Lots of opinions and pointers needed!!

[DFMJoe]

check this out..

the quality is a lil lower than it would be cuz its an mp3

rip it apart.. thanks

 

[Blue Bear Sound]

oh my......

Where to start... this is a muddy, buzzy, murky mess!

There's no definition or clarity to ANY of the tracks, the guitar tone is like bees buzzing (not good), and there's no sense of space around a single mix element -- it's all simply kinda lumped together like a big jelly salad.

You need to brush-up on the basics of recording/mixing skills....

This ARTICLE may give you some pointers, but I strongly suggest you pick up one or more of the following books and start learning:

Huber & Runstein - Modern Recording Techniques
Total Recording - Dave Moulton
The Mixing Engineer's Handbook - Bobby Owsinski
The Art of Mixing - David Gibson

 

[DFMJoe]

The sad thing is.. I've read a couple of those, and tons of articles on the subject, and it still doesn't help. This is what we have to work with...

mr8
1 MCA Sp1 condenser mic
5 sm57 drum mics
10 channel peavey mixer
all guitars run through digitech effects

and for as bad as our drums sound.. we have a sonor force 3000 kit.. I think.. whichever is sonor's latest kit.

I play carvin guitars, our other guitarists play ibanez and epiphone, and the bassist plays fender.

I've recorded other stuff on an AKAI dps12 and had GREAT results. I've been recording for a good while.. prolly at least 2 years, and nothing I've ever done has ever sounded THIS bad. I'm not a profressional. But I have some stuff in a different style that I'm at least not ashamed of people hearing.

Basically if I could determine whether it was the way it was recorded... or the mixing.. it would help alot.

 

[DFMJoe]

its so sad when ur the opposite of what people expect.. usually the band doesn't sound as good as the cd.. in our case.. we sound better live..lol

 

[gospel]

DFMJoe,
I don't know if this is the case because I haven't even listened to it yet (can't at work, no speakers on pc), but our last in studio project did not sound as good as we are. When messing around with the MR-8 at home to get a decent recording of out group I realized what was the problem with the studio project and how to mix us on the MR-8 and n-track to get a better sound. The problem was over processing. Too much reverb, too much eq, too much everything. Besides concentrating on getting the best recording and then messing with it as little as possible. This may help, but if it doesn't no big deal.

 

[muttley]

Is the Peavey an older unit? Some of them that were built in the 80's were dull/dark sounding.


da MUTT

 

[Blue Bear Sound]

The sad thing is.. I've read a couple of those, and tons of articles on the subject, and it still doesn't help.

The problems I heard in that mix all go back to paying close attention to tracking.... getting the sound you want from the source onto "tape"..... that's half the battle right there!

Look at the guitars for example -- why are they so buzzy and toneless? That's not mixing that did that - it was lack of attention at the tracking stage. BTW - amp tone that works on stage generally doesn't work in the studio.

You have to pay attention to the sound source you're trying to record -- mic placement, mic choice, tone of the source, the room you record in -- all this needs to be factored in. Going back to the buzzy guitars -- why didn't you hear it in the control room as you tracked it? This all points to a lack of understanding of the importance of the fundamental engineering techniques.

And there's no other way for you to learn by reading about proepr techniques, and then practicing them.... spend an afternoon with a guitarist and work on emulating the sound on a commercial CD -- see if you can come close to capturing a similar sound -- little exercises like that will give you valuable practical experience.

 

[DFMJoe]

Thanks!! I really love this forum.. so many people willing to help.

I've already decided today that we are going to do nothing but mess with levels, settings and just do some trial and error to get a good sound.

The sound we are going for on our guitars is that of pretty much any commercial emo band, namely finch, senses fail, from autumn to ashes, taking back sunday.. etc.

We record the guitars direct running through a Digitech rp200
if u have any specific things we should do when recording the guitars to make them better.. please let me know.

and the drums... are a major problem

 

[Bigsnake00]

joe ...
are you recording this one track at a time.....or is it all live....as for your guitars...take the digitech thing and throw it away...a Line 6 POD is the only way to go for direct guitar recording...wait behringer also makes a fine unit...i would agree with bear...grab a disc and spend some time breaking it down, trying to reproduce what you are hearing....i used taking back sunday's dont tell your friends to get my guitar tone....either way take it one track at a time bud

b

 

[Enrique]

What and how many mics are you using for the drums? You can barely make out the drums over the guitar. Also, how are your mics placed when recording the drums? If you are recording this live, the problem could be the bleeding of each instrument. Again, try experimenting with EQ and everything else, and try to focus in on mic placement, especially with the drums. If you need any help with it, let me know.

 

[DFMJoe]

Drums...

shure drum mics..

1 on the snare
1 on the kick
2 over head

all except the snare running into a peavey mixer, the snare is going directly into the mr-8 on a different track.