This'd be the school that never released singles?

 

Nice post

 

Here’s my punt on best mixing practice. Hope its useful


It is usually best to listen and mix on decent monitors as this gives you the best chance to hear accurately what you are doing. Once a mix is progressing its always worth listening to it on different speakers, headphones etc. Don’t over compress the mix as if you are looking to put it up on Spotify etc they use a pretty fierce loudness compression and if over compressed already your mix will tend to be squashed by this added compression and sound flat and less punchy. Go between monitors and headphones and don’t monitor either too loud as it can cause ear fatigue as well as possible damage. The key is a constant comfortable monitor level


Below Headphone mixing info anyone interested.


When using headphones, the way our ears receive sound, and hence the way our brains analyse and process it, is radically different to the way things work when we use loudspeaker monitors. When wearing headphones, each ear will only hear the audio on the left or right channel, but when listening to a pair of speakers in a room both ears will hear the signals produced by both the left and right loudspeakers. The timing differences associated with this acoustic 'crosstalk' between the two channels and each ear lie at the core of the 'stereo illusion'. This is what allows us to perceive a “stereo” image between the speakers, and coincident-mic and stereo-panning techniques (which employ only level differences between the two channels to convey the spatial information) rely entirely on this acoustic crosstalk to work properly.


When listening to ordinary stereo material via headphones, this aural timing information is missing and so we have only the differences in level between the two channels to go on; hence the stereo image can suffer as this perceptive difference is what makes judging stereo signals and panning mono ones so much more difficult on headphones.

 

A "precise" chart is good indeed, but not every instrument is tuned or made exactly the same. Experience using your ears is the golden key here. I love to take breaks every 30-45min get some silence, let your ears "sober up" then go back to mix on same speaker/headphones, switching to hear what is clashing/fitting with the tracks. With headphones you ca get a lot more mid range starting at that lower 1k so its good at LOW db to mix vox/sn gtr etc... With monitors you can get a better over all balance on the bass/sub, but also keep in mind with monitors its easy to keep adding more bass (and muddddd) thus trashing your mid-range mix. Mixing comes from the heart. Do what feels right.

Peace

 

Last edited: Jun 14, 2019

Great information, thanks OP

 

Great post, definitely using this as a reference, thank you!

 

Some the things that can really build your skill is mixing live sound in venues a bit, recording tracking mixing setting up the microphones preamps and recording in a well treated room in the studio.
Once you done these things it carries over well to synthetic music .
There's something about a natural balanced sound coming from mics and a good room .
That's puts all the frequency areas of a sound into perspective . The width and front to back depth of a sound all these things .
Then when you go to create say pure synth music .
In your mind you can balance the texture or transient response with the other dimension frequency response. ( And hear how those 2 parameters are different)
Because without that life experience ,you see a lot of people say attempting to use eq to adjust a transient issue , or use compression or limiting to adjust a brightness situation.
It's very important to distinguish transient from frequency response .

 

Mixing Hip-Hop using Plugin Alliance Plugins Only

Kick = bx_Console SSL 4000 G ,SPL Vitalizer x2, SPL Transient Designer Plus, bx_Digital V3 mix,Elysia Mpressor, Black Box Analog Design HG-2, bx_limiter

Snare = bx_Console SSL 4000 G ,SPL Vitalizer x2, SPL Transient Designer Plus, bx_Digital V3 mix,Elysia Mpressor, Black Box Analog Design HG-2, bx_limiter

Hi-hat = bx_Console SSL 4000 G ,SPL Vitalizer, bx_Digital V3 mix,Elysia Mpressor, Black Box Analog Design HG-2, bx_limiter
Cymbals = bx_Console SSL 4000 G ,SPL Vitalizer, bx_Digital V3 mix,Elysia Mpressor, Black Box Analog Design HG-2, bx_limiter
Overhead = bx_Console SSL 4000 G ,SPL Vitalizer, bx_Digital V3 mix,Elysia Mpressor, Black Box Analog Design HG-2, bx_limiter
Ambience = bx_Console SSL 4000 G ,SPL Vitalizer, bx_Digital V3 mix,Elysia Mpressor, Black Box Analog Design HG-2, bx_limiter
Drums Buss = bx_Console SSL 4000 G ,SPL Vitalizer, bx_Digital V3, Elysia Mpressor, Black Box Analog Design HG-2, bx_limiter

