Trying to mix metal track...

[Nightcrawler]

Hey guys! I've been researching this forums and other resources on the web for some time now and have solved some major problems with my mixes, but...
I still feel like i'm running in circles, especially as far as EQ'ing goes. So i need some help from really experienced guys regarding my last mixing attempt.
I am recording a song for my band and i was doing these basic steps:
1. guitar riffs are recorded 1 track per side with one more panned center, with low gain and all the EQ'ing on the amp so not to use track EQ. I did not scoop the mids, lowered low end to make room for bass.
2. i recorded the bass through line input and also without track EQ.
3. Drums come from Addictive Drums without any additional effects on the soft synth track.
4. Vocals recorded through tube preamp/compressor.

Now mixing. i was trying to get closer to the reference track which is Declaration Day by Iced Earth (yeah, i know we are not playing like iced earth in the first place, but still ) and i used the spectrum analyst plugin from Sonar. As you can see on the attached screen shot called Spectrum.jpg the upper is mine and the lower is the reference and they are pretty close.
I have done this by means of the linear EQ plugin and the screen shot is attached too.
Still the difference in sound is obvious. So i would really appreciate any advice that will help my mix sound better than total crap

 

[PoeticIntensity]

Guitars sound pretty good to me, to be honest. If anything, I'd add more bite to them. Make them hit me in the face... Timing on the guitars is awesome, too, but they sound a bit too subtle. Ain't nothing wrong with using track EQ. I'd EQ the rhythm guitars to have a bit more high-end.

The drums...... are horrible. The sound tinny and brittle. Get rid of them completely and start from scratch.

Vocals are okay, for the 5 seconds I heard them. Why did the song stop at like 30 seconds in?

 

[Nightcrawler]

Thanks for the advice, PoeticIntensity! i will be honest - the drums is something i did not focus on and it looks like Greek to me, that is why they sound so.... not good I guess now i have to take some time to sort it out a bit and again, dig through some dedicated threads on this forum...
as far as the song goes - the 30 seconds i have uploaded is pretty much what we have recorded so far and the rest of it still misses vocals and second guitar parts. I will definitely post more once i mix it together and once i try applying changes you pointed me to, i mean the high end on the rhythm guitars and playing around with drums.

Speaking of drums, currently i'm using Addictive drums and i pretty much apply all the effects (crunch, compressor and hall) within Addictive Drums and don't push anything on track. Is it where my mistake is? Or should I rather export the dry track from addictive drums and process them just like guitars and all?
Or maybe it is worth trying to go further and export like 4 tracks from AD: kick, snare, cymbals and toms and mix them within Sonar? Thanks again for your great help here!

 

[joeym]

Yes, definitely separate drum tracks. I always have 5 tracks: kick, snare, cymbals, hihat and toms and route them all onto a bus track. I tried AD a while back and didn't like it, especially the built-in effects. I wouldn't use those if I were you, just process the kit components on their own tracks or together on the bus track using other tools. There are better drum samplers out there like Battery, EZdrummer, Steven Slate Drums, to name a few.
Gúitars could be a bit better, like Poetic Intensity said. Learn to rely on your ears when you EQ, not just a spectral analyser. You can't just copy a pattern from a commercial CD, they are recorded with different situations to a home studio. The song seems to be pretty promising, although too short to be able to comment on it properly. So you're off to a good start.....

Joey

 

[PoeticIntensity]

Speaking of drums, currently i'm using Addictive drums and i pretty much apply all the effects (crunch, compressor and hall) within Addictive Drums and don't push anything on track. Is it where my mistake is? Or should I rather export the dry track from addictive drums and process them just like guitars and all?
Or maybe it is worth trying to go further and export like 4 tracks from AD: kick, snare, cymbals and toms and mix them within Sonar? Thanks again for your great help here!

Sorry, dude. I've never dealt with programmed drums on any level I'd consider professional. All my drums are acoustic, so.. No advice there.

