Mahloo13

Hey Brado,

That was one of the things I wanted people to realize, that when you are mixing a record you are not solely mixing it for your environment or for your monitoring system and that mix needs to translate well on everything.

Nowadays people listen more and more on earbuds, laptop speakers, portable speakers, phones, tablets etc. so it's really essential to get a balance that works on everything. How you do that? well...you listen, listen on multiple playback sources, use reference tracks etc., of course after a while experience kicks in and you basically know without crossreferencing if it sounds good everywhere. A good way to set balances (at least for me) is to monitor at really low volumes as that clearly evidentiates to me atleast what stands out and what doesn't.

As for the drums sound, I almost always add samples, even if they are really low in volume. I might add a kick sample that has more low end and one that has a nice midrange and some top and blend those with the original then buss those to an aux and eq them overall as one piece so basically I'm using the samples as EQ. The same goes for snare although I trigger just one sample which is really close tone wise to the original snare and use that to emphazise lows and highs and trigger a reverb, that way I get a clean reverb sound without all the spill. Sometimes if the drums are clean enough I'll get my samples from the actual tracks.

A lot of my sound comes from my EQ curves, I tend to boost a lot in the low end and the high end to get a really hyped EQ curve (the smiley face curve if you wish to call it that) and then compress and use another EQ to round off any edges.

The biggest secret is automation though. I use a lot of automation especially in the overheads and the toms and the room tracks. Recently I've started using parallel compression as well so during the chorus I'll unmute the paralllel compressed track for more punch...or I just duplicate the kick track for example and use the second track as a parallel track just for volume.

Sounds complicated but the secret is really in riding those faders and making everything exciting and dynamic.

Cheers!

Thank you Ed!

I also love guitar and guitar tone and I could probably spend days just recreating diferent amp tones. An amazing instrument!

There are definitely some cool tricks one can do with compressors especially if each is used for a specific purpose. Compressors are really hated on cause a lot of people missunderstood the concept behind the loudness wars and have since thought of compressors as something that's a no no when it comes to mixing. Compressing even overcompressing can yield interesting results and sonic characters. It comes down to experimentation really.

Thank you once again for the great review!

Hello Wayne!

The choice of compressors is irrelevant..as I've said many times the emulations just provide a certain vibe and allow me to get results faster as I already know what they deliver so it's easy to just reach for a certain vibe. You can pretty much get the same results with stock plugins, it's all a matter of getting to properly use attack, release and threshold controls on any given compressor.

For example to replicate this particular scenario you could ride the level of the vocals going into your stock compressor which would have a 3:1 or 2:1 ratio a slow attack and pretty fast release, while the second compressor would have a 4:1 ratio with a medium attack and a fast release and the third would be something like 2:1 for ratio and slow attack and medium release. Again you would have to listen in context and see how the compressors react from word to word and how they muffle or brighten the sound, it's all in the ears honestly.

I've always said it...it's not the gear that mixes the song...it's the engineer.

Thank you for the review!

Thank you Brado!

I love outboard as well. But yeah the thing is without having a full setup of outboard gear your kinda opening a can of worms as you''ll want to run everything through the gear and that may result in sending each track individually to the eq in this example and then record it again in the daw so that you have the eq-ed version :)) been there done that and it's just time consuming. Not to mention capacitators going out more often than a teenager hits the pubs :))

Thanks Brado! I do have the processed and clean files as well as pictures with the settings used available for download so if you want them let me know. There really isn't much going on in terms of processing as effects like delay, reverb and harmonizers make all the hard work. :)

Thank you for the review!

