The only EQ I ever use is Melda. All others sound plastic to me.

 

Spencer, I was following you on the other thread. You mentioned you hoped others were learning as well, the world needs more people like you. For sure I was paying close attention.

Having creative freedom is all I really want, I'm ready to stop feeling like I want to slam my head into a brick wall

I followed along with what you did on the master for the Dance track and already I like what it did. I'll have to take a look at purchasing the melda plugins or at least demoing them.

The vocals for my part are still not where I want them to be but I'll keep trying

Here I am with Spencer's mastering

 

The more knowledge you have the more creative freedom you get. Its hard to be creative when you don't know how to achieve what you want.
I wont be able to listen to anything probably for 24hours.
My new mac connects by firewire800 to my m-audio interface by firewire400 which connects to my Beyer DT900 Pro headphones via sonarworx headphone plugin. All of which I cant do without to trust my ears.
Spencer

 

Hey Richy
Just had a listen to your track.
I have never mixed any of this sort of music but the first thing I would say is there is no space.
Everything is going all the time. No color.
I dont think you can judge anything till you remove some things like the continuous keyboard in some places.
The kick is not loud enough for me. But listening to me could get you into trouble.
The vocals are also relentless. I have heard a lot of this music and the succesfull stuff has a lot more room.
I cant pass any opinions on sound until I can here some space.
Spencer

 

Sounds worse than the original (no offense).

Either way, this technically is not a bad mix. There isn't a specific thing that I can point at and say "aha, that's it, fix that".
If you are not fully satisfied with it you should get somebody else to mix it. For me personally, the beat ain't banging enough. Especially the kick and the compressed 808s aren't hitting you well enough. So i would start from there. And, you know, a different mixer will result in a different sound overall.

 

not my type of music, but sounds ok to me, the kick maybe needs more punch, vocals are nice tho,keep it up

 

i like the overall style/track a lot, really nice vocals except for that other (?) rapper stressing to catch up sounding nasal, and the f%%€ lame "living the life" crap, its so darn tiring and brings down the whole experience.

the mix is regularly ok though.

what i def hear is a bit of lack of crisp/air.
and the kick range is to hard/snappy for this track so it doesn't fit at all. i suspect that is what is creating the havoc and feeling of something been wrong.
so at least for me the "problems" are the lack of luster (high freq) and the wrong kick.

 

Last edited: Nov 30, 2017

Gotcha, I'm going to work on creating space. I also thought the kick was low, I was scared that if I I processed it the way I wanted I would run into some issues since it was pushing pretty hard into the limiter

The one thing that I struggle with Spencer is that my original mix sounds crunchy in my car, things get distorted when I turn it up loud and I have no idea why. Since other music sounds clean I think there are some things I'm doing wrong and it's preventing me from mixing how I want it to sound. Instead I'm mixing to try and not do something wrong

Noah Shebib is someone I look up to, his mixes are loud and clean!

Definitely I've been fighting with this 808, I've been trying to find a way to hit harder but everything I throw at it is failing me. I don't think the sample has enough sub frequencies, when I try and add some artificially (LoAir by waves is what I tried) it just didn't sound good enough to me. I like the high end of the sample it sounds musical

I have a friend who is going to mix this track for me but that doesn't mean I want to give up, each track is a learning experience, ultimately I'm going to want to do my own mixing. It's half the fun!

Thanks DJK, I'll try to beef it up a little. I understand this type of song could rub some people the wrong way and that's not really what I want. I think the frustration of mixing comes across in my voice

I hope I can make tracks that everyone can feel good about!

@EddieXx I appreciate the feeback
"%%€ lame "living the life" crap" I'm not sure why I write music like this; I'll work on it.. lol. I really try to be genuine so that I can really learn what works and what doesn't. I suppose the music I like for the most part has this theme since my favorite artists are drake and wiz khalifa. I really like some EDM artists as well that do all their own mixing and sound design, I can appreciate their technical and musical skills. Xilent and Virtual Riot are worth mentioning for sure. Or maybe I just have a bad taste in music

I'll see if I can add more air and I'll look to replace the snappy kick

Here I am with this mix and although I can't revert back to the original I'll do my best to make it better. This is before I read your comments so I'll have to go revisit it again with those things in mind. As far as I can remember the changes I made were:
-Re-did my vocal chain completely
-Added some parallel compression on the kick with a dbx 160 plugin
-Raised the bass levels with the multiband compressor on the master channel
-Tried to take out some ~4k hz on my voice it was a little harsh in earbuds
-Changed the reverb on the one of the vocal busses to an altiverb with some eq on it
-A few small changes to the beat



Thanks guys,
Rich

 

You still have some compressor pump baked in, making it loud is going to highlight that.

