Need some help.

[TheMusicBucket]

So I've been attempting to mix and master some songs in garageband. I'm pretty much just starting out at this but I've always been able to get good results with whatever I attempt in life through trial and error!

Well, so far I'm running into mostly errors, particularly when it comes to the quality of the exported files.

I can get stuff sounding really nice, clear, and full in garageband, but then when I export it to disk(either straight to itunes, or just to the harddrive, compressed or not) it sounds very quiet and muffled.

I've googled and found other people with this same issue, but none of the advice people have given has solved the problem.

How am I supposed to get better at this if what I mix isn't even close to what it'll sound like outside of garageband?

 

[Dogbreath]

I don't know anything about Garageband but maybe some of it's in your tracking.
How hot are you tracking? Tracking too hot (just below clipping) doesn't leave any headroom for later. Cool for the old analog days but not in digital. Let it breathe til its time to choke the shit outta it.
(I kid)

When you're mixing, do you hi pass tracks (cut the lows out of the instruments that don't have fundamental frequencies there)? I lo cut many tracks on every tune. Check out Glen's page http://www.independentrecording.net/irn/ for help on what the fundamental freqs are for a bunch of different instruments. "Interactive Frequency Chart".
Hi pass (lo cut) is pretty important to relieve the lo mid mud and brighten, liven up a mix.

Using compression? How much?

Mix with all the tracks goin? Not soloing tracks to make em sound good solo'd are ya? Ya don't care what the solo track sounds like. It's how it plays well with others that counts.

Is your room treated? If not, it really helps to hear what's actually goin on. If ya can't hear it right, ya can't mix it right.
Bass freqs tend to stomp the shit outta your trebly freqs. That skews your image of what you should tweak in the mix.

If not treated, burn a mix, put it in your truck, boom box, cheap piece of crap stereo and good sounding home stereo and take notes of everything you hear that's different from what you heard in your room. Bass, mids, pans whatever.
Take the notes back to your mixing station, tweak the mix according to your notes, burn another CD, take more notes, lather rinse repeat.
Then do it again.
And again.
Sooner or later, you'll figure out that this is a bullshit way to do it and just treat your room.

Not yankin your chain dude, you can learn alot about what's goin on with your room, the monitors the mix etc...by doing exactly that. Gotta learn how everything translates.

In reality, the number one thing that I would have taken care of first, if I had to start all over again would be...

Treat the room. Hands down.

Number 2 would have been....

Get the very best monitors I could afford, hawk off somethin to kick in to the fund to get a little better monitor.

3rd in line would be to get the best mics I could.

Everything else after that.

I know ya didn't ask for a book but I have a few minutes and a 6 pack in da fridge.

Hope somethin here helps man.

Kel

 

[TheMusicBucket]

Lots of questions XD!

I've tried most of those things. As far as headroom, all of the tracks have a ways to go before they are in the red. I've played with the filters but I don't know what many of the sliders mean so I usually just end up EQing out the frequencies that I dont want on each track to get an over-all cleaner sound. I play around with compression, but I don't want to strangle the dynamics too much. Plus I dont know what the sliders mean so I just have to go off of what my ears tell me .

I solo each track individually on the drums to listen to what other drums are bleeding through, then I play with the EQ to cut out the dominate frequencies(sounds fancy!) of said bleeding drums by ear. Then I balance/EQ/whatever with everything going. I only solo a track if I'm trying to isolate something I'm hearing.

The room is in my basement and is not treated. Its fairly large and has a concrete floor/walls/unfinished ceiling, we've tried various things such as draping blankets everywhere on the walls and stuff, and that helps deaden it without choking the sound. Honestly its gonna be a work in progress as far as learning more, adding here and there, but right now I'm very pleased with the sound I can actually get recorded into garageband, its just the exported files that sound dumpy...

I found a strange "solution" tonight. I imported the muffled garageband exported file into the free program Audacity. I EQ'd it to add back in some of the lost high in frequencies and I cut some of the low frequencies. I then used audacity's Normalize function, and its limiter effect. Not fine tuning anything, just going for it to see what it'd sound like.

Well, playing it back in Audacity it sounded miles better already. Richer sound, more brilliant highs, and alot more "thump" instead of "mud" from the bass, almost what it sounded like initially in garageband. Although the drums still sounded kind of burried, when I exported the mp3, it retained almost all of the sound it had when playing in Audacity!

I know garageband isn't "pro grade" software, but I would never have thought that Audacity would have a vastly superior file exporter.

Its a weird step though, and I feel like something just isn't adding up.

 

[Waltz Mastering]

So I've been attempting to <snip> master some songs in garageband.

These 2 words do not belong in the same sentence. Sorry, but it's true.

Don't put the cart before the horse. Getting your mixes to sound right would be a great start.

 

[TheMusicBucket]

These 2 words do not belong in the same sentence. Sorry, but it's true.

Don't put the cart before the horse. Getting your mixes to sound right would be a great start.

But until I fully utilize the tools I have and know their limitations from actual experience I can't justify buying more expensive things.

I realize garageband isn't the best program in the world, it came free with my imac, so I'm not expecting "pro grade" from it.

But I do wonder why the exported files sound so different than how it sounds in garageband itself, when audacity doesn't have this problem, I still have yet to find an answer to this question.

 

[Waltz Mastering]

But I do wonder why the exported files sound so different than how it sounds in garageband itself, when audacity doesn't have this problem, I still have yet to find an answer to this question.

To tell you the truth the only experience I have with Garageband is burning a cd of a guide track that my eight year old son recorded, to take to the studio so he could cut acoustic guitar and vocals.

What I found was if you "export" a file it will automatically export as an mp3. If you burn a cd it burns as a 16/44.1 wave..

So rather than export, burn a cd and see if that makes a difference.

Best.

 

[TheMusicBucket]

To tell you the truth the only experience I have with Garageband is burning a cd of a guide track that my eight year old son recorded, to take to the studio so he could cut acoustic guitar and vocals.

What I found was if you "export" a file it will automatically export as an mp3. If you burn a cd it burns as a 16/44.1 wave..

So rather than export, burn a cd and see if that makes a difference.

Best.

I'll give burning it directly to a CD from GB a shot...I don't think that lets you burn more than one song per CD but maybe if it retains the quality then I could just burn one song per CD, rip it to the computer, then re-burn them all to a single CD.

Ah the loopholes!

There are several ways to export it though. You can "send song to itunes" as either an AAC, mp3, or uncompressed file. Then you can also export song to disk with the same options. I've found exporting it as "uncompressed" is the only way to make it usable.

Life goes on.

 

[joeym]

From what I understand, you're EQ'ing a lot in the "mastering" process. Why?
If there are frequencies in the mix that aren't right, than try to get them right first time when tracking, before mixing down. "Mastering" will not help you with a faulty mix.

I also find it hard to believe you can do any sort of "mastering" in Garageband, except maybe throw a limiter and a compressor on the mix to make it somewhat louder and tighter. That can hardly be referred to as "mastering" though......

 

[TheMusicBucket]

From what I understand, you're EQ'ing a lot in the "mastering" process. Why?
If there are frequencies in the mix that aren't right, than try to get them right first time when tracking, before mixing down. "Mastering" will not help you with a faulty mix.

I also find it hard to believe you can do any sort of "mastering" in Garageband, except maybe throw a limiter and a compressor on the mix to make it somewhat louder and tighter. That can hardly be referred to as "mastering" though......

I try to do the least amount of EQing as possible.

The entire point of this post is to find an answer to this question: why do the exported files from Garageband sound noticeably different than they do when played in garageband? IS this a problem inherent to the program itself or is it user error?