Getting a decent final sound in home recording

[twostone]

Try this website ATS they sell raw rigid fiberglass panels or wool panels treat your room then after that come back and tell us how your mixes sound BTW Ethan website has plans for the DIY traps guarantee you thank Ethan I know I do he's save me countless hours of not mixing right and a lot of doe by DIY.

[tutu-1]

Majoria,

 

Would other advice be helpful to you? I stumbled on this thread, and it seams like once the topic of acoustics and monitors was brought up, no one moved past it. Here are a couple other useful ideas after hearing your "O Come" track. Keep in mind that i am no closer to being a pro than you, and my gear is equally feeble.

 

Firstly, what pro track(s) are you comparing your recordings with? If you could post a clip of something that you might call a 'goal' in terms of production quality, that would help a lot.

 

Now the very first, immediate thing i noticed about your recording was that everything seemed to be left in the center of the stereo spectrum. In some cases it is a non-issue, because the synth patch itself has some sort of swooshy stereo effect that lends space to itself, but as a general rule I only leave the kick, snare, bass and lead vocal in the center. Only on very rare occasions will anything take over that coveted real estate. Often i'll pan things hard right and left. If there is a sound (like acoustic guitar or backing vocals) that i want to position so that it is audible in both speakers, i'll often use a stereo delay set at 100% wet, where the left delay is set to 0 ms (no delay) and the right is set to somewhere between 5 and 15 ms. Just that little shift is enough to throw the sound to the sides and leave the center clear for the most essential information, while being virtually indistinguishable to the ear.

 

Other things:

 

Use reverb sparingly. Too much (or poorly eq'ed) reverb makes for all kinds of mess.

 

Get a hold of a spectrum analyzer, sometimes called a Real Time Analyzer or RTA. I use Voxengo GlissEQ which is just an amazing eq in itself, and is also a fantastic SA. I agree with the fella earlier who said, "Mix with your ears," but i know that after a couple months of being able to 'visualize' not only my recordings but also my goal recordings, my mixes got a whole lot better.

 

Try a limiter, multi-band compressor or sonic maximizer. Be careful because it's easy to overdo it and squash the crap out of (or maybe into?) your music. But, a lot of times we think our home recordings sound pewny because we listen to them next to radio hits that really have been squashed to death.

 

Give it lots of time. Like i said, i've been doing the home recording thing for close to a decade now and i still can't get it to sound right most of the time. Of course, maybe that means you shouldn't be taking advice from me! But i do know that with every passing year my recordings sound better and happen with less time and frustration and effort. It's a lot like carpentry or any other constructive skilled trade. You just have to be patient with yourself and be alright with the fact that you have to go through a pretty lengthy 'suck stage' before anything worth listening to happens.

 

blessings to you and merry christmas.

 

rje

 

 

PS

 

www.myspace.com/ridderhof

 

here is a link to my old band. the recordings are several years old now, and were done on a very, very feeble recording system (one AT 2020, $30 2.1 computer speakers and Sonar 3. Well, we had more mics for the drums. . . ). i think what i do now is much better, but it should give you an idea of the things i was talking about, especially the panning.

[garyjblackwell]

I am not a professional or anything, but I thought your mix was pretty good. There was a sudden increase in volume in the drums at about 3:00 in the song, but other than that I didn't hear any real problems in the mix. (You really could end the song at 3:00 and still have a good rendition.) However, what I felt was missing was some musicality. The drum ramp up was mechanical because the song broke, played the drum ramp up, and then continued. The female ooohs were nice, but quickly lose their ethereal quality at about 22 seconds into the song, at which point I was getting the feeling that it was time for all the instruments to start, and that should be the end of the introduction. This, in my opinion, would be the place to start the violins, which I believe kick in about 1:22. It seemed also that the "attack" on the female ooohs increased stealing away the ethereal quality and replacing it with mechanization. The electric guitar sounded griny, almost, but not quite something I think what you might have been going for - try to be original instead.

 

To summarize, I think you should first work on your arrangement, second work on making the sounds less mechanical and then worry about the mix.

 

A quick suggestion on the mix is using a good compressor. Voxengo has an inexpensive compressor called Elephant I think you might like.

You might look at http://www.garritan.com/GPO.html, if you aren't using it already for more expressive orchestra sounds and realistic piano with a MIDI controller.

Hope this helps.

