Monitors sub £400

Snap

here you go,



and do't worry, there are guitars in it......eventually....!

listening back, I wonder if it actually might be a tad bass heavy

Clarky

you know that you need to listen to these monitors with music you know well for many hours to dial your ears into them..

when mixing, you should also drop in a reference track that contains a song with a similar style [musically and production] to what you're aiming for.. and then use that as a guide..

lil' tip...

rather than send all of the tracks in the DAW to the master output, send them all to an aux channel and then send that to the master.. so if you need to do a little EQ / compression etc on the entire mix for whatever reason, you don't do it on the actual master.. you can therefore send your reference track directly to the master output and that will remain untouched by "master bus processing".. the last thing you want is to be noodling with bits and bobs on the master bus, trying to get close to the sound of your reference, and your noodlings are making the reference a moving target..

the other thing here is that you can reduce the level of your reference track [which will no doubt be fkn hot] down to the same level as your own... this will ensure Messers F&M don't artificially make the reference sound a bit more exciting just cos it's louder..

I'll scope your track out when I'm in the studio later..

PolarityMan

Clarky said:

rather than send all of the tracks in the DAW to the master output, send them all to an aux channel and then send that to the master.. so if you need to do a little EQ / compression etc on the entire mix for whatever reason, you don't do it on the actual master.. you can therefore send your reference track directly to the master output and that will remain untouched by "master bus processing".. the last thing you want is to be noodling with bits and bobs on the master bus, trying to get close to the sound of your reference, and your noodlings are making the reference a moving target..

Never thought of that! great tip

Snap

Nice one Clarky - great tip.

BTW, I have adjusted the EQ on the above track, the bass was too high on the master. Sounds much more like I intended. I had a custom EQ profile that I'd used, but the bass end was way to heavy, must have written the EQ patch for something tinny,,,lol

Clarky

forgot to add...

the other prob with master bus processing and sending your reference track to it is that your reference has already had all the mastering treatment done to it.. if you whack Ozone etc on your master, you're slinging all that over your reference too..

essentially, you're looking at the masterpiece you're trying to emulate through a pair of shades..

so keep the reference clean..

Clarky

Snap said:

here you go,



and do't worry, there are guitars in it......eventually....!

listening back, I wonder if it actually might be a tad bass heavy

bass wise it sounds absolutely fine..

and musically it's an interesting piece too.. I like it..

the way it grows reminds me a little of film music..

some of your guitar melodies are in lower registers.. that's fine, but be mindful that there's room down there to do it..

if there's bass and / or keys 'stuff' happening in the same register as that guitar part you'll struggle to get it to stand out without it becoming overpowering in the mix.. frequency masking will bite you in the ass..

so if you have a melody line running, take a look at what everything else is doing in the same register to ensure there's space for it..

if that melody is really important to the piece in that register, maybe think about clipping some of the notes generated by other instruments that occur in the same general area to make space for it..

as much as I'm not a fan of dance / pop music, this is something they have totally nailed..

which is why their mixes has so much incredible clarity..

Snap

Cheers buddy. My music is veering into this sort of area, electronic but with guitars in there too. Consequently I'm using a lot of big synths quit a lot so mixing is crucial. These monitors help. Also, that track was done in about 2 hours all in!

Help and advice always very very welcome

My biggest issue is clipping and headroom. No matter what I do, once I start adding in reverb and eq it eats up headroom

Clarky

what DAW do you use??

Snap

Sonar X3 Producer.

I try to get inputs recording around -3 to -6db, but the mix master usually ends up too hot, once the track builds. I'm thinking this is down to badly arranged EQs, in line with what you said above. One thing I've never tried is altering the eq of parts of a track - as in, say a synth pad, dipping the EQs that align with a guitar part, when the guitar comes in, and rolling them back up when the guitar stops etc.

