Had time to practice my mixing/mastering today...tell me what ya think.

[DaveBlack]

I've been told in the past that my mixes dont sound very powerful so I had some time to mess around this morning and i recorded a riff and programmed some drums to see what I could come up with. Excuse the poor performance, I didnt wanna waste too much time recording. Basically, Im just looking for any and all critque on the mixing/mastering job. Thanks!

Mastering Test
Its the first one on the page

Guitars:
Guitar rig custom setting (not great, I know)
Guitar 1 panned 100% L
Guitar 2 is guitar 1 panned 100% R but i tried to do as much to it as possible to not result in phantom center. Brought it up an octave, chorused it and set it slightly off time.

Drums:
Kick is a random sample I have I cant really remember the source
Snare is an awesome sample thats actually from the program that allows you to use your rock band drums on your computer.

All work was done in reaper

 

[ruonitb]

You should really double the guitar tracks, not just copy them.

And remove all effects (except the distortion) and don't use the guitarrig presets.
The guitars sound very thin and digital...guitarrig isn't that great but it's definitely possbiel to get better sounds out of it.

 

[DaveBlack]

yeah I know, like i said I wasnt really concerned with the recording process. Im looking for critique on the mastering. The loudness, power ya know things of that nature. Thank you though.

 

[ruonitb]

If you want the mastered track to be powerful the mix has to be powerful as well...you can't just take a bad mix and hope that the mastering will get it done.

The mastering isn't there to make a bad mix sound good. First you need to make sure to have a good mix...then you can start thinking about the (pre)mastering.

Regarding the loudness you can just compare it with other CD's.