[Majoria]

Thanks for the feedback. On my studio headphones and home speakers it sounds pretty good, then I burned a copy onto CD to listen to in my car. The drums coming in at 3:00 were WAY too loud and other things were much more noticeable. I tried on the first draft to pan the electronic drums that start first to the left more but it sounded like too much pan. The second draft (with the link posted above) sounds too much centered, as was pointed out. I agree.

 

garyjblackwell - The electric guitar sound is really not at all what I want but I'm using Reason 3.0 to do them (I have a cheap electric guitar and it's not even as good as the MIDI). I actually don't change any of the quality of the female voices; they are left the same all the way through the first verse and chorus. I take another listen to it with your feedback in mind. I'm having trouble with getting the punctuated portion of the song to stand out more without being so much louder.

 

tutu-1 - I'll take any feedback. I know it's simple and more focused on the lead/melody with very little supporting harmony or substance. It's still a rough copy but I wanted to use something that many people knew so that more people can relate to what I'm trying to do. I'm not going for a rock and roll punch at the 3:00 mark but rather just a jump in emotion via some power; unfortunately my limited resources are inhibiting that. I need some guidance as to when/what/where/how much to pan. So far I'm just using trial and error, mostly error. So what are some basic or general pan rules?

 

I definitely want to have some visual assistance to help train my ears as I'm an amateur at this. If a spectrum analyzer is what helps to tell me what frequencies are excessive/lacking then that is what I'd like to aim for. Hopefully that can help train my ears.

[WRGKMC]

Recording Digitally and then getting them to mix to stereo before mastering is the toughest part of the process but you need the best recorded individual tracks Played Well BEFORE you even try to mixdown. You also need to have a vision to how you want it to sound when completed before you even start recording. This is for a few reasons. 1 You want the best mix you can get. 2 You need to employ specific tools like mikes and amps, guitars, acoustics etc during the recording process. 3 You will have to listen to it many times to get the mix right. 4 Why waste your time going through the mastering process if it doesnt mix right? Right. I can only take a few hours at a time anymore of mixdowns and I get worn out. Having done this for 35 years I find that If I wait several days or even weeks after the initial recording is completed I will hear every fault and FQ deficiancy in the tracks and then use the bag of tricks to get it as close as possible to the ideal mix. I rarely do overtakes/Dub anymore. Its got to be a great performance from beginning to end of track to be right. Otherwise You are just creating a Frankenstein recording of bits and pieces which can be good in some ways and a lie in others.

[univalve.net]

One of the best tricks I learned when our band's CD was being recorded was that the engineer decided on a reference track that he wanted our track to sound like. He imported the CD audio and stuck it on a spare channel track, and would occasionally mute everything else and listen to the other track on the monitoring system, then switch back to compare the mix and overall sound quality. By the time he finished his mix (many hours later), the overall feel of the mix was incredible.

[Kittenfaust]

Originally posted by univalve.net One of the best tricks I learned when our band's CD was being recorded was that the engineer decided on a reference track that he wanted our track to sound like. He imported the CD audio and stuck it on a spare channel track, and would occasionally mute everything else and listen to the other track on the monitoring system, then switch back to compare the mix and overall sound quality. By the time he finished his mix (many hours later), the overall feel of the mix was incredible.

 

 

Just remember to drop the fader on the mastered reference track to your non-mastered mix level (guessing somewhere around -12 to -6 usually).

[Ethan Winer]

 

Originally posted by alcohol Listening to my own mixes in a great room and fabulous speakers is a revelation, like M-Works mastering in Cambridge MA. I heard things I didn't hear in my own studio

 

 

Exactly. I hear things all the time that I'm certain the mixing / mastering engineers didn't.

 

--Ethan

[I was The Funk]

 

Originally posted by alcohol Listening to my own mixes in a great room and fabulous speakers is a revelation, like M-Works mastering in Cambridge MA. I heard things I didn't hear in my own studio which is not a bad sounding room, just not equal to M-Works. However, I would say that I got at least 98% of my mix where I wanted it. If I could have a better room and better monitors, my potential for better mixes increases. The budget just ain't there yet.

 

 

I mastered a record with Matt at M-works. Great guy. He did a great job. Our mix was very close in my bedroom to what we heard at m-works. But it took months to get there.

 

 

Its a lot of work to get a good mix without good recorded tracks. It can be done but it takes a lot of time and a lot of work and will never be optimal.

 

It takes a lot of work to get a good master without a good mix.

