for the mastering stage becuase i am already using much of my computers processing power on verbs and sheer volume of audio tracks etc."
You may be kind of reverse engineering your project proceeding in this fashion...I don't know. :eek:
 
in regards to what your computer can handle...why not just just send the mix to a bus and mix it down, or bounce it, or whatever it is you do as your final process...then apply the mastering to just the lone audio track in a whole new file. you'd have more resources for the mixing then, and more resources for the mastering. doesn't answer your question, but it'd give you more options with plugs and such.
 
This is helpful advice I'll be using for my current album project and other projects. In the past I've tended to be a "fix it in the mix" guy but I am starting to realize just how important it is to get the tracks closest to how you want during tracking. It's just easier said than done when you have a punk band who's just itching to record some tracks! I've always somewhat neglected that advice because of the way I mix.
 
I like to shelve the guitars at about 60-80Hz. This seems to open up the bottom end letting the kick and bass dominate. Just a thought. As for the albums you mentioned, the same results are probably just not acheivable in a project studio environment compared with the studios and engineers that those projects were recorded with.
 
nonovice said:
Thanks everbody but I seem to be acheiveing good results with a mixture of equing the offending frequencies and using a bit of upward expansion for retention of lost dynamics. It seems to thin out the lower mids but keep the impact of the drums, bringing out the presence and punch that was captured in the original tracks and not completely changing the sound of the recorded audio.
Anyone else had luck with similar techniques? or can offer better ones? This the longest labor day ever ZZZZZzzzzZZZzz.........
Click to expand...

Sorry but you're confusing the crap out of me. You're compressing to get the sound you want then using upward expansion to reverse the effect of compression?

Maybe EQ is really what you're looking for but haven't found the correct combination yet?

BTW, Digidesign has a "mix-off" of the new NIN album. It may help to download it in order to have a reference of what individual NIN tracks sound like. It's quite a bit different than Pretty Hate Machine, but a good ref anyway.

As far as mastering, I would go for a mix that sounds uniform. If the mix isn't quite bright enough overall but adding EQ later makes everything stand out equally, you're better off IMO than adding EQ to the individual tracks to obtain it.
 
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