Members sweet Posted August 17, 2005 Members Share Posted August 17, 2005 First things first, I guess I am guilty of the "make it loud" cardinal sin, please go easy on me. I have a mix that I'm fairly happy with. Moderate compression on the snare, cymbals, and vocal. Heavier compression on the bass (which was DI, and all over the place). None on the kick or guitars. I left the master channel "virgin" until I was ready to mix down. That's when I added some compression and EQ to the whole mix (likely too much) and some moderate limiting (I did try to avoid totally decapitating the signal). Then I mixed down (24/96). Then normalized the new track to -0.10dB and exported (mixed down again if you will) to 16/44. It is loud, that's for sure, but pretty muddy as far as I can tell (still need to give it a good listen on my monitors). Now, to my point, I'm interested in comments about my approach and sequence of steps. BTW, Cubase LE and the genre is Metal/Hardcore Thanks guys. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members where02190 Posted August 17, 2005 Members Share Posted August 17, 2005 Take the compression, EQ and moderate limiting off the mix buss. Leave your master fader at 0, if you're peaking the mix buss, turn the track faders not the master fader down. Mix compression, eq and limiting is for mastering, not mixing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Kiwiburger Posted August 17, 2005 Members Share Posted August 17, 2005 I do a bit of self-mastering for demos and stuff, but I have a local mastering guy who has a good reputation. There are many reasons why you shouldn't master your own material, even if you can. Speakers and room - every system has a color, no matter what price point. I you mix and then master on the same system, you are likely to 'compensate' for that color, in other words re-inforce the problem. A fresh set of ears (not just late night fatigue - I mean somebody who hasn't heard the material before) is more likely to be critical and hear things you have overlooked. It avoids the "it can't be ugly because it's my baby" syndrome. But anyway - if you are doing it yourself, Cubase is fine. A lot depends on your choice of plugins. I don't normalise ever. You limiter should be able to set the output ceiling - I use Voxengo Elephant. I have many limiters, but Elephant is brilliant. I actually bought Harbal from www.har-bal.com and use it as a 'second-opinion' tool. It was a great learning excercise - i'd recommend studying their site and getting the demo, even if you don't buy it. I don't actually use Harbal as an eq, although it is good enough. I just use it as a 'second opinion', and if I find that a particular frequency range needs cutting or boosting, instead of eq'ing the mix file, I eq the track and export a new mix. It's just as easy, if you are doing it yourself, and gives you far more options. For example - if you need a boost at 80hz, you can choose to boost the bass or the kick - not necessarily both. For compression I sometimes use a multiband. There are plenty of options - I love the Kjaerhus, Voxengo and PSP stuff. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Kiwiburger Posted August 17, 2005 Members Share Posted August 17, 2005 Also - treat Mixing and Mastering (or Pre-mastering for the pedantic) as two seperate excercises. It wasn't clear, but it seemed like you were applying effects on the same session as your mix session. Export an Audio file of your mix, at the project resolution. I recommend 32 bit floating if re-importing into Cubase. I go with 24 bit fixed if sending outside - although have the option of 32 bit floating just in case they prefer that too. The two big advantages are: you keep a 'safe' copy of the mix, so even if you really screw up your self-mastering, you can always go back to un-corrupted mix. Plus - you conserve a lot of CPU. I find I need all the processing power I can get. I always use the high quality, over-sampling options. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members where02190 Posted August 18, 2005 Members Share Posted August 18, 2005 If you must put dynamics and eq on the mix buss, do yourself and your clients a favor and do a mix with them disabled as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members MASSIVE Master Posted August 18, 2005 Members Share Posted August 18, 2005 Are you UPsampling to 96 and them DOWNsampling to 44.1? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members TonyCrazyMan Posted August 18, 2005 Members Share Posted August 18, 2005 I think you should focus more on the stereo image and less on the compression stuff. If you get the mix with element separations I would work on getting a good true stereo image first of all. When this is done you should use slight compression and EQ on these tracks in order to further make it more polished and balanced on different speaker systems. When using the EQ avoid boosting frequencies, always first try to lower some frequencies. (and keep the q pretty low if you use a parametric EQ) When the material is balanced this way you might want to focus on the loudness at last. For this you need a really good and transparent stereo compressor/limiter. The most important thing thereafter is the dithering process. That's a very critical process that requires good gear. But if you have the uv22hr/uv22 software plugin and no other dithering unit, then that can be used... Finally you mix down to 16bit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members TonyCrazyMan Posted August 18, 2005 Members Share Posted August 18, 2005 Originally posted by MASSIVE Master Are you UPsampling to 96 and them DOWNsampling to 44.1? MASSIVE Mastering, now that you are here, maybe you want to reveal some stereo image trick for us, now that I have revealed a lot of what I do? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members MASSIVE Master Posted August 18, 2005 Members Share Posted August 18, 2005 Depends on what the mix need...? Sometimes it's M/S, sometimes it's parallel compression, sometimes parallel mono, parallel stereo, parallel side only... