http://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/mix-mistakes

 

1) you should always compensate the gain directly after eq'ing, this is not only the case with boosting but also when attenuating
2) indeed it isn't a problem in in the box mixing, but in contradiction with what u tell, boosting and cutting is essentially the same thing,
only you will need more bands to attain the same outcome

The fact that ssl eq knobs go further then halfway tells us there is more to it,

your explanation would make me not want to boost any frequency's at all.
this is essentially what is wrong with this era of youtube tutorials and internet in itself.

 

The May 2011 issue of Future Music has an in depth article about bit depth and sample rate and dithering and how they correlate for dynamic range and clarity. Very technical, but a good read. (just read it last week).

 

First off, I hear a significant difference between what I listened to last night before I went to sleep shortly after I read your message (11:30 CET) and and six hours later, now when I woke up. I just had to turn the volume WAY down after what sometimes happens in certain mixes that I listen to here at AS...it hurt my ears. I kind of think that it sounds like a phase issue from using equalizers. Maybe it is harsh air bands or high midst that are affecting me so, but I can't listen to it more than this one time until maybe later when I can get into the studio and listen with monitors and throw up some visuals and an equalizer to cut what is the culprit to me.

About the space in the mix, it sounds and seems to me that this mix is over complicated. I know that someone like CLA solos each instrument, boosts the shit out of what he loves in that instrument, compresses the b'jeezus out of it and maybe does it again, and that is fine and good, as one example. But after that is done and we now have the individual instruments sounding as good as they individuallly can be, putting the pieces of the puzzle together is the hard part. Let's assuming that you recorded all the parts well with the least amount of phasing possible. How can you create the width, depth and perhaps height that you want after you are happy with the individual instruments that you have now scattered on the table.

To me there is a very big difference between treatment of a mix consisting of live instruments opposed to songs in the genres of EDM. To me EDM is technology driven and depends much on the movement of its core, lots of animation of LFOs, filters, tons of parts weaving around, big bottoms and silky skinny tops, lots of compression with side chaining because of many competing frequencies, etc. On the other hand, music that is captured with microphones from sounds traveling through space, at least to my sensibilities, can be much less complicated and will use some of the same techniques but does not depend on them. For me, much more depends on the musicians performance and energy and what we expect to see when we listen to a track. Why don't you try this. Get rid off all the reverb and/or delays. Go through the tracks dry and pinpoint the timing issues (as well as any slightly false flats or sharps), try to fix those before moving on. Now, place the instruments and voices where you would like to see them in the sound field. Kick and snare up the middle and the rest of the kit placed accordingly. The guitars opposing each other while the main vocal is center and the backing voice where you wish it to be. Compress the kick and snare individually and try to feel out the release for each in time to the beat. You will have to feel that out. Throw the drums into a buss. Compress the main vocal as well as supporting voice. Leave the guitars alone as they are all about their human energy. If you hear something jumping out manually adjust it with automation just at those spots. Try not to go wild with reverb as the previous mix was to me a great wash of mush and what I thought actually hurt the sense of space that you are trying to create. As you bring up the reverb per track stop when you begin to hear it and then back off ever so slightly. Perhaps the snare gets treated first alone with a plate reverb and then as part of the bus. Throw a glue compressor on the drum buss as well as compressing the reverb of the drums. Use a plate for the kit and a room for everything else. If you feel you need to eq a channel at this point go ahead but use it judiciously, a tiny cut here, a tiny boost there. Maybe you would like to put up a verb on the master to see if it adds any glue to everything to bring in a commonality for everything. This especially should be given with a very slight touch.

 

Last edited by a moderator: Dec 18, 2016

Easiest way for space is using room mics or reverbs and really dial in the early reflections. And there is a tendency to close mic everything now and days, but when you pull a mic back about a foot, the amount of air you get in the signal really makes a huge difference.

Would be great if you uploaded the raw tracks here. I think you can learn a lot with people actually hearing and effecting the tracks on their own and reporting back here with what they did and why.

