elimination of peaking during mixdowns

[laird]

PS, I just got back from a session with a good Mastering engineer, and he didn't use a single Limiter. EQ, compression, yes, but the attack on the compressors never went below 50msec (i think it was mostly much higher than that) and ratios were at-most 3:1

And this was a wall-of-sound project, too.



which isn't to say limiters are bad! But I would suggest not putting a limiter or tube-amp simulator on tracks as a matter of habit. Especially drum tracks.

Are your drums sampled or from a drum machine? They shouldn't have wild peak fluctuations, I would guess.

[michaellpenman]

[quote="laird"]louder ≠ more powerful
sorry but this is not correct it is a presived loadness not an acctually loadness
make everything has it place and there is head room then if someone turns it up on hi fi system there will be no horrible peaks

[laird]

say again?

≠ = does not equal.

[ground_control]

Why don't you ask flore how she got her mixdown like that? That would be what I'd do.

J

[Dan Dare]

To avoid peaks I pull the faders down and turn up my monitoring a bit.

I personally try to get a fat sound sound with as little compression as possible. Then when it's mastered they have more to play with.

Bruce Swedien, the legend behind the board for Thriller and one of the fattest kick snare combos on Billie Jean, has some interesting conversation over on Gearslutz.

Although he is mainly talking about recorded music, I still think some of the same theories apply.


http://www.gearslutz.com/board/bruce-sw ... -kids.html

[stjohn]

mix your loudest thing to maybe - 6 or 8 dB...
if you watch the teeny levelmeter at the bottom left of Live when u click the master channel, that shouldnt clip

[The Phat Conductor]

cool.

FYI my practices are 'unusual' because i am not going for a normal sound. i generally prefer an extremely processed sound. i'm not really going for 'natural' at all. many of my drum sounds are little bursts of static, mic crunch, typewriters, etc. and not drum kits. as a result of this, and ehavy stacking, there is often a lot of volume level fluctuation that needs eliminating. i like them to sound extremely sharp and loud. i use a lot of things like stationary phasers and erosion in ways that are not normal too.

that said, i turned everything down a lot as a result of this thread we'll see how it all comes out in the wash.

much love

dylan

[laird]

cool.many of my drum sounds are little bursts of static, mic crunch, typewriters, etc. and not drum kits. as a result of this, and ehavy stacking, there is often a lot of volume level fluctuation that needs eliminating.

Sweet. Sometimes I find it helpful to layer in samples of actual drums with my "noise percussion"... enough to give that static sound a blip or snap to it, but not so much that you can actually hear the drum sound.

Something that can also help (imo) with all the found-sound percussion is to use compressors to LOWER the volume. Don't use the makeup gain, but use a good amount of Attack setting, letting ~50msec or something get through uncompressed. You will still be able to hear the sounds just fine, they will still sound like typewriters and such, but they wont SATURATE your mixes so much and the levels will be more controlled, too.

[e-theory]

Everything in this post has already been said somewhere, but as it is all together in my head I thought I would dump it upon you unassuming readers

I've started working using a new method lately, and it has helped my mixdowns and "personal masters" immensely - just thought I'd share:

1.) Start with your track faders at -6dB - NEVER at 0dB, and keep your original sound sources individually below the -6dB level of track volume.

2.) Turn the volume knob on your speakers/stereo system/headphones up so that it is twice as loud as normal, but still mix to the volume you are used to - which makes my previous statement about mixing with track faders initially at -6dB make more sense - the combination of the two will cancel out - and initially everything will sound how you are used to hearing it.

3.) When you bring in any reference tracks you are trying to "sound as loud as" - bring them in as audio tracks turned down to -6dB.

The effect of all this apparent weirdness is that you will begin to ACTUALLY mix your songs ( in a much more similar way to how it used to be done on analogue desks ). Instead of mixing to the reference track at full volume you will be matching it at a lower volume, avoiding squashing the life out of your sound.

Once you get them matched nicely at -6dB, begin to match them further and further up the scale, until eventually you get closer to matching the reference track at 0dB.

Start without anything on the master track - no limiters etc, and start so your song never exceeds 0dB - if it does turn down your track faders to make it quieter - at all times leave your master fader at 0dB.