Electric Bass - Ampeg SVT - VR, Bx_Console 4000 E, ,SPL Vitalizer, bx_digital v3 mix, Vertigo VSM -3 or Black Box Analog Design HG-2, bx_limiter

Strings Ensemble - Bx_Console SSL 4000 G,bx_digital v3 mix, SPL Vitalizer, bx_digital v3, Elysia Alpha Comp, Black Box Analog Design HG-2, bx_limiter

Grand Piano - Bx_Console SSL 4000 G,bx_digital v3 mix, SPL Vitalizer, bx_digital v3, Elysia Alpha Comp, Black Box Analog Design HG-2, bx_limiter

Master Buss - Bx_digital v3, SPL IRON, bx_Masterdesk, Black Box Analog Design HG-2, bx_limiter

 

Double Bass comments here on different posts are interesting.
There are so many things to consider - Is it arco or pizzicato. Is the style classical or jazz because the pizz techniques are completely different and not only generate a different tone and attack, the bassist if they play jazz, will hate most of the settings recommended so far. The quality of the DB also determines the volume, resonance, overtones, clarity, definition and areas that run into microphone placement and more.
However with a jazz DB player the midrange choices are critical. Too much it sounds too nasal and too little it sounds like custard. The funny thing is that if you want definition for a classical DB they almost work too. Look it up in major studios that have recorded a lot of double bass.

EDIT: Go onto youtube and listen to John Patituchi, Christian McBride, Neils Henning-Orsted Pederson, Ray Brown and Brian Bromberg both in studio and live. That will give anyone wanting to know what a decent jazz DB sound should represent.
Gary Karr or Francois Rabbath for classical Arco DB.

 

Last edited by a moderator: Jul 3, 2020

Frequency table (in Hz)

 

Not gonna lie that frequency chart in the first post helped me a lot.
Made my mixes a lot better

 

Interesting..

I wouldn't class 80hz as being anywhere near the rumble ...
That's more in the sub 40hz zone. Of course you need a good room AND good monitors that extend very low, or a sub (or preferably a pair), to really hear what's happening in that range.

 

What an awesome post, can't believe I've just seen it now and it's from 2011! I will say that after going through this awesome list, that you need to every once in a while forget all the "rules" and experiment for yourself.

Doing that has been the biggest source of improvement for me over the years. Just experimenting, making "mistakes" and seeing what happens if I overdo something, or do something differently. That's how you gain experience and that's also how you develop your own style and not just sound like everyone else.

Just my two cents.

 

The post is almost older than me
What CPUs were used then?

!!!Oldie but Goldie!!! Like old wine!!!
Immortal post

 

In the digital age, many mastering engineers use digital audio workstations (DAWs) and plugins for processing. However, some engineers choose to incorporate analog summing into their mastering chain. Analog summing involves sending the mixed audio tracks through a high-quality analog summing mixer before the final stage of mastering.

The idea is to harness the inherent sonic characteristics of analog summing to glue the mix together and add a touch of analog warmth and depth. Analog summing can impart subtle harmonic distortion and natural compression, which can enhance the overall cohesiveness and richness of the mix.

 

The return of the inmortal threads lol
That video alone answers over 90% of all questions posted through the year.

 

Almost, the DA-AD conversion can do this, the summing itself doesn't do anything different than your DAW - which already has been proven several times.

 

My 2 cents.
Mix as low as -20 -30 db (every track)
The room you have left over can be used to put whatever in it.
Say for example...
You got 10 tracks with compression and clipper on it.
When you keep the 10 traks UNDER -20 dB, and then Master it,
it will come out cleaner on -0.2dB then when you created the whole
10 tracks @ - say -5dB or even -1dB what most music is like.
In other words, keep as much room (depends on your soundcard how much dB)
-20 to -30 is good.
For classical music it could be from -40 to -60dB.

The harder you push on the Master Bus, the more crap and loss you get.

The secret is... Mix as low dB as you can, and then pump it up to the max.
That is why nowdays Digital music sound so clean.
It's not about how hard i can push every track...
It's about whats the whole package.
Try it yourself.
Take a song and reduce the dB for every track to it get's plus minus -30 -40dB
Then render it, and master it.
You will be amazed.

 

Last edited: Dec 16, 2023

Before starting balancing try to add a trimmer on every channel and boost till it goes to 0rms then balance the whole project. Low the volume from your playback device to avoid ear bleeding.
That will help you to get more loudness when you will be ready for mastering.