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members TonyCrazyMan Posted August 18, 2005 Members Share Posted August 18, 2005 Originally posted by MASSIVE Master Depends on what the mix need...? Sometimes it's M/S, sometimes it's parallel compression, sometimes parallel mono, parallel stereo, parallel side only... Let me put it this way: The mix needs a better stereo image! Hmm... interesting! Thanks! So I understand there are different scenarions that demand different actions for the process to equal great stereo image! Something that I would really appreciate is if you could describe very shortly M/S, parallel compression, parallel mono, parallel stereo, parallel side only . You use the word "parallel" a lot. To me it seems to be the same as the New York compression trick, in that you run the compressed track in parallel with the original dry track (but the NY compression trick also includes some EQ change on the compressed track). I use that technique myself a lot, because it sounds good, but I have to say, it doesn't sound nowhere close to your mastered stereo image! But since I don't have any real hardware compressor, I guess I'm only able to run parallel mono and parallel dual mono, but not in real stereo. Should I buy a stereo compressor in order to create a better stereo image? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Kiwiburger Posted August 18, 2005 Members Share Posted August 18, 2005 If you actually know that your mix is lacking stereo width, better fix it in the mix. A mastering engineer is given two tracks, and expected to perform miracles. And there are many techniques, as Massive Master is hinting out. With Mid/Side processing, for example, it's possible extract the Left/Right mix into mono & stereo components, and process them seperately. That means, if you stuffed up in the mix and your stereo overheads were too loud, the mastering engineer could possibly reduce some of this in relation to the mono component. But - if you knew that you had mixed the stereo overheads too loud, it's much easier just to drop the fader in the mix. Or - if you want a spacious electric piano, better to apply your stereo chorus or whatever at mix time. Expecting the mastering engineer to make it wide isn't the best approach. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members kylen Posted August 19, 2005 Members Share Posted August 19, 2005 Massive mentioned some great keywords to use to research some things. Here's a couple of free VST plugins to hear some of it: C_SuperStereo http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~thman/VST/vst-alleff.htm MSED http://www.voxengo.com/product/msed/ Run those across some commercial mixes and see how the pros places & stretch stuff, spend some time experimenting, then researching, then listening, if you like watching grab the free SPAN spectrum analyzer while you're at Voxengo so you can see what stuff is in the middle and sides and left & right freq and dynamics wise - C_Superstereo will show you what out there phase wise as well ast stretching the sides for you if you like. Don't be afraid to destroy some mixes - guaranteed that will happen...uh a friend told me that's what happened to him... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members sweet Posted August 19, 2005 Author Members Share Posted August 19, 2005 Thanks for the replies guys. Some great feedback! I'm downsampling to 16 BTW. I'm going to check into the mentioned plugins as well. Someone mentioned the uv22hr/uv22 plug in. I'm very interested in dither. I don't fully understand it, but know I need it:confused: I don't think Cubase has a dither feature/option. WTF? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Kiwiburger Posted August 19, 2005 Members Share Posted August 19, 2005 SX3 comes with the Apogee UV22 dithering plugs. Only dither once when you are downsampling. Unless you have great monitors and a low noise room, you probably won't notice the difference. If you don't have it, don't worry. Check out Voxengo Elephant - it's a great mastering limiter that also has good dithering. Check out all the Voxengo stuff - it can transform your Cubase system. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members sweet Posted August 19, 2005 Author Members Share Posted August 19, 2005 Originally posted by Kiwiburger SX3 comes with the Apogee UV22 dithering plugs. Only dither once when you are downsampling. Unless you have great monitors and a low noise room, you probably won't notice the difference. If you don't have it, don't worry. Check out Voxengo Elephant - it's a great mastering limiter that also has good dithering. Check out all the Voxengo stuff - it can transform your Cubase system. Oh ok, I've got LE. I'll check out Voxengo! Thanks a ton! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members MASSIVE Master Posted August 19, 2005 Members Share Posted August 19, 2005 Tony - I don't know if there really is a "brief" description of M/S processing... But essentially, you're splitting the mix into it's mid (mono) and side (stereo) components and working on them individually. Parallel compression or processing (no matter what city it's named after) might be applied, or applied directly to the M or S components (again, depending on what the mix is asking for). But for the most part, I'm with Kiwiburger - If you have access to the mix, it's way better to fix it there than to try and expand the image post-mix. It's incredibly easy to mess it up completely, or spend insane amounts of time trying to tweak it just to make it "seem" nice. Whereas during the mix, it can actually *be* nice. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members TonyCrazyMan Posted August 20, 2005 Members Share Posted August 20, 2005 Ok, thanks for the information. I have to start experiment with the mono and stereo parts a little more in the final phase...! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members MASSIVE Master Posted August 20, 2005 Members Share Posted August 20, 2005 No, you have to start experimenting in the INITIAL phase. "Fixes" for the stereo image are no substitute for having a good image in the first place. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members TonyCrazyMan Posted August 20, 2005 Members Share Posted August 20, 2005 Originally posted by MASSIVE Master No, you have to start experimenting in the INITIAL phase. "Fixes" for the stereo image are no substitute for having a good image in the first place. Yes I know that, I was more thinking about what I should do if I get a pretty good stereo image in the mix but need to enhance it even more from there in the mastering phase. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members MASSIVE Master Posted August 21, 2005 Members Share Posted August 21, 2005 This is why mastering one's own mixes is self-defeating... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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