Yes, definitely separate drum tracks. I always have 5 tracks: kick, snare, cymbals, hihat and toms and route them all onto a bus track. I tried AD a while back and didn't like it, especially the built-in effects. I wouldn't use those if I were you, just process the kit components on their own tracks or together on the bus track using other tools. There are better drum samplers out there like Battery, EZdrummer, Steven Slate Drums, to name a few.
Gúitars could be a bit better, like Poetic Intensity said. Learn to rely on your ears when you EQ, not just a spectral analyser. You can't just copy a pattern from a commercial CD, they are recorded with different situations to a home studio. The song seems to be pretty promising, although too short to be able to comment on it properly. So you're off to a good start.....

Joey

Joey, on the other hand, seems to have a pretty darn good handle on programming drums. I'd probably listen to his advice.

 

[rockonin]

The song sounds ok. The guitars sound too weak to for metal, you need to add more gain or distrortion to beef them up. The drums ruin the song. I use programmed drums and they do sound pretty bad but they have more life to them. I use Halion One and Groove Agent One that came with Cubase 5. Listen to my last song 'The Descent' and compare them.

Listen here:
http://www.soundclick.com/bands/page_songInfo.cfm?bandID=964012&songID=9465626

or watch and listen here

:

 

[FadeToMuffins]

Im going to listen to it right now, but just from reading your post I can mention that you should almost never have a rhythm track down the middle. When you are doing stops and breaks where the band wants to drop out and you want to go for effect, that's fine to have a center-panned rhythm track. But during full-instrumentation it should always be either 2 or 4 (or more if you want, as long as its an even number) rhythm tracks panned to the sides. if its 2, than its 100% L / 100% R. If its 4, then I usually go 100%L / 80%L / 80%R / 100%R.

The reason for that is that the center panned track is just going to muddy up all your other instruments that SHOULD be panned center, aka bass, snare, kick drum, main vox etc. The idea is to use the stereo field to your advantage.

Now im gonna listen to it and i'll give you some more feedback after.

after listen:

Definitely seperate your drum tracks. The 5 track suggestion above is fine, although I do mine a little differently: Kick, snare, tom1, tom2, tom3, tom..., and then an overhead track. When I record accoustic drums my overheads are usually two track (OHL and OHR), one for each mic.

Then what I do is I set up an extra track (or a bus, if you will) and set it up so it receives the toms and the snare. Then I place a compressor on it with a high ratio (8:1) really fast attack (2 - 5 ms) and a slowish release (75 - 150 ms, depending on the pace of the song). What this track does is helps add fullness to your drums by boosting the volume of the drum transients and decay, without boosting the sound of the initial attack of the stick hitting the head (typically, that is the loudest part of any drum track). This helps you boost the volume of the drums while preventing the peaks from the initial hits from limiting track volume. This is called parallel bus compression. You may want to play around with the attack settings on the compressor and figure out what works best with your particular drum tracks.

Here is one of my tracks that has programmed drums. I split up the tracks the way I outlined above, created the bus, and then mixed in reverb for taste. They sound a little washy, but I was going for that Fredrick Nordstrom (Arch Enemy, old In flames, at the gates) wall of sound old school metal atmosphere with them.

http://www.lightningmp3.com/live/file.php?id=24596

(Any of you experts out there on parallel bus compression feel free to correct any of what I just said...it's early morning and my brain is not operating at full capacity yet).

You're guitars also sound thin. I would suggest going with the 4 track approach I mentioned earlier. Other than that, the vocals sound good, and the bass is there. I would say boost around 1000hz for the bass, since it lacks a little presence.