Clarky

I don't know that DAW.

lil' tip before mixing:

make sure everything is audio [so, save your "song" to a new version.. this new version is just for mixing.. bounce down your MIDI instruments to audio and then remove the MIDI instrumenets [AU's / plug-ins].. so now all you have to work with is audio..

by default, knock 10dB from all of the audio files.. don't do this from the faders on the mixer because the faders are "post fx".. in Logic, each audio file has a "gain" setting which is 0dB by default and can be changed in both + and - directions. This is the equivalent to the input gain control on a real mixing desk.. so this sets the level of the audio signal entering the mixer's channel strip..

leave all the faders at 0dB for now.. use this "gain" control to set the rough levels of everything [but none of these stting can be above -10dB].. this means that all the audio is nice and low level so you cannot overdrive the inputs of any of the fx on the channel strips.. plus you now have a ton of headroom...

if you don't do this already, use aux channels to subgroup everything "drums", "bass", riff guitars, "vocals" etc..

these auxes can have compression / limiting to lift the levels... then all these aux's route to another "final aux" [which then routes to the master output].. any general "master bus processing" is applied to you "final aux".. this is where you'll make the mix hotter again..

so the general rule is that the raw audio is at the lowest level.. the group aux's get louder.. the final aux is loudest.. so the signal level strengthens as it passes through each successive stage of processing.. this ensures that your do not clip the fx inputs, and maintain headroom...

most folk start mixing far too hot... they'll already stripped the transients, from there they have nowhere to go, so when they make the mix hotter is ends up a fried mess..

Snap

mate, that post is great, thanks for that. The tip on gain is priceless. I always end up having this issue, then my whole mix has to be turned down as it clips like fk.

I'm going to try this on a track I've already recorded, see what I can do.

Sonar is the newer version of Cakewalk.

Clarky

another "top tip"

start mixing the song at the loudest part first.. then the next loudest.. etc.. and finish mixing at the softest part..

cos if you mix from the start, and the intro is too loud, you have nowhere to go from there.. if you're pinning the meters at the start, you'll only go on to pin them harder and with more distortion as you try to get the song to 'grow'...

you can't get any louder than 0dB.. so the trick is to make everything else quieter.. it's all relative..

Snap

One thing I'd noticed that I had stopped doing is rolling off all low frequencies on any non bass parts and vice versa. Makes a huge difference to the master db. Obvious really.

Clarky

general scooping out of 50Hz and below does a pile of stuff..

makes space for the bass / kick drum / floor toms..

enables a hotter mix

cleans out low freq dross like sub-harmonics, deep rumbles / booms from mics etc, and so the low end of the mix gets more clarity and focus..

Snap

yes, and for no logical reason it was something I'd stopped doing altogether. This is because usuallyi@m grabbing a bit of time here and there to get stuff recorded, don't ahe the time to properly dedicate to it.

THe whole paying attention to what the EQ profile is, for each track, is priceless, and again, obvious. If a sound sits in a particular fequency window, everything will sound clearer if it's not sharing the space with something else.

IanSavage

Look into 'side-chain' and 'parallel' compression as well. Side-chaining (or 'ducking') when done subtley can free up a lot of low-end by momentarily pulling down the bass guitar, for the sake of argument, when the kick drum comes in. It takes a bit of tweaking to get it right, and the EQ plays a big part (getting the kick drum 'out of the way' of the bass guitar in the first place is still important) but when it's done right it's pretty much inaudible but makes a big difference to the level on the master meters.

 

Parallel compression was a big thing back in 70s Noo Yawk recording studios; essentially setting up an aux feed of what you'd like compressed (usually a sub-group of drums or vocals) and squashing the hell out of that aux, leaving the original track(s) alone. With judicious blending of the compressed and uncompressed instruments you can then get a really nice balance of the untouched transients from the original and the 'punchiness' of the squashed-to-shit compression, as well as hopefully a bit of a reduction in overall peak level.

Snap

chers Ian,

yes, sidechaining and New York comp are things I've been reading about, and will try. I wondered if you couold get a compressor that would do it automatically.

I believe it's used a lot in dance music, to push the beat, innit bruv.

all these things, make everything sound so much better. All down to time and knowledge, both of which are in short supply at Snap Towers, ha!