 

May I suggest to you to check these vids (very informative vids, by the way. There are more tutos in his YT channel)

cheers

ps: I've forgot this one ;-)

 

Lots of great advises allready mentioned. A bit too much highs and mids. But you ask aubout depth...

My aproach to get depth is I allways mix into a MixBus comp. I use the typical glue ssl comp kissing the mix on the mixbus.
MixBus EQ only for headphone or Monitor (room correction).

Do your rough stereofield (panning) as you do the inital gainstaging of every track. Listen and think allready about where in the mix each instrument track/ steam should be. left right - front back. For me than a compression and eq phase follows where i not only try to improove the single track/instrument and seperation. I also (try to) use compression and eq to put the track in the correct postion (back or upfront) only with eq and compression.

Thats the most important stage to get great separation dimension and depth. Thats where all the real good engineers shine. It is unbelivable how much depth a great engineer can creat with compression (eq).

If you add than reverbs and delays on top of an allready created depth you ll get that grammy award winning professional sounding depth everyone of us is looking for. ;) Still trying to master this...

A good haredware eq (even a nebula/acqua plugin - navy - test it you ll be surprised) can add a lot of 3d to single tracks so the whole mix gets more depth.

 

Last edited by a moderator: Dec 18, 2016

The playing of the instruments is important to get good sound.
You can get great mixes with cheap gear and stock plugins.
In my experience EQing is the last resort.
The room acoustics are also very important and how you place the mics is crucial.
Likely what you need is more experience.

 

I can't tell you how to fix it, but I can say what I hear.

It almost sounds mono to me. It sounds very narrow and confined rather than majestic and massive, as it sounds like it should do to my ears.

To me, it needs more width and air. And scale - it doesn't sound like what's happening is as big as it should. Ask Butch Vig? ;)

It sounds good. But after Butch it's got to sound.....bigger?

 

Guys, thanks for listening and most of all for all the suggestions. I've decided to start the mix process over by removing everything from the chains and giving it another go starting with the drums.
I think ultimately this piece will end up being re-recorded as there are some timing issues with the kick which I don't feel can be resolved just by simple edits (overheads are involved). As well, listening to the uneq'd toms, and they SUCK! I know I can get a better capture of them now.
I noticed some timing problems in the bass line too. They could be salvaged, but I'll probably get the bass player to re-record to ensure that he's locked with the new drums. Also, my recording technique has improved greatly since this was recorded as well as the audio hardware and preamps we have so I believe I should be able to get better results.
Also, I've got a few SM57's on the way that I want to record the cabs with. I noticed working with the stems that the cabs were captured too low so I'm sure that's part of the problem.

I am still going to continue working on the current stems, however, as I think the practice is definitely needed.

Just doing the hi pass/lo pass to the drum stems helped with clarity and separation. I will be visiting his site today. I thoroughly read the post. Going to listen to the various passes today. @subGENRE, that's one awesome thread right there!

Going to research this so that I have a full understanding of how to apply it. Thank you for sharing this with me. If I'm understanding this correctly, it's equally important in the recording and mixing stages

Have you got any reference resources that outline these adjustments for depth? The only thing I can figure out on that is to place a drum/mic/vocal in a room and walk around to try to figure out what's happening to the sound as position is changed.

I assume by over complicated, you mean the EQ-ing as I gave every instrument the up-front piece of the action? Also, I was using two different mics for the guitar captures. I've decided to simplify and use just 1. Maybe after I've learned to deal with that, I can blend the other in if still needed.

I am willing to share the stems if anyone would like to take a crack at this one. Please PM me and I'll figure out a way to do that.

 

I've been looking into this as well. I've got a Mackie 8 bus board I'm going to try and see where that takes me. That coupled with my two MOTU interfaces (12 tracks on the HD192 plus 8 tracks on the 1224) should get me going. In your experience, what levels should I shoot for into the board? Would volume adjustments using the board faders be better than volume adjustments in the DAW tracks?

