So I am in the midst of starting a new track which involves a bunch of kontakt string, flute, and brass libraries alongside some EDM heavy kicks, snares, hi-hatsand 808s...All of this is going to be under a lead voice, that is loud, and operatic. How should I go at getting this ready for a mixing, and mastering engineer? I may do minimal subtractive eqing, but I want to focus mainly on gain staging properly. Is there any advice you can give to gain staging synths alongside orchestral samples, and a heavy operatic lead? Keep in mind I am not too familiar with the depth of leveling, and gain-staging so please try to explain any terms that you may pass as casual, but may be unusual to a amateur. Thank you!

 

I'm a bit confused, why do you want to mix it if

That's his/her job then.

 

Wikipedia:

Gain staging is the process of managing the relative levels in each step of an audio signal flow to prevent introduction of noise and distortion.

Nothing relevant anymore as long as you work "in the box" and without too much "magic vintage noise floor components". And if it is relevant, you should think about how much noise floor you need.

What most people think it means is not called gain staging but "reading the manual of the components and behave like it's recommended there".

 

Last edited: Mar 29, 2019

hi. if you give the project to a mixing engineer, render all tracks as wav/aiff and give it to him, he will sort out the gain staging. don't apply eq/compression on any of the tracks, give him raw material. what might sound good to you soloed probably won't in a mix. don't try to mix it, you will only do damage. been there done that

happy songwriting !

 

Well the thing is that I have so much going on. I am also going to try to get so much done on the instrumental before I do a record session, and I have to anticipate that too. I guess the big question is where I should keep my levels at, and how should I quantify their gain to make sure I get the most out of their raw sound.

 

doesnt really matter where your levels/faders cause you give the track to a mix engineer. just make sure they don't go into red. but since you using vsti's (kontakt libraries), lower levels can be achieved after recording, you just dial back the master fader on kontakt's interface. make sure you are not clipping (going to red) when you turn midi to audio. even better : ask the mixing engineer if he has the same kontakt libraries/daw, so you can give him the project as it is. with digital audio, you can keep the levels really low, they can be blown up later during processing/mixing. what's the project may i ask? how many tracks? what instruments? midi only? audio too? whats the colour of your socks ?

 

keep faders under -10 to -12 and leave the master fader alone, you need alot of headroom for the mastering guy to do his work, clipping is a big no no

 

Be mindful of using fart samples. I hear they are hot these days round these parts.... You could also start with pink noise set to -18dbfs then bring each soloed track up in volume along with the pink noise until you just start to hear each track above the noise. That could get you a rough all faders up mix. Then mute the noise and start your real mix from there...

 

+1

Usually I am the one always preaching, everyone should be doing what they are the best at.. composing/mixing/mastering. But, to be honest, in this cruel world you are often confronted with cases when you should know/understand at least the basics about mixing. So I never discard comments geared towards improving the art. One case is obviously when you're making a "demo". The other would be, when you want the mix to have some aesthetic impact (like a nice throbbing sidechain pump, or the drums panned all the way to the L ;))

Not so long ago I was watching Fab Dupont mixing (yes, I know - just awarded the most arrogant mix eng by AS community, along CLA, of course..;). The artist (band) obviously sent him the stems, but also their own mix. When he started, soon the mix became clearer, snappier, w/ more air ..all those good things. But at some point he realized, the muddy thing the band sent him was "musically" better. So he made two steps back and tried to catch the vibe, before polishing it.. my point being:

The project as described seems quite complex. There is no harm to give the mix engineer your take on it, your idea how it should sound.. along with the raw stems (take advice above). Rather concentrate on your part. And good luck, of course..

 

It's not arrogance, it's just that all the "top" engineers today think they are still living in the 60s and 70s you know...THE GOLDEN AGE !!

 

I'm a mix enthusiast, I think the most important thing regarding levels is to establish what the focal point of each part of the composition is. That should be the clearest most defined element playing at any given time. Your question is legitimate because if the mix guy can't distinguish the focal point and you have a lot of elements going on he may get confused. Also note they tend to remove sounds they deem unnecessary or making something too busy as well.

