let's talk mixing and mastering. I need some help

Shaun Werle

Shaun Werle

Member
Dec 30, 2009
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Brodheadsville PA
Hey i have been lurking this forum all day looking for some help with my mixing and mastering issues. I am finished tracking the insturments of this band i have been recording and i want to mix/master these tracks. they're doing vocals at another studio so i when i get them back i will mix and master them together. But anyways, I am stuck. I have been working on my mix all day and i still can't get it sound the way i wanted to at all. l1 on the master bus. along with some eq, I have the waves diamond bundle so for anyone knows what's in that bundle could direct me in the direction telling what would be helpful to use when mastering. My questions are

What are some rules to follow when mix and mastering?
What plug ins should i be using?
Also how to get my mix loud, without it sounding like shit.
and idk anything helpful i would like to hear. thanks :]

Here's a link to one of the songs i am working on.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5865601/ugh(1).mp3

This is mix is really a rough mix i sent to the band because they need somethign to show their drummer because the guitar playing recording some drum parts for this song.
I know in this mix the kick is blasting.
I know the snare sounds weird.
I also know there's some editing to be done on the drums and maybe a little
on the guitars.

And last what do you think of the direction of the song so far?

thanks guys :p
 
Seth Munson said:
GClip > a limiter on the master buss IMO
Click to expand...

Thanks man, I heard your one mix the generic loud one (as you said i guess)
I actually really liked it, what was going on in that chain? haha
Really crisp, and punchy too, with a little modifying it could have been amazing IMO

Thanks for the post man

Gclip link?
 
Seth Munson said:
yea gclip is free

and you just need a vst wrapper like fxpansion.
Click to expand...

Hey i do have fxpansion actually it cost me almost 100$ bucks, the only bad part is i am not sure what to do with it

do i just put the .dll file in the pro tools folder
and click detect and wrap vst plug ins?
The only thing is it doesn't find the plug in to wrap it, am i missing something?
Also this works with Vista right?
 
Shaun Werle said:
Hey i have been lurking this forum all day looking for some help with my mixing and mastering issues. I am finished tracking the insturments of this band i have been recording and i want to mix/master these tracks. they're doing vocals at another studio so i when i get them back i will mix and master them together. But anyways, I am stuck. I have been working on my mix all day and i still can't get it sound the way i wanted to at all. l1 on the master bus. along with some eq, I have the waves diamond bundle so for anyone knows what's in that bundle could direct me in the direction telling what would be helpful to use when mastering. My questions are

What are some rules to follow when mix and mastering?
What plug ins should i be using?
Also how to get my mix loud, without it sounding like shit.
and idk anything helpful i would like to hear. thanks :]


Here's a link to one of the songs i am working on.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5865601/ugh(1).mp3

This is mix is really a rough mix i sent to the band because they need somethign to show their drummer because the guitar playing recording some drum parts for this song.
I know in this mix the kick is blasting.
I know the snare sounds weird.
I also know there's some editing to be done on the drums and maybe a little
on the guitars.

And last what do you think of the direction of the song so far?

thanks guys :p
Click to expand...

Another person with cracked Waves plugins who doesn't know how to use them. Awesome...

Stop worrying about what plugin bundles you should be stealing and learn to mix with the stock plugs in you DAW. I guarantee it's not the quality of the plugins that's holding your mix back. 99.9% of the sound of any record comes down to:
1. The quality of your source sound (instrument, room, mic and positioning) and how well suited your source sound is IN THE MIX
2. What the engineer does to make the elements of the mix work together. NOT WHAT HACKED WAVES BUNDLE HE IS USING!

Get rid of all your stuff on the master bus while you're mixing. Seen as you clearly don't know what you're doing then it's going to hurt your mix more than it will benefit it.

Getting your mix loud is the combination of having a good, well balanced mix and then compressing, clipping and limiting on your master bus. Though this is best left to a mastering engineer if the band can afford it.
 
If you're like, serious-level-serious about mastering, then as trevoire said, go elsewhere. Room acoustics are really important in this and *real* mastering studios spend megabucks on room design.
 
waltz mastering said:
The words mix/master or mixtering scare me. Why would you want to do both processes at the same time? I see this talked about on this forum a lot, so it must be popular. What's the advantage to sticking mastering plug-ins on the mix buss? Why not do your mastering separately?
Click to expand...

So you can adjust your mix to allow the best possible mastering. You don't want to bounce the mix and then go 'ugh the snare isn't surviving, I need to go back to my mix and thicken it up somehow'.

Generally with a 3rd party this isn't as much of a problem, but most people here are on limited budgets and working with pretty cheap plugins, rather than super nice hardware, etc. which means getting it loud is a lot harder.
 
I by no means consider my mastering to be remotely good but I love to a/b mixes on and off with mastering presets the whole time while im mixing just to see what it will be like when limiters/compressors/saturators hit them.
 
I found as I was getting better results over time I was relying less on plug ins that dramatically change the sound like some mastering plug ins while I was tracking/mixing. It seemed that with better mixing and tighter playing the sounds just start to fall into place. Maybe touches of eq or slight comp here and there.
 
