Hello! I'm working on the mixes of my band's COVID album and I'm struggling to get the low end right

[DM60]

That makes sense. I have been doing some back and forth comparison today using Spotify (don't have the WAV files for what I want to compare it to right now) and I'm pretty close given that my tracks aren't mastered. Made some tweaks and have been A/Bing them with my commuting headphones and I'm almost where I want this particular track to be. Once I have that set, I'll use it to reference the rest of them.

It's interesting how easy it is to go MAD SCIENTIST on tracks with a DAW; I decided this morning to strip down the drum sound and realized that I was doing stuff I didn't need to, especially to the kick drum. I need to develop a better sense of when something is good enough, then stop futzing with it lol. The guitars are a different story; our guitarist is recording his tracks and home and he abuses the spring reverb on his Fender amp like it's an IV drug, while playing really percussively. I'm having to surgically remove the peaks with gain reduction, it's tedious lol. That's probably my next Newbie Thread - "how do I convince my guitarist to turn off the reverb without copping battery charges?"

Heck yea man, first thing one does when you get into the recording and mixing is throw every thing you have, and if a little sounds good, more must sound "more better!" I think almost everyone on this board has been there

But really, start with a flat mix, get your levels and mix sounding the way you want, no EQ, no compression. Then once you have a decent mix, then understand how you want to make it better. Also, don't forget you can reduce a frequency in one channel/instrument to help another channel/instrument. Just don't always go for a fader increase/decrease. It can be simple if you just understand what it is you want to do.

Example, I can't hear the vocals, you think, do I have other instruments that sit there in that vocal range? What would happen if I take some EQ and remove out of another instrument that might be in the same space. That is just an example, but not everything is volume, lot more to it than that.

Hopefully it helps you to step back and think about it so you better understand what you want to do, then learn how/go, do it.

 

[JayArby]

Heck yea man, first thing one does when you get into the recording and mixing is throw every thing you have, and if a little sounds good, more must sound "more better!" I think almost everyone on this board has been there

But really, start with a flat mix, get your levels and mix sounding the way you want, no EQ, no compression. Then once you have a decent mix, then understand how you want to make it better. Also, don't forget you can reduce a frequency in one channel/instrument to help another channel/instrument. Just don't always go for a fader increase/decrease. It can be simple if you just understand what it is you want to do.

Example, I can't hear the vocals, you think, do I have other instruments that sit there in that vocal range? What would happen if I take some EQ and remove out of another instrument that might be in the same space. That is just an example, but not everything is volume, lot more to it than that.

Hopefully it helps you to step back and think about it so you better understand what you want to do, then learn how/go, do it.

That's the stuff that I know intuitively from live sound, that I'm having to translate into recorded sound. I'm not working with the greatest source audio so my ear is screaming at me to fix everything, when I need to kind of accept that turds only stay polished until you switch hands holding it lol.

You should have heard our guitar player squeak when he watched me high-pass everything he sent me in one indignant swoop (he loves having low end in his "tone"). Like bro, I'm living proof that we have a bass player, calm your cheese. Then I sent him home to re-record all of his distorted parts without reverb, after he complained that it wasn't loud enough in the mix.

Thank god I had control over the drum tracking sessions, even though my room isn't ideal....

 

[Mr. ROUSH]

Personally, I think too much emphasis is being put on your room and your monitoring situation. I think it's possibly your technique that needs addressed first. People get great bass response mixing on headphones, soundbars, and in all kinds of inadequate monitoring situations. Now, don't crucify me for what I'm about to say. But, people need to forget all about headroom until the very end of the mix. If you're going through your mix and leveling elements based on that -12db on your master, then you might be deceived into thinking you need to set the level of certain elements lower than they actually need to be. You're much better off ignoring the levels and setting individual elements based on how they sound relative to the other elements in your mix. Once all of the elements sound balanced, THEN look at the level on your master. You can either pull the master fader down until you have the desired amount of headroom, or you can reduce the individual tracks as a group until you hit your target, same difference.

As for balancing your mix to allow for that nice low end, start by turning everything else down a bit. Make sure you're looking at the low end of all of the mid range, and even high range instruments. You'd be surprised how much low end information you can find on things like hi hats and snares. Filter that out with a shelf or a high pass. Consider filtering out the high end of your low frequency elements. In most cases, when people are struggling with the low end, it's more often an issue of frequency masking caused by different elements clashing with the low end elements, or multiple low end elements clashing with each other.

Once you have carved out space for your low end, consider adding some saturation and some parallel processing to it. In my experience, saturation has been the difference between a wimpy low end and a strong one in most cases. In a lot of hip hop music, where the kick drum is crucial, it is boosted until it clips to really punch through the mix. People will put a soft clipper on the master and just hammer the amplitude of their kicks. As long as you don't get unwanted distortion and it sounds good, you're good to go. Even though it's pegging at zero on the master, you will still be able to turn down the master at the end to allow for headroom. Try starting your mix with your kick and snare. Put a soft clipper on the master. Solo the kick. Turn up the amplitude of the sample at the earliest stage you can. If your kick is just recorded into a track on the playlist, add a gain plugin. Try to avoid cranking the level on your mixer in case you need to adjust it later. Anyway, get that thing knocking, and then turn the snare on and level it to the kick. Turn on any other low end elements, then the rest of your percussion, and finally the rest of the melodic elements, etc. Get the kick where you want it, and mix everything else to relative levels. Fine tune your EQ's at this point. Once everything sounds balanced, and the elements you want to emphasize are as present as you'd like, then turn your master down until you have the desired amount of headroom.

I think shooting for -12db is probably a bit excessive and likely having an impact on your mixing decisions. I would shoot for -6db to -3db. That's really more than enough, especially with the advent of 32 bit floating sync. If you export in 32 bit fs, even if your mix is in the red, you can open the stereo file in a new project, normalize it, and you will see that you still have headroom and dynamics for mastering.

Well, I hope this information was helpful. Forgive me if anything I mentioned was already said. I didn't read every response. Great topic!