mixdown

  • Thread starter Thread starter trax
  • Start date Start date
what does mixing a cake mean?

same principal...blend all the ingredients into a cohesive unit till it tastes great!
 
Mixing down a song entails making each element sound great on its own and in ensemble with the other tracks, each in its appropriate place left/right/center/front/back as heard by the listener, with special equalization or other processing enhancements that clarify the meaning of the lyrics and perhaps the drama of the instrumentation, with original and creative effects applied as necessary, with the view toward maximizing the emotional impact of the song, setting new trends in popular music and winning Grammys, then preserving it in the correct final format in 2 stereo tracks without pissing off the talent or the writer or the producer or yourself. In doing this you are, of course, limited to what pitiful little collection of hardware and software you have managed to accumulate.

That's all there is to it, although there are several here who might want to add some other factors.
 
I was thinkin about gettin a 24 tr. mackie console,and I would have my cd recorder hooked up to it.I also have cubase,so would I go line out of my sound card to line in of my console,and I would be able to control the tracks I recoded with cubase on the console?
 
trax said:
I was thinkin about gettin a 24 tr. mackie console,and I would have my cd recorder hooked up to it.I also have cubase,so would I go line out of my sound card to line in of my console,and I would be able to control the tracks I recoded with cubase on the console?
Click to expand...
Nope. Sorry.
 
Wow, you really made the natives restless on that one.

Here's the concept (loosely);

Multitrack recording - recording the various instruments and vocalists in a band to seperate tracks on a multitrack recorder, so that each can be played back seperately from the others, but all can be played back synchronously.

Mixdown - the re-combining of the seperate instrument and voice tracks in a multitrack recording to create a "mix" of the individual parts that is then recorded to a stereo master.

The mixing a cake reference was not as sarcastic as it sounded. The individual tracks become the ingrediants for the cake, and how much of each ingrediant is the first basic premise of mixing. But there is soooo much more, and the link for the mixing primer was a good tip. Happy reading, and good luck.

RD
 
trax said:
I was thinkin about gettin a 24 tr. mackie console,and I would have my cd recorder hooked up to it.I also have cubase,so would I go line out of my sound card to line in of my console,and I would be able to control the tracks I recoded with cubase on the console?
Click to expand...

Only if you have a soundcard with multiple outputs. If you have say, 8 tracks of audio recorded, you would need a soundcard with at least 8 discrete outputs to be able to route each track to a channel on the console. If you just have a regular soundcard with l-r outputs, the sound is going to be "mixed" before it comes out of the computer.

Your best option would probably be to use the mixing features built into cubase.
 
Right now I have a 2 i/o soundcard,if I get a a patchbay wit 8 out puts,could I go those 8 outs to 8 ins in a mackie 16 tracks mixer,and then mix the song.
 
No, a patchbay is just a passive box of jacks that enables you to connect things to other things without crawling around behind the desk and rack cabs. What you need is more D/A converters, which means buying a soundcard or firewire box that provides them.
Here's a tip......please don't take it wrong. If you want the respect of the members of this forum that will prompt them to spend time giving you thoughtfull and insightfull answers, as well as accelerating your learning curve beyond learning a basic or two per day, then you really should spend some time reading up on this stuff. I don't mean that to sound harsh, and I really like helping newbies, as do many others with way more knowledge than me. But you'll be years away from a decent recording if you try and learn it all one basic question at a time with no effort on your part to study this craft.
Kind regards, RD
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top