i need help to get a standart sound in my recordings a bit of help please

R

riseowfind

New member
Hey Folks, im Sergio from Bolivia i mostly speak spanish so im sorry my bad grammar and my lack of expression on english, i would like to thanks to any that would take his time and read my topic, well I search up the forums but didin't find anything related to my problem, if some one has a topic about it please show me, so i can close this one.

Well i started 2 weeks ago with recording experiments im a totally newb about mixing and mastering and im learning, i bought the focusrite 2i2 scarlett USB interface Pre Amp and a mic AT-2020 i like how they sound, the preamp is a beauty and the mic too, all those connected to a Toshiba 505 A satellite the 2i2 came with a ableton live lite version wich i use for record, Well what im looking for is to get a standart industry sound that have nice presence, ok so in ableton live i recorded every instrument track in track and mix them later, i get all the recordings at the most of volumen i could without clippin, the voice, the piano and everything.

By the way for transform every mono signal to stereo i use the tecnhique of: duplicate track then, for each channel put ALL THE way Left 50L and for the other duplicated channel i put 50R and the right one i delay from 0.00 to 12.00 so it gets more loud and appreciable and reensampling so i get the stereo this way from mono.

So when i finish doing this to all tracks then i export in .wav and the sound is as High as i wanted, it needs more body and louder but i dont want to modify to much the sound, when i compare my song to anothers, there is a difference the others got more body and not becouse of the bass that gives the song that, i mean the presence of all its more envolvent, its louder in the rest of the songs.

well here is a video of the song i recorded recently.

search in youtube for -- > EL LADO CANSADO - RISING <- i tried to put the url but forums doesnt allow me since i need to make 10 posts or more :(
my youtube channel: ElLadoCansado

For the last i would like to thanks a lot if any of you guys can help me to fix this kind of issue im having. or give me tips for recording or if the tecnhique im using its not the most appropiate im open to learn becouse i really wanna do this.

and probably im being a bit impertinent and rrelevant on my post if im going that way im sorry.
 
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I'll try to keep my response as easy to read as possible. Your English is really good anyway. By presence or body your saying your music needs more strength not volume. There are many ways of achieving this, but the real question we would all need to know from you before we can really help is:

What are you using for monitor speakers (headphones are not going to help you achieve want you want either)

are you mixing in an acoustically treated room

what type of music are you recording, MIDI or acoustical instruments

do you use compression, equalizer, or anything in mixdown

Just recording and putting a sound in stereo will not make your sound have more presence, it will just widen the sound. Monitors will help you hear your sound better (and not computer speakers, real studio nearfield monitors), acoustic treatments will help balance the sound to make mixing easier, many techniques are used for recording different types of instruments and this is why knowing if your using MIDI or miking instruments matters, and finally using compression and EQ alone will help your sound much more if you are using them correctly. Hope this helps, and good luck!
 
Thanks a lot for the Reply, yes i refered presence or body as strenght !, i dont use monitors i use the headphones shure smk440 due to my small budget, and monitors kind of expensive for me at this moment but if its really neccesarry i will save up, my room is not acoustically treated room, so i found that problem and you are right i have to work on this, i just record acoustical instruments i dont like using mid, and i didint use compression or qualizer or anything else in the mixdown becouse i tough it makes sound nicer but weaker, and thanks i think i have loads of things to do for get a better sound, i wanst not considerating at all that physical matter of acoustic treatment and also the monitors, thanks a lot for your time i will start working on this you help me a lot alredy !
 
Good to hear. As for recording in your bathroom, I don't recommend that at all. You will add more problems with reverberation that may make your recording worse. A friend of mine would record in his closet with all of his clothes around him, this isn't the best idea but its better than a bathroom. If you can put the mic in a more absorbent area, than a reflective area, that would be ideal for stopping harmonic distortion, phase, and unwanted reverb characteristics in your vocal. Its just an idea, but try many things, you need to experiment.
 
First of all, none of this discussion has anything to do with Mastering. These are all basic recording and mixing issues. We're so far away from needing to talk about Mastering at this point.
riseowfind said:
i get all the recordings at the most of volumen i could without clippin
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You shouldn't do that. If you're recording digitally, you shouldn't be going anywhere near clipping. Your peaks should be at about -6db and even way lower than that.

