Message 20/21
Date: 29-Mar-02 @ 07:22 AM -
RE: Muddy mixing
I read a couple of books but they were only good for pointing the direction to go in.
"The mix Engineer's Handbook" Bob Owsinski.
It gooes into interview and techniqes as well as theory..The song is a 3D thing "tall deep and wide".
But the is every mixer is diferant. I can run hoter in Reason and still not get overs than in VST, but in VST I get much more detail and imaging. What I have discovered over the last few years has all come together in the last two weeks of mixing a new track many ways....and the lesson was that head room was the most important thing. Not trying to go loud with it but making it sound good and clean with plenty of room left on the levels leaving space to hear the top end and reverb.
Also eq on te reverb made a ton of diference. Solo it and use a high pass filter or eq til it is nice and shimmery. Then mix that under until the mix shines. Balance is the key. And don't send everything to the reverb either. Keep some things dry and other wet especially if they are tonally similar. Use reverb to creat stereo effect on things that are mono by panning the reverb or delay the other way from which you pan the dry signal.
Nothing should stick out too much but it should all sound good at low level listening and then go loud with it to make sure it is balanced.
Also turn up the bass and high shelve on your mixers eq with the volume up to expose and trouble frequencies. I learned this hard way. I mix a track then when I tried to maximise it in wavelabe it would crackle when the high hat;s hit or some other high frequency. Some of those tambory and snares have a lot of noise and crackle in the attack that clip the mix when played on system ith eq boosted.
Home mastering for demos- Best success is mixing like I said, not to hot at about -10-14rms. Just getting into the yellow barely. My master chain is
1.wave RCL set to "Kneeless Opto" diging in deep as this is subtle about -21 on the threshold.
2.wavelab stereo expander- about 30-40%
3. maxx bass- set to hi-fi enhancer
4. Wave L1- Dig in until you get the peak part of the track as thick as you wanted and adjust the release to keep it clean.
The kneeless opto setting on the RCL will keep the mix nice and tight. I a/b'd my mix to a pro-mix in the car and the volume didn't change at all and the imaging was jsut as good. If you need to do eq do it after the mxxbass as it is a dynamic compressor as well.
Good luck on the mixes and keep them clean and and not too hot. And the mud thing is very dependant on your synth programing. So if you have two similar parts filter one down and make the other brighter so they layer instead of compete for space. This newest mix using these methods is ten times better than any I have done. the problem is that if I didn't do the mastering I would have never figured out what a non mastered mix should sound like.