You will find "mastering" ( imo send it to a mastering house, or you will never be able to get "that" sound you are after, you WILL get close, but their is no replacement for the experience of an expert ) after this a lot easier, as it will be easier to get the initial vibe going, as you are mixing with much more headroom and your initial mixes will be able to attain much more punch, dynamics and clarity.

The other key thing you will learn is that matching the quality and presence of a professionally mastered track at a 0dB peak reference level is nearly impossible - as this should be reserved for the profession mastering engineer. The other thing to learn is that if you DO send your material to a mastering house mixed with the suggested method here, do so without increasing the volume level, so nothing exceeds 0dB, as a 32bit at at least 96kHz sampling rate - or whatever is their preference, as an uncompressed file, and the mastering engineer will be a very happy person with plenty of room to make your material loud and lovely.

Seriously, you really must try this before you say it sounds weird - my mixes have never sounded so good since I started doing this, and it's essence harks back to the days of analogue mixing. Have fun and try something a little different, and when you do really want to make your tracks loud, you will find mixes initial set up with way will respond very well to limiters. Something about this method sets the track up to be squashed much more than normal with squeezing the life out of your mix.

Another thing is learning to side chain deep percussive hits - i.e. kick drums - against your bassline. I used to think this wasn't necessary - but now I think even if used with only a few dB max of gain reduction, that it is. The new Live 7 inbuilt compressor is surprisingly good at this, and once you get used to this you will find that squashing your bassline when the kick hits makes your kick sound more punchy and also reduces the overall volume of your song, whilst maintaining the same perceived volume - allowing you to go even louder at the mastering stage.

Aside from that remember that every instrument, in order to be heard in its own right within a mix, needs its own space. A slight decrease in the high and low frequencies of each sound, centered around its "key" frequency will help maintain the individual space of each instrument. A tiny amount of this does wonders to your mixes.

[Freekster]

First thing i suggest is to forget the peak meters. Setup a proper meter with RMS metering and make your mix around -14db RMS. You wil have more dynamics and you don't have to worry about peaking. If you are sending the track to mastering house then don't put anything on the master. If you master yourself the you can either add the plugins to master (after the RMS meter) or bounce the track and master later.

When you learn to mix with -14 RMS and it sounds LOUD you have learned a lot Avoid compressing if possible and make tracks to fit and kick by using automation and eq.

[url=ttp://www.rogernicholsdigital.com/inspector.html]Inspector[/url] does the metering pretty well.

[The Phat Conductor]

sick.

i've just taken all of this advice into account on my latest and it is sounding much more 'real' and '3-d' than the earlier mixdown.

thanks so much for helping!

any other tips?

[Fidel]

I'm not sure if I can actually add anything useful to this thread... Mayhaps.. Anyway..

I agree with the comment about mixes from the 80's sounding generally better. This is only logical though considering that previously music took a lot of work to come up with a sparkling finished product. For a buyer to even get it, it had to go through the hands of a mastering engineer that took into consideration all of the types of systems it would be played on.

Now a lot of the house tracks I'm finding have extremely weak low and mid range. Because even if an artist can afford software and a somewhat decent set of reference monitors they can't afford someone to master the track.. As we know.. mastering being quite the different beast than producing or mixing down..

Anyway.. I guess my only advice on this would be use as little compression on the low end as possible..

[The Phat Conductor]

Anyway.. I guess my only advice on this would be use as little compression on the low end as possible..

what? really?

how do you get your bass to be properly loud without compressors?

[Tarekith]

It's all about relative balance with the other instruments, you don't HAVE to use compression to get things to stand out in a mix. You just need to turn other things down until the important parts have the focus in terms of loudness. That and choosing the right sounds from the get go are the important parts IMO.

[The Phat Conductor]

wow. wierd.

i've made dope ass bass sounds out of just about any old piece of shit using the right compressor and eq settings. i even made one out of a pitched coffee grinder i recorded in disney hall. you would never know, it sounds like a meaty dubstep bass synth.

i guess i just thought that was how everyone does it... i'll try uncompressed bass some day, but it sounds too freaky for my little mind right now.