Newbie - Tracks laid down, next steps?

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UKTexan

New member
First Post! So I have some audio tracks recorded in Cubase 7 elements and once I've fiddled around a bit more (which it's technical name seems to be "mixing"! I think i'll soon be ready to export an MP3/WAV file but I'm a little unclear on mastering or the next steps. Cubase 7 elements has mastering plugins and talks about dithering and stuff but I'm struggling to understand quite what I do next.

My newbie question is, because I only have one track and not an entire album, do I need to go through a "mastering" process and can you do mastering within the Cubase 7 elements software and if so what makes mastering different to mixing, because it seems to me that mastering is only useful for making sure several songs sound good together on an album?

My biggest worry is that I've recorded some stuff which sounds good through headphones or speakers but when I burn it to a CD it will sound quiet, i.e. I'd need to turn the car stereo up more than a commercial CD?

Any tips/links to decent videos etc all very welcome!
 
Don't worry about mastering at this stage. Just turn the volume up on your playback device. You've got a lot to learn, and mastering is done ONCE you've got a good mix (or a bunch of songs to compile to an album).
 
UKTexan said:
My biggest worry is that I've recorded some stuff which sounds good through headphones or speakers but when I burn it to a CD it will sound quiet, i.e. I'd need to turn the car stereo up more than a commercial CD?
Click to expand...

Trust me, that's not your biggest worry. Sounding "good" through speakers and sounding "quiet" in the car are not opposites...

Your biggest worry is getting it to sound good in the first place irrespective of final volume. One of the things that mastering does is address relative/absolute volume. If you're only just familiarising yourself with the term "mixing" then you don't want to go anywhere near mastering tools in your DAW just yet.

I'd advise you to get your mix the way you like it, convert it to MP3, post it in the MP3 Clinic, get feedback on how it might be improved, rinse and repeat until you're happy and your listeners start to say "not bad, dude", and then and only then worry about how "loud" it is. You might learn enough along the way to use a limiter to raise the volume a bit, or if you make friends here, someone might do it for you.
 
Welcome to the world of audio! First thing you should do is play around with the faders until the whole song sounds decent in terms of the instruments' respective levels.

The next thing you should do is take a look at your DAW's basic EQ plugin. Do you understand what it does and how to use it? If not, Google some introductory EQ tutorials and start learning.

Next, do the same with your basic compression plugin.

EQ and compression will get you 90% to a good mix. That last 10% will take years to learn.

Forget about mastering until you can produce good mixes. Upload your mixes for feedback in the MP3 Clinic to learn.
 
Thanks for the replies. Last night I exported to a WAV file @ 44.1 / 16 bit and put my mix on a CD. As I suspected the volume needed to be increased more than usual. I think i'll export an MP3 and get some feedback as suggested by Brian, I have already done some things to the dry tracks through research on Sound on Sound and these forums e.g. added inserts and sent my vocal to 2 FX channels for reverb and delay, though the EQ and compression side are definitely a mystery so I need more help with those.

As an overall sound I'm quite happy that my first song by myself is alright, it's not a number 1 record but it's good fun to learn how to make it better! I'm into alt. country e.g. Reckless Kelly, Wade Bowen, Randy Rogers Band which makes it a bit more difficult as I find most forum posts are more about metal or dance music and obviously not everybody uses Cubase either
 
If volume is concerning you then just shove a limiter on the master track and increase the output until you are topping out around -3db. A quick fix. I always temporarily do this if I am wanting to test my music out in different situations or if I am sending unfinished tracks to friends etc for feedback.
 
The VERY next thing you should do is copy all the tracks to another file on the existing hard drive..Then copy that to a USB stick..THEN! Burn the data to one or more DVDs and post them to a friend. You can also use Cloud storage though the free ones are usually only 2G.

Can't remember how you copy a complete project in Cubase but plenty here will.

Dave.
 
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