Trevoire520 said:
Another person with cracked Waves plugins who doesn't know how to use them. Awesome...

Stop worrying about what plugin bundles you should be stealing and learn to mix with the stock plugs in you DAW. I guarantee it's not the quality of the plugins that's holding your mix back. 99.9% of the sound of any record comes down to:
1. The quality of your source sound (instrument, room, mic and positioning) and how well suited your source sound is IN THE MIX
2. What the engineer does to make the elements of the mix work together. NOT WHAT HACKED WAVES BUNDLE HE IS USING!

Get rid of all your stuff on the master bus while you're mixing. Seen as you clearly don't know what you're doing then it's going to hurt your mix more than it will benefit it.

Getting your mix loud is the combination of having a good, well balanced mix and then compressing, clipping and limiting on your master bus. Though this is best left to a mastering engineer if the band can afford it.
Click to expand...


I bought waves, and i heard it is cool for being rude to a person who just asked a question. I appreciete the post, but seriously.. was that neccesary
 
Shaun Werle said:
I bought waves, and i heard it is cool for being rude to a person who just asked a question. I appreciete the post, but seriously.. was that neccesary
Click to expand...

I also would like to clarify, I do not completly know my way around all my waves plug ins, that is why i posted this thread. I was angry at the way you attacked me in a sense. I do appreciate the words, and i do agree with a lot of them.
Valid advice but no reason to hate on someone for not knowing as much as you. I am new to this i guess you can say, but can you say you knew your way around compressors, eqs, limiters yada yada when you were just starting out?
 
Shaun Werle said:
I bought waves, and i heard it is cool for being rude to a person who just asked a question. I appreciete the post, but seriously.. was that neccesary
Click to expand...
Shaun Werle said:
I also would like to clarify, I do not completly know my way around all my waves plug ins, that is why i posted this thread. I was angry at the way you attacked me in a sense. I do appreciate the words, and i do agree with a lot of them.
Valid advice but no reason to hate on someone for not knowing as much as you. I am new to this i guess you can say, but can you say you knew your way around compressors, eqs, limiters yada yada when you were just starting out?
Click to expand...

Why would someone spend thousands of $ on a package they have no idea how to use when they're just starting out? No-one goes and buys a 5150 and a Les Paul when they're starting to learn guitar. This is why everyone assumes you've cracked it.
 
Am I going to notice a difference when upgrading from T-Racks on the master bus with preset "mastering" settings to buying Izotope4? That seemed pretty popular from what I found on here. I kind of have trouble getting that hi-fidelity polished sound I would like. I usually just gate and verb when needed and then T-Racks the shit out of everything to compensate for bit or punch. I use the standard eq band that come with my daw nothing fancy, could that be a problem? When I highpass the OHs and equalize everything else, getting a mix that is good to my ears, and upload an mp3 to Myspace (just keep reading lol) it loses like ALL of the "shine" or "crisp" or what have you... When the file is compressed my mixes sound like SUPER flat and dirty. When I go to pages of you more experienced gents that don't have topnotch converter but know how to get the best out of your firestudio's, 002 rack, motu's, you don't have that problem when your mixes are down to a 96kpbs stream... As some have said, investment in a room is a major element- but even people with a slightly treated bedroom are getting good results. I'm temporarily stuck as a mobile service (without a snake), so I have to clear our bedrooms and dampen garages/halls and work with that. I don't think it could be tuning or recording technique since people approach these problems, adapt or just replace entirely and manage- and I really doubt it mixing when I'm pretty much applying everyone's general advice to get what sounds good. The final mp3s sound good, but it's when I turn the mix down and or export to a low bit rate, I can just hear this like flatness that drives me insane. Like everything is individual in a bad way, whereas comercial recording produce something that can be turned up or down and still sound like one complex element that like blends

When I first bought my firestudio I was using magneto (cubase/nuendo guys) on the master bus because it has that whole "hi-fi" knob to compensate hahaha but I'm sure the people that know about this plugin know about the pumping and you're probably thinking "...wtf..."

I just stopped attempting to "master" my tracks entirely because I know I'm doing something wrong here because the end result isn't exactly what I want without it and worse when I try to

My posts always turn into fucking ten pages, sorry hahaha




To sum it all up into a few points, if my book up here was explained well:

Like I said, I experimented with Magneto and tried T-Racks and just didn't get what I wanted.

Is this problem due to lack of a good mastering plugin such as Izotope? Or could a good saturating-type plugin help this at all? Or is it my approach? I also haven't been able to find any Y/N if recording in 96 makes a difference over 44.1 if it just gets bounced anyway... Does that make a noticeable difference in pre's and then the final product?

Like, I could just crack Waves, but aside from stealing I wouldn't learn anything from it or know how to apply it to make it better...

I'm going to be finishing a song that I am recording tomorrow night and will have it up on here very soon so maybe that will help if you actually hear what I'm talking about. I think I've outgrown T-Racks by now... But if this is really the problem I will go buy that shit right NOAW
 
You might get more out of a copy of "Mastering: The Art And The Science" by Bob Katz than any cracked software. Just a thought...
 
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