(no subject)

[shermarama]

This mixing malarkey is really starting to get to me. I know an awful lot more about it now than I did this time three weeks ago, but I'm still not getting final results as good as I'd like.

I can now get mixes that sound pretty exciting, this is cool. It's taken a lot of fiddling to work out what to do with the vocal reverb so that the vocals sit *in* the song, sound like they're part of it, but I think I've got that. The mixes I have at that stage, though, then need generally boosting in volume and a sort of finishing tweak. I was working on the idea of getting the vocals to sit in and then finally bring them back out a little more with the mastering stage. For mastering I'm messing around with a four-band compressor and a nice EQ thingy and these seem to make sense, do something useful while setting up and considering the changes they make, but no matter how minor and subtly augmenting these changes seem at the time, by the time I've got the final version exported and on my main sound system it sounds like I've killed it. I don't know what I'm doing wrong.

The problem seems to me to be not least with getting the final volume up. People complain if the track is slightly quieter than the last song they listened to, but if you amplify into the realms of limiting, it sounds dead because the dynamic range has just been shot. I understand that loudness is the standard, I was complaining this time a year ago that all the money we'd paid for mixing and mastering on the SON demo had produced only a limp quiet thing, but knowing any of this still doesn't bring a solution. At least this time I'm not paying thirty quid a track for someone else to fuck it up, but what would be ideal would be working out how to not fuck it up myself.

Comments

[editor.livejournal.com]

If your mix sounds dead, try an HF exciter?

As for loudness, dunno what system you're using, but I find the RMS normaliser in Sound Forge ideal for getting the volume up without audibly sacrificing quality.

[shermarama]

When I start with what I think is the final stage, the mix sounds fine. Upping the high frequencies brings up the cymbals more than the vocals and starts drowning them.

[editor.livejournal.com]

Not an EQ - an exciter. I use iZotope Ozone, but it sounds like you're not using a PC for your mastering...?

[shermarama]

Will that get the vocals and not the cymbals? How frequency-specific is it, as it were?

And I'm using an IBM laptop, with a spec substantially below what the soundcard thinks is its minimum, which has done everything I've asked it to so far. I think the spec would only be a problem if it were generating lots of tracks rather than playing recorded audio. And it's handy for running around the house with, listening to mixes on different stereo set-ups for comparison.

[editor.livejournal.com]

The effect of an exciter is quite hard to describe (and very easy to overuse). It might be worth trying the exciter on the vocal track only, at least as an experiment.

I suggest you get on KaZaA and download Ozone. Just to try it out, naturally.

I have one word for you...

[mzdt.livejournal.com]

compression.

Re: I have one word for you...

[shermarama]

I have three for you: read the post.

It sounds pretty good *until* I put a multiband compressor on it at the end. I'm beginning to think I don't need to bother with that as it kills it; the only reason I'm trying it is because people keep telling me I should!

[rgl.livejournal.com]

I have been told that you want to do as much compression as possible at the mixing stage, so that when it comes to mastering what you're doing is closer to limiting than compression. The most professional mixing experience I've ever seen was: a compressor on the vocals, a multiband compressor on the bass, a compressor on each drum mic, a compressor on the whole drum submix, and then a final compression on the whole thing (which may have been multiband as well, not sure) as it was being burned to CD. Then we took the CD to be mastered, when it had EQ and multiband limiting.

[rgl.livejournal.com]

Actually, there may not have been a separate compressor on every drum mic, but definitely on snare and kick.

[shermarama]

Right, I might assume I don't need any more compression at the mastering stage, then, and stop trying to add it on just because everyone seems to think I should.

As it stands I have compression on the vocals, on the kick and snare (and the only drum mics apart from that were the overheads, which I don't think need it) which leaves only the guitar and bass. The guitar was on distorted sound the whole time so the signal level is ludicrously flat already and a compressor wouldn't do anything. The only thing it might be worth doing something with is the bass, perhaps, so I might try setting only the bass section going on the multiband compressor.

[rgl.livejournal.com]

I was talking to someone about mastering at the weekend, and he said that he took a multiband compressor, used only the bottom few bands (the high frequencies need to come through to be detailed), and switched it onto "hard knee" so that it was basically a limiter. But then again, most studios will give you a CD which has had whole-mix compression on it before you take it to the mastering studio.

The only other thing is that you could send the output of the compressed kick and snare, plus the overhead mics, through to a separate buss and then compress that.

