I saw how helpful you were to the other member here I was hoping you'd be able to save me as well

My mixes tend to distort at high volumes much easier then commercial mixes, I can't figure it out for the life of me. Also, soundcloud completely butchered it, I hear a lot of artifacts that it added.

My master chain is this:
Fab Filter Pro Q getting rid of anything below ~20hz
Brain Worx digital EQ to increase the stereo width
Ozone imager to make it even wider in the mid range and decrease the stereo width of the bass
oxford limiter just using the enhance feature (11%)
ozone spectral shaper (TBH idk even know that this is doing it just sounded good)
Finaly A.O.M invisable limiter at +4db, it's not even hitting any gain reduction in fear of distortion

I have a LoFi plugin on the synth to decrease the sample rate to take the high end out (decreased to 7kz)

I know how smart you guys are though; what are my issues?



I made the beat and the voice is me as well

There it is, let the roast begin. Thankful for any help at all

 

Well....

Listening to your lyrics you are already living the dream and are financially at the top. So why not just buy into a quality mixing engineer?

 

This is actually a cool track, vocal production and lyrics are catchy and clean. It might be worth having a pro mix and master an EP of your music to shop. That said, a couple things come to mind when hearing the mix. I can hear the compressor pumping on the master and I don't really like what its doing to the dynamics overall, I think the distortion you're referring to is coming from compression/limiters, maybe try to apply some mastering eq and multi-band compression techniques instead of just smashing everything in a brickwall limiter. Also some people always roll off 20hz and below to make more headroom but I don't think you need more headroom in this mix, more sub might be beneficial to this kind of track so I might try leaving that 20hz in. I like the track!

 

Not hearing distortion at lower levels my end but the bass needs to come down a couple (or more) of db if you want it to play full volume without crapping out people's speakers

 

I just like mixing my dude

 

Thanks! I'll definitely think about having my music professionally mixed, I really would love to just be able to do it myself though!!
I'm impressed you can hear compression on the master, I'll have to train my ears more to that. I'm going to take all the things you said and apply it right now

Duly noted, I'll take the bass down. Funny though I really thought my bass level wasn't loud enough xP

 

I think its mainly the limiter reacting to parts of the bass which seem to hit harder at certain points which to me feels like its pumping a bit at times. Maybe try decreasing the release time on the mastering limiter or leveling the bass out more. Its all trial and error. Seriously your vocal production is great which is the most important part of the track.

 

Here I am, bass lowered, a little 50hz taken out of the kick to help not blow up speakers and no limiting. Peaks at like -3.5db and I still feel like soundcloud destroys it

 

Post us a WAV/FLAC of your final mix with nothing on the master. You're pretty close to a sweet sweet sound, man!

Soundcloud is famous for being Soundrape. Not much you can do about that, and life's too short to fret about that. I would give it the standard -1.0db dead space so that you have a better chance of not being mangled by the MP3 codec, and aside from that, no special consideration for SC or anyone else.

The Ozone widener is all over the place in everybody's tracks in modern hip-hop, but my tip would be to consider taking it outside and shooting it dead in the dark of night. It's doing its widening thing and that's great, but it is also subtly messing up a ton of other things for you that you likely won't notice unless you're specifically listening for them. It can sometimes smear instruments in weird ways making them feel thin or ethereal, that's why it's especially dangerous on the master track. If you get your track sounding just right without it, you can later add it, and really listen for the problems, so that you tune it for the best tradeoff of extra wideness vs bullshit.

 

Cool track! up 2db with that deep bass again ;)
Maybe try to spreed the background vocals hard left/right could create a deep sense of deep eh But the track is sounding nice as it is ... keep them coming.

 

mix always in mono... try it, u will see why.. search "lifestyledidit mixing in mono" on youtube...

 

I like your synths and drum sounds.
I think your vocals are too prominent in the mix, especially at the first verse. In fast verse (with the "Success!") the vocals are mixed well imo.

Also, your drums and synths are all in the bass/upper mids, leaving your voice the only thing filling out the low mids. This is fine, but it makes your voice come off as not having very much power, which doesn't match with the "I got money and success" theme of the track. Maybe do more double tracking? Maybe send some of that vocal stem to a saturator to grit it up? Maybe put more stuff in the low mids to support the vocals?

Finally: I think your production is really good, like at 80%, and your technical skill is pretty good too. I think the area you could put the most work into is songwriting/beat making. Your beat is nice and catchy, but it doesn't change up too much throughout the song. There's no build and release. There's no "oh shit" moment where everything changes. It starts at "this is pretty cool" and stays there for 2 minutes. Maybe work on making more dynamic tracks?

Just my 2 cents.

 

Bass too low now

 

First, thank you so much, I'll take your word for the ozone thing (I took it off), everyone is trying to make their track sound huge, I was trying to follow suit

They were panned half way, I corrected it and hard panned left and right!

Recently I've just started trying this, and in fact I did this in mono haha. I have a feeling that won't make you feel good about my mixing in mono skills

Thank you bro, I love producing and creating beats and then going back to make a song and mixing it. I really do struggle with making builds and releases and changes like that, that will be something I'll have to work on. I took your suggestions and sent my vocals to an aux with ableton stock saturation and also the bx one. I really wouldn't be making music if it weren't for this community so I really value everyone here that is helping me with this, thank you guys. Right now I'm stuck, chasing my tail, questioning everything that I'm doing and it's taking a toll on me.

I'm the first guy, the fast verse is a another artist who goes by Yung Rich, a soundcloud artist that reached out to me. Since we both have rich in our names it was only natural to make a song like this. I really kinda envy the mix on his vocals

Vocal Down
Bass up
Master FX off
Hosted on Audio Mack which should be higher quality (please let me know if there's a better option)
BG panned hard

 

Now I have just put in a new Mac and the firewire port has changed so I have no audio till new cable arrives.
But I can tell from your mastering chain you have no hope.
Get rid of all that Ozone crap. Look at the Mastering chain I setup on the other thread.
Spencer

 

By the way forget mixing in mono or trying to make it sound good on an IPhone.
Spencer

 

I just checked out the mix you did on the "Dance Don't Stop" track thread, scanned all your posts but can't seem to find your master chain you mentioned though, can you help a fellow out and point me in the direction. Your master on that was phenomenal!

 

https://audiosex.pro/threads/need-help-with-the-mix-last-restort-completely-stuck.32417/page-8
With add ons on page-11

Hope you can put that together. Its not ideal and these are not the plugins I use. I use mostly MeldaProduction plugins with the exception of Satin and the Sonnox Limiter

 

Thanks so much! Really amazed and humbled, I had no idea these plugins could do that. I thought I saw you mention using Charly to boost 2.5 but didn't see it in the chain, did that fit at the very beginning of the chain? My apologies if I confused that. Thanks again!

 

I put Charley Before the output limiter just to drive it a bit harder. Usually the oxford limiter.
Spencer