Getting your mixes to SCREAM!!!!

[Line666]

Vocals were the bit that bugged me the most from a listening perspective, they could have an interesting style but they're spoiled by really bad tuning issues.

 

[Loren Littlejohn]

Investing in a pro mastering will breathe new life into your mix, if its done right.

Yeah this.

 

[CatharsisStudios]

just scare it :3

 

[Harry Hughes]

just scare it :3

 

[El_Gato]

hahahah

 

[AerialThesis]

Yes most people do want their mixes to sound like what they hear on the radio because that is the standard. Please name a "radio quality" mix that has phase issues, I'd love to hear it, and not all radio quality mixes are mastered so loud that they distort

Also, OP: 2k-3.15k in guitars is a super harsh frequency, don't boost that unless you want people's ears to bleed from the piercing noise

The best example I could use is 10,000 days by Tool. It as clipping involved troughout the songs everytime a guitar starts playing a bit high in pitch and also when the mix isn't pretty crowded with stuff to hide it. The Vocals and drums or should I say the complete center of the mix is extremely phasy when stereo enhancer is needed to keep the mix from clouding towards the center of the stereo image in more crowded parts of the songs. I can still give a bit of credits to it since it contains a bit of macrodynamics thru the songs, expecially in the intro of Vicarious.

I could name other albums if you still like more exemple. I think some of you guys on the forum should listen to old minimalist recordings such as Portraits of Cuba by Paquito d'Rivera or more popular stuff like earlier Genesis or Collective Soul. These are exemples of incredible almost perfect mixes with great dynamics, no phase problem due to equalisation or stereo enhancing on the master bus and free of digital clipping or smashed sounds. Yes it is not metal! but it is critical to understand good sound before destroying it to these days "standard". Compression is part of a metal mix, since it defines the sound for the style and can sound pretty punchy and kick ass for the cost of clarity and unwanted compression artefacts. It's always a matter of compromise! But clipping sound only makes the mix sound worse than it allready sounds when it's heavily compressed. Compressing a whole mix clutter's it. So you fuck up with the phase to make the stereo image big again wich causes it to sound phasy when the stereo image should sound a bit more cluttered (ex: L-R guitars that hit the same note at almost the same time) for the stereo enhancer tries to enlarge it more at that very moment. I could cary on with this, but right now i need to leave for the studio. Cya!

 

[arv_foh]

The best example I could use is 10,000 days by Tool. It as clipping involved troughout the songs everytime a guitar starts playing a bit high in pitch and also when the mix isn't pretty crowded with stuff to hide it. The Vocals and drums or should I say the complete center of the mix is extremely phasy when stereo enhancer is needed to keep the mix from clouding towards the center of the stereo image in more crowded parts of the songs. I can still give a bit of credits to it since it contains a bit of macrodynamics thru the songs, expecially in the intro of Vicarious.

I could name other albums if you still like more exemple. I think some of you guys on the forum should listen to old minimalist recordings such as Portraits of Cuba by Paquito d'Rivera or more popular stuff like earlier Genesis or Collective Soul. These are exemples of incredible almost perfect mixes with great dynamics, no phase problem due to equalisation or stereo enhancing on the master bus and free of digital clipping or smashed sounds. Yes it is not metal! but it is critical to understand good sound before destroying it to these days "standard". Compression is part of a metal mix, since it defines the sound for the style and can sound pretty punchy and kick ass for the cost of clarity and unwanted compression artefacts. It's always a matter of compromise! But clipping sound only makes the mix sound worse than it allready sounds when it's heavily compressed. Compressing a whole mix clutter's it. So you fuck up with the phase to make the stereo image big again wich causes it to sound phasy when the stereo image should sound a bit more cluttered (ex: L-R guitars that hit the same note at almost the same time) for the stereo enhancer tries to enlarge it more at that very moment. I could cary on with this, but right now i need to leave for the studio. Cya!

Interesting. I'll have to give 10,000 Days a closer listen, it's been a few years since I've listened to it. Guessing the prowess of Tool though, it was probably done intentionally, yeah? I would figure phase issues would be caught by the mastering engineer and sent back to the mix engineer to correct.

 

[Morgan C]

^ I remember reading that they didn't want to squash the mix (10000 Days), so very little or no compression was used in mastering, so they'd have to rely a lot more on clipping/limiting to raise the volume.

 

[Klosure]

Dont you guys find though that guitars generally emit a lot of 3k stuff, and without dealing with it it sticks your guitar out alot..


I have been listening to some stuff recently, the best example would be Katatonia Discouraged ones, on this album you can hear a whistle (check out Cold Ways) on the guitar tone where its obvious the frequency was boosted about 5-6k (maybe) and I assume that some of the 2-4k stuff was lost.

I miight be very wrong here, but when I said I want my mix to scream I think many here assumed it was was loudness I was after, like I said, I have a volume knob that does that!