That really low really loud sub some where between A0 and B0 is probably what is making your compressor pump, can you even hear 27Hz or more accurately feel 27Hz it is at the very bottom of human hearing range and considered infra-bass which means you feel it on the hairs on your arms and the back of your neck - but can barley hear it with your ears. It also takes a serious playback system... is you target audience going to actually have the means to feel/hear that sub, without having to crank up to permanent hearing loss SPL levels.

It's also a bit of PITA to take care of during post-processing and if you hand off your track to someone else you are also giving up control as to how you want to handle that.

It is nice to have it as an accent on large systems at low levels, but as steady sub it begs the question if you are hearing it or the synth envelope as it comes from somewhere around 400Hz and decays to that steady 30Hz peak. If you want that synth sub - consider a shelf or a HP filter around 45-60Hz to attenuate the the steady peak down and highlight the harmonics that are a bit higher.

As it is, I don't really hear anything that would keep you from pushing this track absurd loudness levels if that is what you are after, -7LU to -6LU once you fix that sub triggered pumping. You also have quite a bit of room in the 160-270Hz range to push more bass and low mids into your song. Consider restructuring and ULF sub up a bit higher or filtering out the sub-sonic aspect and layering it with something that has more presence.

 

Hey mozee I think we better do our gig and sort this.
Look I have to say I don't know how to mix this sort of music but I download the Billboard top 100 once a month and listen to as much as I can stand which really never gets me past 40.
The variation in bottom end is just astounding. I don't know where anyone hears that absurd bottom end.
1. Maybe people cant afford good systems that give that bottom and the mix compensates. I see it on MTV and the subs kill the sound.
2. Maybe the cheap systems kill that sub shit.
3. MP3 maybe sorts it a bit.
4. Bottom end in clubs is controlled by their subs and any track with huge subs has to be rolled of in a club.
5. The clowns in the 4 wheel drives with the big Subs and HiHat only. Who cares.

Now I say control it to where it sounds great on anything you play it on.
I am not saying I am right on this but I cant see any other solution. Especially with Radio and TV using 8 Band limiters to make everything the same. And what happens here is that huge sub shit confuses their algorithms.

Look for fuck sake start by Hi passing and Lo Passing every track. See other thread for details.
Spencer

 

Last edited: Dec 1, 2017

Hey Rich
Your vocal sounds are great don't change them. You could add some throw delays to lines but overall they are not the problem.
Spencer

 

hehe, ey you do this really good so don't stress. your sound a bit like the new generation of californian rap. some of those new kids are not pushing the classic bling cheap shots (at least not that often), some are talking about their own experiences growing up, yung pinch for instance been sensible/sensitive.

you sing/rap so that opens a whole lot of possibilities to create your own. i love hip hop since day one but im VERY picky with what i can enjoy to hear nowadays, "bitch my money my car" don't cut it anymore.

so go with what you love, you will always find your own sound.
by the way

i highly recommend you to insert a reference track into your first audio channel (bypassing the master, or on youtube) with a "hit" in the style you like. then you can rapidly hear what frequencies are not right.

legends 6 was the bestest I've heard so far all the levels were better (the latest version i havent heard since it said "still loading"), still lacking the brightness but that is easy fixable. the original track was very boxy, if you just reference-listen you will hear that at once

 

Last edited: Dec 2, 2017

In the intro there is a resonant ringing between 2.5KHz to 5KHz from the bell synthesizer sound, as the loudness and SPL go up, its going to sound like sand and the artifacts are not pleasant.

The double bass drum + sub always triggers a hard pump from what am guessing is a master buss compressor....