However, I've never actually tried any of this, merely watched other people, which is nothing like the same.

[shermarama]

I'm not having a problem with compression on the drums; basically, I'm not having a problem with anything except getting the vocals back up and out a bit and getting the whole thing loud enough without killing it stone dead with all the compression...

Useful idea about using only the bottom bands, though, that would seem to be the only area that's benefitting from it at this point. I'll have a fidget with that, ta!

('Most studios' is what I'm trying to avoid, anyway; 'most studios' is where I've paid lots of money for someone to do all the standard things they do, and have it sound rubbish.)

(The fact that I am a stubborn bastard and demand to see *results* and *why* things are done means it really is better that I get this all out here and get to understand how to do it for myself, I think, though I'm going to be a right royal pain in the arse if I do end up in a 'most studios' kind of place again.)

[editor.livejournal.com]

This makes sense. If you don't compress your drums until the final mix, you run a grave risk of ending up with Call on Me by Eric Prydz.

[shermarama]

I'm aware of all the warnings about letting drummers in the control room, thankyou...

[christhomas123.livejournal.com]

Yeah, compress little and often at every stage you can.

And then compress and stick lots of limiting on the master mix.

What may be helpful is to open up a WAV file of the mix in something like Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/) which will show you where the big peaks are that you could remove...

[shermarama]

There aren't any particularly huge peaks, on account of me having got the hang of mixing now. I'm beginning to think that you know, maybe my ears are right and the last stage of compression is mostly superfluous in this case.

[christhomas123.livejournal.com]

If there are no peaks, then it's odd why it's coming out so quiet.

Personally, I apply compression and limiting on the master mix to get the loudness coming through.

Only trying to help - not trying to sell you to Simon Cowell. ;o)

[shermarama]

It's all appreciated, honest, it's all making me think about it.

There's not *no* peaks, I mean, but I don't think any of them are problematically loud compared to RMS, like. With a limiter I can get it fairly loud with minimal clipping; it's just that when I do it's a bit dead. In cases where this has happened, though, I've been doing the last stages of compression and then limiting in one. I was suspecting the limiting but that doesn't make much sense, as you say, but I think rgl might have an idea with the compressor maybe only needed on the lower end. More Quadcomp fiddling ahoy.

[christhomas123.livejournal.com]

Absolutely. The bottom end is where all the power is and can totally lay waste to everything.

Hello Sherm

[(Anonymous)]

Hi it's Dave here (your personal tour guide for the Perivale area). Tell you a couple of things that worked for me doing home recording with live drums into the computer. Firstly, when you you want to boost everything up to as loud as it will go without peaking a "Normalize" feature in Soundforge does the job really well. You can set how many decibels you want it to peak at (I usually pick -2db or 0db depending on the type of music). Good thing about the SoundForge feature is it allows you to push beyond 0db if you have a track that is recorded just a little quieter than the others. Now any sound engineer here is going to jump down my throat at this point, but providing you haven't got anything in the mix that suddenly jumps up 2/3db in the middle of the song you will get away with it without losing any sound quality. Other pieces of software like Cubase have a "Normalize" feature but I have found that the SoundForge one appears to, ahem, "Normalize" more properly in terms of boosting the level.

With your vocal problem ... If I may ask you to consider another perspective ... It could be the frequencies that are the problem. Countless times I have encountered the scenario where you have a great vocal level and muted the music sounds right but mix the two together and the vocal gets lost. You turn it up and it is too loud and down and it gets lost even more. Normally this is because the vocal is competing on the same frequencies as the guitar in the same octave. So essentially the distorted guitar is getting through and the vocal gets swallowed. There are two answers to this ... ha ha, get your singer to sing different notes, only joking, what you have to do is use the EQ here. Turn the volume on the EQ up to it's max and then adjust the pitch EQ down until the vocal sounds crap and you find all the horrid growly bits. Stop at that point and turn the volume EQ down to below it's tarting point. Now you have essentially killed the nastiness, you can do the same in reverse to treble it up slightly, which I have found normally brings it alive a little. Frequencies do vary with singers though. I should say that with Jodie pulling the bass out a little in this manner will work. Finally a little off center pan if you have two vocal tracks can work wonders.

Apologies if you have considered all this anyway but most of the posts above seem to be trying to find the answers with compression and I don't think that is the problem in your case from what you have said.

Hope this helps, and looking forward to catching you live again soon.

hatful_of_hollow@onetel.com