By the way for transform every mono signal to stereo i use the tecnhique of: duplicate track then, for each channel put ALL THE way Left 50L and for the other duplicated channel i put 50R and the right one i delay from 0.00 to 12.00 so it gets more loud and appreciable and reensampling so i get the stereo this way from mono.
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You're not creating stereo. All you're doing is the same as adding a delay to asignal and panning it. It's a horrible technique and is probably doing nothing but crowding your mix. Leave mono instruments mono. If you want a "stereo" vocal or guitar track, then record twice, don't Copy/Paste/shift.

I'm only going to touch on those 2 points, but there is so much that can be addressed in this post.

For example, you're getting confused between "volume" and "power". The songs that you're comparing your songs to are louder because they have been mastered. This is not something you should be trying to achieve during mixing. Mix so that you're mixes are peaking at -6db or lower and turn up your monitors.

When your song is ready for mastering, that's where you can use limiters and/or compressors to bring up the overall volume.



(I know that when I say "shoot for -6db", the more experienced people here are probably saying even that's too high. But I know that even -6db will freakout a newb, so I certainly don't want to drive them away by saying that I track at -12db or lower)
 
RAMI said:
You're not creating stereo. All you're doing is the same as adding a delay to asignal and panning it. It's a horrible technique and is probably doing nothing but crowding your mix. Leave mono instruments mono. If you want a "stereo" vocal or guitar track, then record twice, don't Copy/Paste/shift.
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I think it's even worse than that, isn't it RAMI? What he is describing to me is a recipe for phase disaster that is almost a recipe for thin washed out tracks - depending on the amount of delay used...
 
You definitely should not be duplicating tracks or using any reverbs in that manner. I forgot to touch on that issue.
 
i see now, thanks a lot RAMI apoczen211 and chuckduffy, sorry for post this topic in the wrong place, and thanks for your time for reading it and asnwering i just take note of everything you wrote, and i will try my best to follow yours tips, thanks a lot for the help and show me that i was wrong on my ways of recording, i truly appreciate your help becouse now i can see more clear that i was really wrong, and this is not even mastering, it's something really basic.
 
riseowfind said:
i see now, thanks a lot RAMI apoczen211 and chuckduffy, sorry for post this topic in the wrong place, and thanks for your time for reading it and asnwering i just take note of everything you wrote, and i will try my best to follow yours tips, thanks a lot for the help and show me that i was wrong on my ways of recording, i truly appreciate your help becouse now i can see more clear that i was really wrong, and this is not even mastering, it's something really basic.
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There's nothing wrong with doing things wrong, that's how you learn. I appreciate that yo're gracious with the advice given, that doesn't always happen :).

Doesn't matter if we're in the wrong forum. Either a moderator will move it, or we can just continue to have our discussion, as long as it's understood we're not talking about mastering. :cool:

As far as treating mono instruments as mono instruments (vocals, guitar, closed mic'ed drums,etc.....), instead of trying to get them to fill the whole audio spectrum by making them "stereo", use the fact that they're mono to create a canvas, the same way a painter would. Pan a guitar a little to the left, pan the other one a little to the right....just examples. If you want something like a rythm guitar to be "stereo", or at least to take up a lot of room, then record the same part twice and pan each of them wide. These are just examples what you CAN do, but it all depends on what you think each particular song needs.
 
i get all the recordings at the most of volumen i could without clippin, the voice, the piano and everything.
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As mentioned earlier, that's your first (gigantic, IMO) mistake. -6dBFS peaks was mentioned in there somewhere - Personally, I'm a bigger fan of (if I had to give it a number) never going over -12dBFS (which is half the voltage of -6dBFS) and being closer to sustained levels of -24 to -20dBFS. More accurately, I try to peak "somewhere above" -20dBFS and stay as close as I can to that except for classical -- There, I'll tell the tympanist to smack it like he just found it cheating with his girlfriend and make that peak around -16dBFS or so (in which case, an aggressive recording may peak in the -12dBFS-ish area occasionally).

Now after all that has been said --

Keep in mind here that you've been at this for "a few weeks" -- It can take years - and years - and years to even start making "standard quality" (assuming you're talking about a typical off-the-shelf, professionally recorded album or something). And that's *IF* you actually have - and actually develop the necessary technical and listening skills needed. I know people who have been at this for decades and have quite decent gear that can hardly make a reasonably listenable recording.
 
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