The overall balance of the vocals is fine - except for a bit too much presence, which can be a personal choice.

voice 1 post into has some plausive and sibilant bursts that should be attenuated, they might be coming from an effect, or a gate, those hard fast attack transient clicks will also become more obvious are the signal is compressed.

first occurrence of "Don't trust anybody, so am feeling...." a bit too close to the microphone. Should be re-done if possible if not some by hand automation to fix those plausives as that capsule gets overloaded.

voice 2 is well done, could use a bit off De-essing and a lot less presence, it cuts the ears as it is, better to take care of it in the mix rather than leave it up to a D-EQ or MB-C to level that out.

The mix needs some space, it's just dripping in too much stuff that is constantly bumping into other stuff.

Those HH and the bass drum to a lesser extent need to have a serious fight with a compressor if you are aiming for loud, take a bit more control of how you want your transients dealt with. If you are not comfortable lowering the attack to much or can not get the sound you want in the low end, at least take control of the HF transients as they are a bit more of a compromise to control in post.

You can not push 5K on every track, make some choices, it is very crowded between 5-11KHz, between the reverbs, the EQ and whatever else is getting pushed up there you need to make some decisions. The stuff above 8-10KHz can be balanced easily in post but if you have an idea of where you want to be up there, best to handle it yourself, rather than leave it up to someone else.

Be a bit careful with how much overall distortion you have in the original sample, even order harmonics are fine, but THD should be kept a bit low especially since you are pushing a lot of air in the low end. If you are not careful in the mix, there is very little anyone can do to remove all the fuzz and mud that will pushed up when the signal gets compressed.

As is your track can get cranked up, your most serious issues are that pumping master bus compressor, a pump in the drum buss somewhere, and the fast attack transients on voice 1. You buss compressors shouldn't be attenuating the signal so much that an audible volume drop occurs in the body of the track. You are just trying to catch peaks and fatten up the signal a bit - you are not trying to control broadband dynamics with them. Resort to your channel compressors to control the signals that are causing large spikes of DR in your bus compressors or remove the buss compressors and let the ME or yourself if you are capable deal with the large transients in post. They can be cliped off or processed transparently if need be, but spending time with a DC-EX to try to fix that pumping isn't anyone wants to do - unless they really love, or your paying them enough for them to fake it for a few hours.

 

I do have a couple of things to add to mozee's very in detail advice.
I think the subs are too lite. But not the 27hz.
This is a creative decision but back off the fx on the vocal. The delays are too loud but the throws are ok.
Spencer

 

Sorry I haven't posted in a few days it's been pretty heavy at work

Wanted to give you guys an update. First thank you for your posts I must've read them 10+ times, I really appreciate your help and comments. They've pushed me in the right direction. I've worked on this track a lot now, It's almost done and I'm happy with the outcome.

How I reach loudness and clarity is compression/limiting in stages. Each track gets appropriate compression and their corresponding buses are then treated. I basically tore it down and built it back up, I realized my treatments were overly complicated and were not working well. I carefully high passed all bass to take out pretty much everything below 30z. The loudness in the end comes from the SSL compressor that has ~5db gain reduction and then cranking the makeup gain (am using Spencer's mastering chain) plus little bit of bx digital EQ which has a great stereo width feature. The bus compressor really is really only clamping down the kick and snare. It boosts up the noise floor quite a bit so I'll have to find a way around that but I'm reaching a much higher RMS without the distortion I was facing before.

I had to switch out the 808 just because of clarity, it had some nasty elements in the mid range that weren't complimentary. The new one is pretty good it's from the L.MD kit if you guys want to find it

From the other thread you guys turned me onto Reverberate which is fantastic. I found the bricasti IRs and am having a blast with them.

For anyone struggling like I am I recommend you check out some of Cymatics templates, they have some great producers that show you some good techniques IMO but everythings subjective and there may be better ways to accomplish what it is you guys are after so don't take my word for it

I'm a little reluctant on posting it because I think I'm pretty close to releasing it however if you guys want to hear I can't say no

Hope you guys are enjoying yourselves,
Rich

 

Hey Rich
It is really cool that you have taken on advice and can now see what your doing.
Its only up from here. Just be open to learning something new every day.
The disadvantage in not working in a studio with engineers and musicians is there very little feedback.
It is so important to get other peoples feedback.
Spencer