 

It all goes down to the fundamentals. You need to capture a great performance as well as you possibly can.

 

Then you take all those great recordings of great performances and make a great mix.

 

Then you take that great mix and make a great master.

 

 

If your mixes are getting muddy in certain frequencies, pick which instrument you want to live in that frequency range and cut those frequencies out of the other instruments.

 

Divide your mix up by frequency range and panning. Make sure no two tracks take up the same frequency range or sonic space.

[alcohol]

I think my mixes are pretty good, and new acquisitions of mics and mic pres have improved the sound of my recordings considerably. I just thought I could hear a little clearer at M-Works.

[I was The Funk]

 

Originally posted by alcohol I think my mixes are pretty good, and new acquisitions of mics and mic pres have improved the sound of my recordings considerably. I just thought I could hear a little clearer at M-Works.

 

 

 

Its hard not to hear things clearly at M-works. Thats a great room!

[Digitalice]

Hi, can I skip back to monitoring.

 

Lots of people talk about doctoring the listening room and using bass baffles and near field monitors. I understand it's best to listen through all media possible, but for the actual mix it seems to me - a beginner with no experience, alas - that headphones are the most sensible option, if one can't make serious architectural changes.

 

I use yer classic Beyerdynamic studio headphones, closed back, and pretty neutral, with no room interference. How can I match this with open air monitors without spending an awful lot of money?

 

Yet no one seems to say "headphones are best". Am I missing something?

 

--

 

Thanks to everyone for a really helpful thread.

[El_Bromista]

 

I use yer classic Beyerdynamic studio headphones, closed back, and pretty neutral, with no room interference. How can I match this with open air monitors without spending an awful lot of money?

 

you can't match it.

because they're not the same thing.

i think i read somewhere that the ears listen differently for headphones than they do for speakers.

or something like that.

apples and oranges, as the saying goes.

[alcohol]

I think for mixing, an open backed earphone is better. The closed back headphones hype the bass and smear the mids. I think you could mix better on Apple iPod ear buds than on the Beyer headphones. I do a lot of transcribing. When I want to single out the bass I use the Beyer, for pulling out inner voicings of horns, strings or harmonies, I use the ear buds or my open backed Audi0 Technica headphones. Actually, sometimes I go from my Mackies 824, to NS10s to these little RCA speakers, besides the headphones to transcribe as each one brings out different instruments. Do the same thing for mixing.

[mono boy]

some things that have really helped me:

 

listen to sgt pepper on your monitors over and over again.

 

mix at lower volumes. really low even. definately helps with vocal and bass placement and ear fatigue.

 

occasionally switch to mono to make sure nothing is sticking out of the stereo field too much (or disappearing).

 

find a couple kind pros in your area who will field any dumb question you can ask, lend you cool gear, and give you a good deal on mastering. just make sure your check doesn't bounce.

 

viva home recording(!)

/jonny

[frazzledphoey]

I don't have a lot of mixing experience but it makes sense to go back to the very beginning - what are you trying to mix?

 

If it's electronic stuff - is it all sampler/rompler? A lot of harmonics and dynamic range (and hence - life!) are just not present in sampled and recorded stuff as an artifact of low sampling rates. Which will make your mix sound limp. Romplers might sound pretty, but it just wouldn't get through anything I tried to mix down. (Hooray for analog!) Case in point - a recording will never be able to come close to a live performance.

 

So my point is you are trying to preserve as much of the unique harmonics present in your instruments - which means using good quality instruments and high sampling rates to keep everything as intact as possible. As the saying goes - garbage in - garbage out. After you are happy you are indeed capturing the real essence of your message - then tweak the rest. Every extra electronic component in the chain of reproduction will change/distort/subtract/add artifacts to your mix which complicate things. Keeping it as simple and pure as possible in the beginning will help you understand cause and effect better.

[willie the wimp]

hey maybe it's just because i have no clue what i'm talking about but that sounds pretty good to me. the snare seems a bit of but thats probably just because it's midi and not a real drum. that actually sounds good!

[halljams]

A fantastic sounding album to use as a reference, especially for midrange, is wildflowers by Tom Petty.

[Wink Junior]

 

I mastered a record with Matt at M-works. Great guy. He did a great job. Our mix was very close in my bedroom to what we heard at m-works. But it took months to get there. Its a lot of work to get a good mix without good recorded tracks. It can be done but it takes a lot of time and a lot of work and will never be optimal.

