FALKEN
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ok at the risk of sounding like a total dumbass in this case it is probably wise to be humble. I mixed 10 songs for my bands demo (about 4 takes per song) from tape, through my el cheapo old broke ass mixer, to my pc, and transferred them to my laptop to master on vacation. so on the plane ride out I picked the best take of each song, and I am basically just going to limit them to where they sound pretty good (adding about 6 db, for an RMS of say -14 to -12 depending on the material). like I said its a demo. here is my problem, any help would be greatly, greatly appreciated.
my mixer's main bus is broke. so is the sub out. Its a 16 fader inline mixer that I bought for $300, that was probably gigged with for like 10 years. when I say broke, everything works, but there are some noisy pots and the biggest problem is that the L and R busses are not the same volume. the L bus is a little weak...maybe 1.5 db lower. I don't know why but Ive been trying to work with it. what I was doing was playing something in mono, center track, through the main bus into the PC, and adjusting the L fader up until the peaks are coming out equal. then I don't touch the mains at all during mixdown. it was working pretty good.
then when I went to pick out the best "takes" of the mix, I noticed that I must have fugged up at some point. most of the takes are all out of whack. so I have been trying to bring them back into balance. I have tried a few different things but nothing seems to work. at least, there is no way I can be sure its working!! Here is what I have tried so far:
-Normalizing the L and R channels separately so that they both peak at 0db. this should work if the peak value is a snare or vocal hit, which were both panned center. unfortunately, its not a perfect world and this doesn't seem to work exactly perfectly, as both channels are peaking at different times, for whatever reason - there are probably many.
-knowing this might happen, I recorded some mono stuff into a spare file, just bass drum and snare. on that file, If I boost the left track .85 dB, they come out peaking exactly equally. unfortuanetly, this also doesn't work on every song.
-taking the difference in RMS of each side and adding it to the left side, so that both sides are same RMS. this doesn't seem to work either.
even at parts of the mix where everything cuts out and all you hear is a couple snare hits, the difference between the left and right channel is not always the same. this I can't explain.
there are 2 possible things that might be causing my headache:
-one is that the rhythm tracks were tracked live so the bass might be more on one side of the overheads, which are hard panned, causing a difference between RMS relative to peak
-two is that the ride is on the right, the hats are on the left, and depending on the drummers choice, this could create a natural difference between sides that my formulas are not taking into account.
I realize that this is a "home" recording problem in the truest sense. most pros that are reading this are probably saying "what a fucking idiot" but this is life and its a demo and I gotta finish it and hopefully I'll learn something.
Thanks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
my mixer's main bus is broke. so is the sub out. Its a 16 fader inline mixer that I bought for $300, that was probably gigged with for like 10 years. when I say broke, everything works, but there are some noisy pots and the biggest problem is that the L and R busses are not the same volume. the L bus is a little weak...maybe 1.5 db lower. I don't know why but Ive been trying to work with it. what I was doing was playing something in mono, center track, through the main bus into the PC, and adjusting the L fader up until the peaks are coming out equal. then I don't touch the mains at all during mixdown. it was working pretty good.
then when I went to pick out the best "takes" of the mix, I noticed that I must have fugged up at some point. most of the takes are all out of whack. so I have been trying to bring them back into balance. I have tried a few different things but nothing seems to work. at least, there is no way I can be sure its working!! Here is what I have tried so far:
-Normalizing the L and R channels separately so that they both peak at 0db. this should work if the peak value is a snare or vocal hit, which were both panned center. unfortunately, its not a perfect world and this doesn't seem to work exactly perfectly, as both channels are peaking at different times, for whatever reason - there are probably many.
-knowing this might happen, I recorded some mono stuff into a spare file, just bass drum and snare. on that file, If I boost the left track .85 dB, they come out peaking exactly equally. unfortuanetly, this also doesn't work on every song.
-taking the difference in RMS of each side and adding it to the left side, so that both sides are same RMS. this doesn't seem to work either.
even at parts of the mix where everything cuts out and all you hear is a couple snare hits, the difference between the left and right channel is not always the same. this I can't explain.
there are 2 possible things that might be causing my headache:
-one is that the rhythm tracks were tracked live so the bass might be more on one side of the overheads, which are hard panned, causing a difference between RMS relative to peak
-two is that the ride is on the right, the hats are on the left, and depending on the drummers choice, this could create a natural difference between sides that my formulas are not taking into account.
I realize that this is a "home" recording problem in the truest sense. most pros that are reading this are probably saying "what a fucking idiot" but this is life and its a demo and I gotta finish it and hopefully I'll learn something.
Thanks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