 

Thank you for your response, I just want to make sure I can do everything in my power to make the ¨raw¨ mix as best as it can be...in the sense that I do not have to worry about having to go back to the original, because there is something I could have done to make it clearer from the beginning. Some terms that come to mind our phase issues, which I do not know if those are problems that can come from the way the original sample or synth is being outputed. I have heard from many people that digital synths like serum should be manipulated from the source, and your faders should be kept at zero, while sample based vsts like Kontakt should be manipulated through your faders. I do not know the validity of these statements, but knowing the answer I think can help lead me in the right directions.

 

Yah I guess a better title would be ¨Preparing a Mix¨

 

I made a solid rendition of the instrumental about 2 months ago (sadly it got corrupted, but I know why) and I had about 72 tracks going. This was mainly all midi, but I had some live recordings along this too, and I plan to add more once summer hits, and I have the time to go to this recording engineer who agreed to record me out of gratis...which I am grateful for...The only track that was lacking was my voice, which is really the center of it all. So another questions arises...When I start this project again, should I do the recording session of my voice first and build my instrumental around it? Or should I do my best to get the instrumental in a correct place before I do anything regarding my voice.

 

Last edited by a moderator: Feb 27, 2020

Why? Can he not pull the volume down by himself?

 

Serum is based on samples too,because it uses wavetables.I think you should use the same rules for every track or instrument or recordings,your levels around 0dBVU with a VU meter.And mix with your console's faders in your DAW.

Some people will say it's a nonsense to use VU meters todays and you just have to not be higher than 0 dB Full Scale for each of your tracks,but personnally I always use VU meters and I find the final result better.

 

Last edited: Mar 30, 2019

Woww,you're a great singer mate!!

 

Make sure you have enough headroom on each track a good place will be -6dBFS .This is needed when the engineer does boosts on an equalizer or some saturation plugin which has some pre-built gain. Otherwise you really have to ask the mix engineer what's his/her preference.For example if you send CLA a 300 track project be ready to hear some scolding from him. CLA likes to have projects which have a small track count(usually 24 to 48 tracks because it's preferable for his SSL console).You really will get the best answers from the engineer who will mix because if there's anything I learnt by watching hours of the top guys sharing their thought processes, is that their methods are completely different from one another.

 

I suppose you will send the mixing engineer an audio file (wav) of every single track/channel? If this is correct and you go for 16bit resolution (which you will probably do, due to the sheer amount of tracks) all you have to care for is not to have levels above 0dB in every single channel. If the peaks reaches -3dB or -6dB doesn't matter at all.
If you what to 'pre-level' the single channels to give the engineer an impression of where the focus should be, which instruments are more important to you and which are less and send him a stereo pre-mix too, you have to take care that the input of the master out doesn't cross 0dB aswell, ofc. To achieve this, just set the master's fader at 0dB, don't insert any plugin and lower all channel faders as far as necessary.
With just a few channels these will probably end up at -6dB with a bunch of channels you probably need to lower them way more than -12dB.

Concerning the phase issues, yes, a lot of synth/sampler sounds already have them. These are caused by a bad use of time-dependant fx like chorus, delay or reverb. A correlation meter will help you to find them. These meters display values between -1 (total cancellation) and +1 (no cancellation at all). Values between 0 and +1 are recommended, the closer to +1 the better, ofc.
Your DAW probaly has such a meter, if not, you'll find some free meters easily online.
To get rid of these issues can be a bit tricky. You'll have to find the cause and change the concerning values (amount of fx, delay time, pre-delay time...).

 

You can use restoration tools and just de-noise or fix any problems with your home recordings these days, so you don't really need a pro studio. Try making and mixing smaller projects with like 5-10 tracks max for learning the basics of mixing, not 72. You can learn pretty fast to mix your own music.( I mean, people are slapping OTT and Soungoodizer, and other 1 knob "magic buttons" on each track and still manage to get decent final results... )