As for equalization...I wouldn't necesarily advise you to go outboard unless you are working with great converters as you'll be basically running audio through your converters twice, once when you record and the second time when you send the audio to the eq and back into the daw. It will also make it mandatory to calibrate your levels going out of the daw. Software eq is perfectly fine honestly (more and more engineers are moving towards mixing totally in the box nowadays). Gear presents the ability to move really fast as everything is patched in but also introduces some issues, if you combine out of the box mixing with in the box mixing then you'll also have to take into account the latency that each piece of gear introduces. In the studio we have everything conected through a patchbay and each hardware insert stays on the same insert always so it's pretty easy to set up the delay compensation for each hardware insert so basically we don't have to do it always. Software eq is just fine believe me. I personally use a SSL channel strip plugin for most of things in a mix as I know the hardware as well and it's really easy to get it to do what I want. So all in all I'd say...save your money for something else :))

Great question by the way! If you've got any questions or would like to further discuss this/similar matters feel free to contact me!

Thank you!

Well the files came as Midi drums, and DI tracks for the guitars. So basically I used the midi to trigger drum software with custom kits (I create my custom kits from samples and layer different sounds to get the tone I want).

As for the Guitars...I use Amplitube, PodFarm and cabinet impulses or if available I send the di signal to a real amp and cabinet and record it with a combination of microphones, I really like the SM57 placed about an inch from the cloth of the cab and between the cap center and cap edge of the speaker and the second mic would be the MD421 at the cap edge placed of axis at the same distance as the fist mic. This gives a nice warm midrange and works really well with any kind of setup.

Easy really....if you do it all day :))

Hey thanks for the review!

The mix notes won't be anything fancy. Just a bit of EQ, compression and reverbs, delays. Working on arranging the files as we speak!

Feel free to ask if you've got questions!

Believe it or not but I also love Middle Eastern and wolrd instruments. I've actually had the pleasure of working with talented people from all over the world and it never ceases to amaze me how a couple of notes played where they don't belong can define a sound and create a distinct and recognizable sonic image.

The duduk I absolutely love and having listened to the real thing it just blew my mind. It's one of those instruments that just needs a bit of reverb and delay and it sounds incredible. Works great on dark tunes.

There isn't really a mix here, it was just a reverb and everything went to tape through a neve console. It wasn't supposed to get printed but in the end i'm glad someone didn't pay attention to what they are printing.

Thank you for the review!

Thank you. It didn't make it's way to the big screens but it sure ended on the loop.

Did you expect heavy guitars and stuff? :))

Believe it or not I do work a lot with orchestra stuff as a matter of fact we are scoring an orchestral piece as we speak :D

I did a lot of stuff in chillout, symphonic, orchestra and movie scoes in the past. It's allways a pleasure.

I prefer to mic them but if not then it's no problem I'll just reamp them in the DAW. I use Line 6 software and Amplitube with RedWirez Cabinet Impulses quite often but most of the time I just receive great files to start with.

For EQ it really depends on the genre, in this particular style of music I tend to do a lot of really narrow cuts at problematic frequencies like 4kHz, 5kHz, 700Hz etc. and shape the overall tone. I also might use de-essers on guitars to get rid of any harsh frequencies and multiband compressors to tame the low mids.

In general a bit of EQ does a lot to the sound.

If they sound good to begin with and I don't need to fix anything, I'll probably add some 8kHz to brighten them up and make them a bit more fizzy I guess.

Yes they are, meaning there was one guitar recorded for the left and one for the right.

I've never used stereo enhancers on this type of guitars. You can get them as wide as you want by proper balance.

If the guitars are properly edited they will sound amazing.

Thank you! One of my favourite songs from them!

The answer to the guitar balance is...it should be lower in volume than you think :)

As for the vocal, as I've said....just Reverb, Stereo delay, and tape delay (slap delay)

-Malu-

Hey,

Sorry for getting back so late at you, for some reason I didn't receive any notifications about the coments.

Yes there is a standard for commercial releases regarding loudness.It depends on the genre of music or if it's for television then it's a totally different standard.

As for how much I push my limiter during mastering...well it depends. I don't limit more than 2 dB's. So basically I get 2dB's of reduction on my final limiter.

You could add a transient designer right before the limiter and it will bring back some snap into the mix.

One of the main problems with mixes that lose life when you throw a limiter is that they are not properly balanced and the limiter triggers all the time on transients thus killing your mix. Don't be afraid to rebalance once you put the limiter there, you do have that luxury. :)