looking for a 'happy medium' mix

[maryslittlesecret]

Figured if I can't use my ears 'after hours', I'd give my eyes a shot. I compared my mix to a 'reference' mix in Voxengo's SPAN and saw my mix had a significant bump in that range, so I started tweaking on phones.

It's not perfect (I lost some warmth with the mud), but it definitely helped. I'm going to toy with it a bit more tonight. Is that generally not a good area to cut?

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Is that generally not a good area to cut?

There's really no such thing as a "generally good area" or "generally bad area" to cut or boost. You do what you need to do where you need to do it, that's all. . I was just curious if it was the result of sweeping with the para EQ or something else that caused you to target a particular frequency.

I'd still recommend using the sweep (even with headphones if you have to) instead of going by eye, and especially don't count on a spectrogram of what you have versus a reference track as being a relaible indicator. Some bumps *should* be there, even if they don't show in a reference. Maybe some very obvious ones can be tamed that way, but there are going to be bump and valley differences between you and your reference that are natural and good and not very obvious on the FFT as to whther they are good or bad.

Also, you usually should be doing this kind of stuff on the individual tracks, and not on the 2mix. In general, the only time it's best to do it on the mixdown is if the original tracks are not available and you have no other choice.

You're off to a good start, though .

G.

 

[TexRoadkill]

That said, I kicked on an FFT and did some master bus EQ quickly and it seems like my mud is in the 75Hz-350Hz range -- where I'm sure the bass and guitar are fighting for space. Any suggestions on carving out space in that area? That seems like vaild territory for both bass guitar and (heavy) guitars -- which one should make room for the other?

In that area you can cut a lot of the guitar unless it's vital for the sound or genre. Filtering the low end on the guitar anywhere from 80hz-300hz is pretty common.

Make sure your kick isn't taking up too much low end. Sometimes a roll off or filtering at around 50-80z can help.

Heavy bass compression can help alot. A slow attack and release will let the initial attack pop through but still give you a lot of sustain.

 

[maryslittlesecret]

In that area you can cut a lot of the guitar unless it's vital for the sound or genre. Filtering the low end on the guitar anywhere from 80hz-300hz is pretty common.
QUOTE]

Thanks for the tips. I rolled the guitar off around 150 and didn't want to take too much more from it -- still want some beef on them. I need to toy with the bass comp a bit...

Also, props to SouthSIDE. I went back and did a sweep on the bass guitar as suggested and was able to make a lot narrower cut after finding a particularly nasty area around 115Hz. Still need to check it on my other 'reference' speakers (car stereo, etc), but it sounds like it cut the mud and kept some more of the warmth.

Thanks for all the help, everyone. I'll keep you posted with any new developments (or questions)

 

[maryslittlesecret]

In that area you can cut a lot of the guitar unless it's vital for the sound or genre. Filtering the low end on the guitar anywhere from 80hz-300hz is pretty common.

Thanks for the tips. I rolled the guitar off around 150 and didn't want to take too much more from it -- still want some beef on them. I need to toy with the bass comp a bit...

Also, props to SouthSIDE. I went back and did a sweep on the bass guitar as suggested and was able to make a lot narrower cut after finding a particularly nasty area around 115Hz. Still need to check it on my other 'reference' speakers (car stereo, etc), but it sounds like it cut the mud and kept some more of the warmth.

Thanks for all the help, everyone. I'll keep you posted with any new developments (or questions)