Mastering Mixes with Vocals

[Sam Bottner]

First off, sorry if there was already a thread about this, I searched and couldn't find anything.

I'm a guitarist so I'm used to mixing and mastering instrumental stuff. My masters were at a volume I was happy with, but my band just recorded vocals for one of our songs and I'm having a really hard time getting the track to the same level in the mastering stage without having the vocals distort. Is there anything I should be doing in the mixing stage to remedy this? I have to bring the volume down substantially before it's not clipping.

 

[olif8]

Subractive EQ is your friend here.

 

[Fox Mulder]

Proper balance of the lower and higher mid-ranges, in terms of the other mid-range instruments of course.

 

[Virgil.]

So, you're trying to take a finished mastered track and add raw un-processed vocals on top and trying to get it to balance? If I'm understanding what you're saying correctly, that's not going to work. Getting vocals to sound good in a mix is just as time consuming as mixing bass, drums, guitars, etc. If you want the vocals to "fit", you'll need to re-mix everything to include the vocals and then remaster to "glue" everything together. Remember, a master is usually louder due to compression, limiting, clipping, etc. If you can't go back and do the mixing process all over again, try compressing the vox really hard, limit and clip to get volume... and of course EQ to taste. But at the end of the day, it's NOT going to sound good taking this lazy way out. You really do need to take all the raw files and re-mix everything together so it's a properly balanced mix, and then master it again. Trying to add something on top of an already mastered track just doesn't sound good.

 

[Sam Bottner]

no, i had mastered the instrumental version before but of course im not trying to put vocals over the mastered track. I'm thinking I'm just gonna have to cut some high mids out of the guitars, but it's a shame because they were sounding good haha

 

[drew_drummer]

Er... maybe your vocals are just too loud?? If their distorting in the mastering stage, it sounds like an amplitude issue rather than a frequency one.

 

[Virgil.]

no, i had mastered the instrumental version before but of course im not trying to put vocals over the mastered track. I'm thinking I'm just gonna have to cut some high mids out of the guitars, but it's a shame because they were sounding good haha

Instead of cutting mids on the guitars, try looking in the 2-4k range area first to see if that might be a problem area if you're concerned about the guitars and vox interfering with each other.

And I agree w/ Drew

 

[olif8]

Er... maybe your vocals are just too loud?? If their distorting in the mastering stage, it sounds like an amplitude issue rather than a frequency one.

But surely a frequency build up is going to cause an amplitude issue?

Something that I heard Dave Pensado mention is he sidechains vocals to the guitar bus and clamps down pretty hard on 2 - 4k with a multiband. See how that works out

 

[Sam Bottner]

I feel really dumb... the mic was distorting alittle at some part and it was just obvious when it was compressed and loud. I fixed it with some subtle overdrive/saturation and a high end boost. No cutting frequencies in the guitars necessary.

 

[frazzlepuff]

I recently tried a new compressor (from the TC powercore bundle) and the vocals were clipping or distorting like mad at some of the peaks, probably TC thought this was a good way to imitate a hardware compressor except it sounds fucking gash. Had to fix it with automation in the end. But anyway a few tips for getting vocals to sit in the mix - eq balancing obviously, dependant on the singers voice a subtle boost around 1-2k with guitars cut with a wide band Q in the same area should give some prescence to vox, around 200k is where guitars and vox have their low end so balance that if need be too. In general I've got a nice mic and pres so I do minimal vocal eqing. Boost guitars around 3k for their 'cutting edge'. Multiband sidechain compress guitars from the vox in the mid range if needed. Put a stereo widener on the vox group, use stereo delays as opposed to mono and instead of sending vox to one reverb bus send to 2 subtley different ones- one panned left and one right - its important not to clutter up the centre of a mix when a simple look at a stereo analyser will show you how much L/R space always goes unused. This is just general mixing stuff if you're after mastering specific advice I'd suggest you perhaps delve into M/S processing. Also I like to master with a good multiband compressor which can help with loudness and clamping down on the lows while preserving the attack of your mid range instruments. You can google all this stuff for more detail.