Mixing / Levelling / Mastering.

[championanwar]

Accomplishing a good mix? We can probably tell the difference between a track mixed/mastered well and one that isn't. .

Now for me this is quite complicated and there are probably many ways to do it, but I'm looking to now polish off a lot of my tunes to get the full "throttle" out of them, so now I come to you lot. I'm not the best in terms of mastering and all that jive, I mean I level it and pan it how I think sounds best > EQ everything once over then the whole thing if need be > Do a little comrpession on top of it all.

I don't really know what else [if there is anything] to do. Does my setup matter? I have my Monitors/Speakers on the other side of the room to me, so it's not that close to me when I'm playing the keyboard or generally editing as a whole. Does that change anything?

So I ask this, when it comes to it, is there a Specific way to master? Does the genre count? [breakcore style mastering / ambient style mastering?]. I did a bit of studying on this when I started my sound design course at college but it was only a touch, we'll probably get into it later on in the course but I want to get cracking sooner rather than later. .

Yep, that's about it. . Any help/tips? =3

[MaXLER8ER]

Well if you want it done right, you mix down your track untill sounds good then you send it off to a sound engineer and they master it for you (for a price). You could learn how to master yourself but it wont sound as good. I know that wasn't the answer you were looking for, but thats my best answer.

[DJSBX]

First off I'd like to point out that mixing and mastering are 2 different things (I often see people confuse that quite a bit).

Mixing: Getting everything in your song to sit properly volume wise and frequency wise. You usually want to mix pretty quietly where your average db is around -6 or so.

Mastering: Adding that final polish to the song, bringing up the volumes, and fixing any frequency problem areas.

So to answer a few questions.

1. Yes, different genres require different mastering techniques, you arent going to master Hardcore the same way you master Trance, because both genres accentuate different frequencies more, have different perceived loudness, etc.

2. As far as making a good mix goes here are a few pointers (Note: These will mostly be pointed towards electronic music since thats what I specialize in):
- To start the mixdown, put the volumes of everything down to -Infinity.
- Get your kick sounding how you like it, and set the volume so its around -7 or -8 db.
- Now get your bass sounding proper with your kick. Use some sidechain compression if you need to.
- Now you finish up the rest of the percussion kit. Try to get all your percussion sounding nice and leveled at this point (with panning/eq/compression)
- Now mix in all your synths,vocals,etc
- As you are doing all of this, you DO NOT want to touch your master fader, nor do you want to add any effects to it.
- DO NOT put a compressor on the master fader. Mixing is NOT about bringing the volumes up to a listenable level, it is about fitting everything in properly.

Im sure there is more I can say, but I can't think of anything else right now.

[stargroup100]

I can't afford mastering, so I just work with what I have.

Meet my new friends: EQ, Compressor, Maximizer, and Stereo Imager.

[DarkbearX]

Originally Posted by DJSBX

- DO NOT put a compressor on the master fader. Mixing is NOT about bringing the volumes up to a listenable level, it is about fitting everything in properly.

Quoting this to emphasize it. It's a horrible, horrible idea to put a compressor/limiter on the master track when mixing. In fact, FL puts a limiter on its master track on it's default template, which is why I'm making this post. Get rid of that limiter, it'll only negatively affect how you'll want to mix things. They put it there so clipping won't happen, although clipping is easily remedied manually.

Anyway I pretty much agree with this whole post. It's good to find niches for the kick and bass first, because they take up more sensitive frequencies. It's a smart idea to start building -around- them, imo. I also notion mixing at ~-6dB, it helps a ton. For finalizing (also important), it's nice to render the track into wav and add EQ tweaks/limiting to that instead. iZotope Ozone is good for this (though expensive). Of course you'll wanna be careful on what you do because this stage can make or break a track. As far as limiting/final EQing goes, just trust your ears ("If it sounds good, it is good" kinda thing).

[UrineTastesGood]

Hey yah, you might want to rearrange your speakers.. I think it's cool to put some behind you but you probably want to get some primary speakers to sit in front of you so the sound is coming at you face first rather than from behind. A minimal difference, but you might be surprised at the difference you hear based on the angle the sound is hitting..

Another thing, when you've got your mix and it's banging on the speakers... Try it through a bunch of different speakers, iPod, stereo, car speakers.. just a variety of different places because you may find that it sounds good in one place but terrible in another .. and then you have to go back and tweak some EQ's and errthang.. I don't know, that's one of the major things I reccomend doing.

[Phlegmatism]

Overcompression: http://youtu.be/Rqt85UX96Rc