 

 

OK, so I'm biased because I'm a contractor at a post-production and mastering studio (no recording, except re-recording vocals) called The Sound-O-Mat. So take what I have to say with a grain of salt.

 

Between the owner and myself, we have 10 years each experience of running a studio, and before that 15+ years each of being in bands and making our own recordings (yeah, we're dating ourselves here, but with age comes experience.

 

We can often do post-production and mastering on a project for between $150-$300 for the whole job, ready to send the CD and/or record pressing plant, including CDR copies for yourself and backups kept in our vault. Part of what we offer is that we work with the artist - a number of which we've not worked with in person at all (in fact, most of our work is that way) and we try our best to offer education on how to make better recordings, explanations of what was wrong with recordings, and how to even mix and do post-production for the musicians themselves.

 

We get repeat customers for a lot of reasons:

 

 

• . You can read how much he got out of the process and how much he learned.

 

Lastly, unlike all this talk of having enough different monitors and the "magic ears", this is the digital age, folks. We approach things scientifically with a suite of analytical tools that allow us to take a completely objective approach to the music. Got guitar hum in a track? If one of our two dozen custom-designed presets doesn't eliminate it, we'll scan the material, hunt it down, and away it will go, without changing anything else in the track. Bass or drums too high or low? We'll figure out what you want to bring out in them, and make it happen.

 

Home recording is great, and we're pleased as hell as to how far it's come since the days of our Yamaha 4-track cassette tape recorders. But sooner or later a serious band will want to go to a real recording studio. And we think that sooner or later a serious band will want to work with seasoned professionals to get the very best out of their music. It's not that expensive when you think of the time and your own costs of trying to build out a studio with $40,000 worth of hardware & software as we and other mastering studios have.

 

So while this thread is about trying to "get a decent final sound", we could try to give some advice, but it comes down to experience and spending the money to buy the tools you need. Another analogy: most people don't fix their plumbing or electric problems in their house, they hire plumbers and electricians.

 

We could give advice on how to make a better recording in the first place, because as the original poster mentioned, that's one of the keys: if you start with good material, you can get great results, but if the source is crap, well, you can sculpt crap but in the end... it's still crap.

 

So our advice would be this, and this comes from the years we spent being musicians, not from running a studio like we do now: work on learning to play your instruments, how to craft great songs, how to write amazing lyrics, and how to record your songs as best you can. Then leave it to a pro to take the results and make them shine before you send them off to the CD pressing plant. It's better to work on everything up to the point of the final results than it is to try to become a mastering expert on top of everything else. Trust us, we've been in both places.

 

Again, I'm a contractor at a mastering studio, so this is biased as all hell. But having been on all sides of the situation, if I was still in a band, I'd worry about getting basic recordings down, writing awesome music, and saving up my money to spend it on a couple days in a good recording studio, sending it to a mastering house for the final mixdown, and then when I got the CDs made, promoting the hell out of it. There's another place people forget to save and spend their money. Once you've got a CD, unless you've got a relative working at a label, it's not going anywhere unless you promote the hell out of it: play live as much as you can, tour if you can, and send out at least 100-200 promos to radio stations, labels that accept them, and reviewers/magazines. That'll cost you, but the return on investment (ROI for any financial wizards out there) will be worth it.

 

Good luck and cheers! Wink

[Lucky #9]

Just listened to your tune. Must say I enjoyed it. :phil: Always liked the song and your interpretation kept me wondering how it was going to change next. I'd like to hear it with some vocals , big and small , coming and going.

[Wink Junior]

 

So my point is you are trying to preserve as much of the unique harmonics present in your instruments - which means using good quality instruments and high sampling rates to keep everything as intact as possible. As the saying goes - garbage in - garbage out. After you are happy you are indeed capturing the real essence of your message - then tweak the rest. Every extra electronic component in the chain of reproduction will change/distort/subtract/add artifacts to your mix which complicate things. Keeping it as simple and pure as possible in the beginning will help you understand cause and effect better.

 

 

Frazzled has it right. Put the effort into learning to play instruments, write good songs and lyrics, and perform. Learn what mics work best with your voice(s) and instruments. Work on getting a good recording. From there, you can get a great final mix, either by hiring a professional or spending a lot of time learning to do that on top of everything else. As a musician, what would you rather be doing? Writing songs, rehearsing, playing live, recording your music... or trying to mix down and master your recordings? Cheers, Wink