 

Just an update to this. I ran this through the console last night in order to try out analog summing (poor man's version), and here are my initial observations:

1.) Panning seems to have been affected by this. I can definitely hear much more focus, especially with instruments which were sent as isolated mono tracks, and then panned using the board controls. Snare and kick as well as Bass guitar have really got that central focus that I was looking for.
2.) Depth has been affected as well. This could be due to a number of factors not related to OTB summing. I had already went through and re-eq'ed most tracks (Drums, guitar, and bass guitar) which also helped (per @Von_Steyr's suggestion), but I believe the summing did affect this, especially after I ran my MDC on the main bus as an insert and applied very light compression with it. Just enough to add some "glue" (per @superliquidsunshine's suggestion)
3.) This really brought home how much I missed adjusting analog controls/fader/pans/outboard equipment settings.
4.) The improved focus has helped me make better decisions regarding effects send ITB. This resulted in a lot of the wash behind the track being removed which also helped clarity and separation, while still gluing things into the same space.

There is now a cable jungle behind my rack and the console. I swear I used every XLR, TS 1/4 patch, and TRS 1/4 patch cable I own doing this. Even had to scavenge cables from my subwoofer setup. I worked on the rewire for two four hour sessions, but went slow and took my time so as to not make any mistakes.
Anyways, hookup/track setup mostly went like this. I have 12 outputs on a MOTU HD192, and 8 outputs on a MOTU 1224. So 20 outputs total. I tried to send the "important" tracks through the HD192 as I believe the convertors are superior to the 1224.
Lead Vocal got it's own output, each track of the drums had it's own output, and bass guitar had it's own output. Guitars were grouped on a stereo output. Backing vocals were grouped on a stereo output, and all effects busses were grouped to a stereo output (together). 2 buss got compression as an insert pre-fader.
Main out from the console was routed back into the HD192 and recorded back into the DAW on a stereo buss.

I really wish I had a decent outboard reverb unit. All I've got at the moment is an old Digitech DSP 128 which I hear is a really gritty reverb. I may still hook it up and try sending some stuff through it just to see how it affects dimension versus the ITB verbs I'm using, but hardly feel it will be a fair comparison to something like Altiverb or Abbey Road Plates. Still, it may give me an idea of if I should entertain the idea of adding a decent quality reverb to add to my outboard gear.

I will be reworking some of the tracks this weekend and, pending results of that, should be able to post up a sample of this next week for anyone to listen and hear the differences. Primarily I will be working on gain staging (per @martel80) both ITB (I believe I've been gain staging Nebula all wrong) and OTB as well as some more equ-ing and adjustment of any compression being used within the track. I've been reading on depth also being involved in those latter 2 adjustments.

Once again, thanks to all you fine folks out there for the listens and suggestions and critiques. Hope everyone has a Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays/whatever you celebrate this time of year!

 

Thanks, @martel80. I will give this a shot soon. Thanks for the summing suggestion too, I'm very pleased at the results of that. It was very interesting to hear the difference between panning in the DAW vs panning on the console. I noticed that there are "panning law" options. I wonder if that could be the reason for the difference in focus.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, etc.!

 

I have done the same in the past when in a dense mix I just couldn't get the vocal to be the focus of the track if copious amounts of compression with my trusty old Meek wouldn't do the trick, although I never made did it with adding so many additional stereo tracks, just one was all I thought of doing. This worked well.

 

Uh oh, was going to go back and check that vocal thickening trick that @martel80 had posted up and it's gone. Don't see his user name also. @superliquidsunshine, you don't happen to have that link saved?

 

@digitaldragon ..

 

another great one!

 

Everybody needs a little "trim" now and then. Thank you Warren.

 

Thank you!

 

Hardware in the analog domain. Use -18dBFS = 0vu gainstaging and try an Acustica product across the 2 bus. Try the demo version of CORAL.