Making overall mix sound warmer

  • Thread starter Thread starter lttoler
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lttoler

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Right now I'm using Reaper and a Line 6 Toneport UX2 to record with. I also use an AT4040 mic for vocals. I'm pretty happy with all my projects, but they usually sound "sterile" to my ears. Is there anything, maybe a VST, that can make my overall mix, or maybe even seperate tracks, sound warmer???
 
Try using ReaEQ on your master FX and give your mix some bass. I think people often relate warmth to bass but without realizing it. Just my opinion and proposition. Maybe that will make your tracks sound a little better. Sterile is a word often associated with a boosted high end. So try and compensate maybe for that sterile sound. EQ out the high end or boost the low end. Fiddle with it, I'm sure you can get something that youll like. Good luck, Erockrazor:)
 
Try using ReaEQ on your master FX and give your mix some bass. I think people often relate warmth to bass but without realizing it.
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it is important to note that too much bass is inherent in many home mixes---- low frequency and sub-harmonic buildup makes a recording sound muddy and dull, can produce strange distortions by drastically reducing headroom (even if you cant hear the offending frequencies), and generally just sounds like ass.

i will go out on a limb and say that 95% of the time, adding low frequencies is NOT going to warm up a mix.

FWIW, and YMMV.

midrange, OTOH, can really open up a recording. again, a lot of home mixes seem to celebrate the smiley-faced eq curve, whether intentional or not. not enough mids sounds distant and muddy, like a blanket over the monitors. i would try CUTTING low end and perhaps even implementing a high pass filter around 30hz.

of course, "warmth" is a very subjective thing, and could be attributed to many things--- mic/pre colorations or inadequacies, distortions and compression, saturation, etc, etc. lots of lower end mic/pre combinations are extraordinarily "sterile" sounding to my ears when recorded flat and dry.

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It's kinda old these days but I have always had good luck with psp vintage warmer. Bit of a cpu hog but not much of a prob as master effect.
 
I always here stuff like "too perfect", "too clean", "too sterile", but they never seem to actually fit the tracks theyre ascribed to..like the poster above said, its probably a bass or low mids thing
 
i'm curious how to boost the low and mids without boosting the mud. i've been noticing in some of my favourite old albums, a certain sound where it's almost like you don't hear the lows so much as you feel them when you should. does one submix the bass with the bass drum...?? say... give them separate eqs first that cut around each other - ie. bass drum gets 70-90 hz and pull the bass guitar back a bit in those frequences, then make a spot the other way around...pull 120 hz on the bdrum and give it to the bassguitar... then group these two together and continue the eq together... i shall have to see.
 
Maybe run the final 2-mix out through some iron and back into the computer?
 
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