I some of you guys have good sound systems.. Please help me pick 1

 

I personally think I should go with Master 3 - I used some extra limiting with FAB PRO - L on master 1 and pushed it a little too hard I think and it kind of doesent feel as tight as master 2 or 3. Master 2 is similar to Master 3 except there is master 3 was pushed to 0.1 and Master 2 has a little more headroom.

 

Ok my friend, first is good you have a rigid skin to accept destructive criticism as in the last thread, you will always need that. I have some time to chill so now I'll give constructive criticism I have the ears and equipment and experience. The first mix is a no for me, the low and high balance is a little bit out for the genre, you have a rounded compressed sound but the hats and tambourine have a small weird resonant frequency and breaks the overall picture. I bet you can listen to it with morning fresh ears. This leave us to 2 and 3, I like the extra punch on the deep end on 3 not sure if its #2 without headroom or not, but I'll pick 3 over 2 if not for that resonant tamb freq showing up, a little less than in #1, but still present. The magic of being the mixer engineer is that you can solve the problem at track level. So my bet goes for 3 with a little extra work on the mid his. freqs for tambourine. Just listen with fresh ears eq out before compressing and render it. Not sure if you did this after a tutorial or something but it sounds good. I not a fan of dubstep but I am a fan of good sound. And from this genre I respect the work of the talented Sawka, Excision and Destroid.
Goodluck
T. K.

 

Awesome thanks! I've been at it awhile.

 

And my speakers can't pickup the tamb issue so i'll prob leave it be, i wish i could get some higher end speakers someday!

 

Master 2 has the best groove clock. Master 3 is too urgent. You might decrease the tempo of Master 3 by subtle increments and see if it locks better. Or, delay the tambs track by some ms to clock it better. The harder comp/lim on Master 3 is what's giving it that early rush. If you don't want to fool with the timing manually you should ease up on the limiter. But yeah, anybody with good rhythm is going to tell you Master 2 at this time. Master 3 has the best color. But we can't just focus on tonal changes when mastering. Every thing we do is changing the clock for better or worse too.

 

That's what i'm struggling with... Theres 1 DB of headroom left on Master 2 but when I give it the extra 1 DB which is MASTER 3 it loses that really good lock.. Any suggestions? You can still crank Master 2 and it will hit hard but it will still be 1 DB quieter

 

Can I route the Tambs and bypass the master and mix that way to avoid the limiter push?

 

I'll try delaying the tambs as well. At least I know 2 is solid and can be cranked way up and still not break if needed.

 

Yeah, I don't record the masters ITB for reasons such as these. If you are recording ITB, another thing you can do is use an I/O tool at the end of the chain. On master 3 you'd lower the input gain incrementally and raise the output gain to preserve your original peak. This could help correct the dynamic clock. On master 2 you'd incrementally raise both. However, keep in mind a master with a zero peak will go over in the red once converted to an mp3. The master (online/broadcast) template for mp3 conversion should be from -1 to -1.3dB. The CD master template is the one suitable to have a zero peak. This is why I find it easy to record the masters externally at lower/higher volumes to meet the criteria I need them for. The dynamic properties stay the same, and you get recordings that sound acoustically identical to what you hear.

 

Last edited: Aug 23, 2017

#2 is very sculpted and mid scooped - I don't know if this comes from being mixed this way or if it was an artifact of mastering.
#3 is flatter overall, it's still sounds a bit smiley face with the EQ, not certain if that was a mastering or mixing decision.

Personally I would try to fix the high end issues in #3 (which could be caused by Mp3 conversion HPF resonance, sounds like they are in that 11K-13K range where loud and band limited start to bump their willies.) Relax whatever compressor you are using to catch that tambourine and drum metal platters transients and do bit more EQ subtraction on the top (4KCPS+) and the bottom (120 CPS-) with some slop shelves of BEQ before compression. You might have to DEQ or D-ESS some of those HF transients so that your top element compressor can take slower attacks and release and that material without digging into too many other things and be a bit more transparent (use your judgement as to where and how you want to filter or treat the low end on that signal.)

Do not have much more to add than that - listening to a lossy codec of the after of a process without knowing what came before is a bit of a shot in the dark.

Cheers.

 

unfortunately tracks are gone. which one did you use?

 

I'm still a little upset about my hi hats losing the groove in the 2nd 8 bars of drop 1 but at higher volumes the cymbals come out a little more but still it drives me bonkers