complexprocess
New member
Hey guys,
Just so we all understand eachother, I'm sort of asking about mastering, but not really. I know that mastering is an incredibly deep subject and should be left to the pros and all that stuff that is general first response material for these threads. I'm not looking for professional results, I just want to take a mix that I'm pretty happy with and get it to sound as loud as a commercial CD, without totally butchering it. I'm using audacity to edit the stereo mix, but more general tips will work too.
What I'm basically asking for is some tips to get me started in the right direction. What sort of compression/limiting settings do you use (approximately) for different styles. I know it should be different for each project, but I just want a good starting point. I've noticed that cranking audacity's built in compression effect up to 10:1 and leaving the other settings at default gets the trick done volumewise, at least for a hardcore song that wasn't meant to have dynamics, but it doesn't sound great and on more dynamic music it makes the soft parts way to loud. Please point me in the right direction.
Also, I'm mostly going the plugin route. I have a hardware compressor (alesis nanocomp) that I usually use for bass, which I could also try, but I'd rather keep it all on the computer. Audacity (again, my current editor of choice) has a VST enabler which is a little funky but allows me to use VST plugins. any suggestions. Should I mess with multiband compression, or will that just complicate things for me while i'm in the infant stages of learning this stuff?
Thanks a whole lot for any tips.
Just so we all understand eachother, I'm sort of asking about mastering, but not really. I know that mastering is an incredibly deep subject and should be left to the pros and all that stuff that is general first response material for these threads. I'm not looking for professional results, I just want to take a mix that I'm pretty happy with and get it to sound as loud as a commercial CD, without totally butchering it. I'm using audacity to edit the stereo mix, but more general tips will work too.
What I'm basically asking for is some tips to get me started in the right direction. What sort of compression/limiting settings do you use (approximately) for different styles. I know it should be different for each project, but I just want a good starting point. I've noticed that cranking audacity's built in compression effect up to 10:1 and leaving the other settings at default gets the trick done volumewise, at least for a hardcore song that wasn't meant to have dynamics, but it doesn't sound great and on more dynamic music it makes the soft parts way to loud. Please point me in the right direction.
Also, I'm mostly going the plugin route. I have a hardware compressor (alesis nanocomp) that I usually use for bass, which I could also try, but I'd rather keep it all on the computer. Audacity (again, my current editor of choice) has a VST enabler which is a little funky but allows me to use VST plugins. any suggestions. Should I mess with multiband compression, or will that just complicate things for me while i'm in the infant stages of learning this stuff?
Thanks a whole lot for any tips.