 

[kcearl]

Yeah spend time on the drums...thats always the thing to do that many dont bother with...Ive heard Addictive and the samples are good but they do need sent out to separate tracks which is pretty easy, you do it at the bottom of each track in the mixer panel on most


take all the effects off...dont use the presets like 90s rock drums etc...just use the dry kits and add your own reverb, compression etc

I sometimes find with superior drums that even when Ive treated each drum that the kick still misses a little "boom" and this is what I do (though im sure the rockers here will find it sacrilege)

download the free club kick samples from here http://www.wavealchemy.co.uk/free-samples and layer a kick under your acoustic samples to add some sub...EQ the acoustic kick to have a bit of punch..it will also bring out the kick on smaller speakers when it sometimes disappears

I mainly post electronic stuff here but I record a lot of acoustic/rockier stuff at home and this method beefs the kit right up when the samples are weak

 

[FoulPhil]

It sounds weak and poorly mixed. There isn't enough of the song to get an idea if it's going anywhere. You sometimes have to do A LOT of experimenting before you can get the guitars to sound how you want them to. First you have to know what your sound is and how to get it. I do a lot of metal myself and it's not easy, but I understand how to achieve the sound for the music style I play.

The song is nothing without decent drums. Even if you can get the best guitar sound in the world, the drums will kill it. So, as you experiment with creating different sounds you should also be arranging your drums around the music. They need to be impressive so when people hear it they can enjoy it.

Same with the vocals, they sound good, but recorded poorly or mixed poorly. You can learn these things quickly by just doing it all the time. You can't expect your song to be HUGE if you don't take the time to make every "sound", sound AMAZING. So, you have to focus and study to be able to get these sounds you're looking for.

 

[Nightcrawler]

Wow! the songs you guys posted here really made me feel and hear the difference... it is a long way to go for me so i will take like a couple of weeks to try different suggestions and then i hope to post something better sounding here.
Right now i figured my priorities are
1. Drums
2. Guitars
3. Vocals
I will definitely separate drums tracks and experiment with those, but as far as the guitars go, i have a couple of questions:
1. i gather i will have my band record an additional rhythm guitar track, right?
2. will panning and playing around with EQ on the hi mids and hi end be of any help there? i mean, to add some bite and punch - words with thousand different meaning to thousand different people...

 

[joeym]

Wow! the songs you guys posted here really made me feel and hear the difference... it is a long way to go for me so i will take like a couple of weeks to try different suggestions and then i hope to post something better sounding here.
Right now i figured my priorities are
1. Drums
2. Guitars
3. Vocals
I will definitely separate drums tracks and experiment with those, but as far as the guitars go, i have a couple of questions:
1. i gather i will have my band record an additional rhythm guitar track, right?
2. will panning and playing around with EQ on the hi mids and hi end be of any help there? i mean, to add some bite and punch - words with thousand different meaning to thousand different people...

yes....depending on whether the mix needs better panning and better EQing, the way the guitars sit in the mix in relation to the other instruments, voices etc.

 

[TripleM]

Not much to add to what's been said. The guitars and (what I can hear from) the vocal sound pretty good.

Drums sound like they're down the street. I don't think your samples are going to cut it. The snare is particularly weak. Programming is a bit robotic.

 

[Nightcrawler]

Hey! I'm back
here is what i have done according to the recommendations that i received previously:
1. I have removed the guitar track from center and added 4th track, so now it is 2 tracks per side on rhythm guitars (100%L, 80%L, 80%R, 100%R)
2. I added some treble boost to guitars but not much so not to make them too "sandy"
3. I took dry tracks from Addictive drums: kick, snare, toms, hihat, 1 stereo overhead and room. Then i EQ'ed kick, added boost around 5k and 10k to bring out the click at least a little bit, then i added 2 compressors as parallel AUX send busses: one slow and one fast and mixed them.
Similar stuff with the snare, but with only one parallel comp bus. Then i added a low cut to overheads and compressed them using snare as sidechain to even out the cymbals and remove snare a bit from there. And finally i used Bootsie Density MK II on the Drums bus with a preset called "drums density" )
I was not sure how to process room so i just left it there in the final mix.
And i did not use any reverb on drums at all. If i should have - please advise me on that.
Do you hear any improvement?