i need help?

MY chain is basicaly a analog mixer pre sending 8 channels to my m audio card. (sounds really dead and smooth no pops ect) The desk is 17years old and was designed for 8 track reel to reel and is a fostex 812 mixer. I also have a Art tube pre amp which i use on my sm57 recording my half stack.

After recording my drums i Eq compress and mix them into a group i then do the same for bass and guitar with their own groups assigned.

Should i multiband to get the sound out in the group section? so i get the drums live and the bass low and the guitars mid killing off the {censored}ty sounds i dont want their?

After this point its send to my output bus from which i add a limiter plug-in "elephant" to master up my mix's, previously (before this post i did all my multiband on the output bus and never in the group sections? (is my idea of mixing flawed or wrong?) i dont seem to be geting the mix's i want

What is your mixing environment? Are you taking the 8 channels from your soundcard and mixing on the mixer, or are you mixing in-the-box. I have some suggestions, but I need to know what you are mixing on, board or box.

I record onto my pc inside cubase SX3 and i mix EQ and arrange in the Box as it were. Using internal FX.

OK.

First, I suggest that you not put any "mastering" type process on your output buss. Bounce the mix down to a stereo file without any multi-band or limiting or normalizing. That is a totally separate process.

drums Do you have the computing horsepower to handle a high track count, or is it necessary to make a stereo drum sub-mix to conserve resources? If your system can handle it, leave the drum tracks individual and process each as needed. I usually do it that way and then make a sub-group fader that I can use to ride the overall drum kit level (level only - no dynamics or ambience fx), while still having access to particular tweaks as the need arises. If you need to bounce the drums down stereo in order to conserve resources, keep a drum mixing file so that you can go back and tweak anything you need and make a new drum submix file as you get farther along in the mix process.

guitars and basses Same thoughts. I would not make a combined file and then try to multiband it to address problems. Keep those tracks separate as long as possible. If you have some sort of wall of rhythm guitars, you could group those to a level-only sub-mix fader, just like the drum kit idea.

IMO trying to multiband grouped sounds with one eq and or dynamics process is like putting toothpaste back in the tube. Address the issues with each part individually, and if you need to create subgroups to conserve resources, leave those sub-groups as level-only items, and save the sub-mixes as separate files that you can re-tweak as needed once you combine the subs that make up the full mix.

And don't try mastering the mix as you reduce it to stereo. Make a nice mix, and then rest your ears from it for a little while before treating it from a mastering perspective.

usually say per guitar section.... i make a group say "guitar verse" then send to this group 4 guitar tracks 2 mic sources paned left "holding 1 take" then the same 2 mics paned right"containing the double take". I blend the mic volumes to get a nice wide Effect then on the sub group use a compressor even out the whole guitar section :S is this wrong!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ive been also sending all4-5bass tracks containing each different section to one sub group using 1 compressor EEEKEEKEEEKK?? help

GuitarsFor doubling something up, I see where you can go with doing FX on the submix. That seems ok. What I'm talking about is more individual parts like rhythm and lead. I would not group a lead line with a rhythm part and then try to address the combined parts with fx in a submix channel.

If you are using the same take and assigning it to multiple channels for doubling and panning, apply some different (reductive) eq to each duplicate (high band, left side; low band, left side; etc.) Without cutting some of the frequencies in the duplicates, any resonances in the original part will start summing and create problems.

bassWhen you say 4-5 bass tracks, is that simultaneously, like a layered part? Maybe it's a stylistic thing, but I don't see a layered bass part as being necessary. Or are you talking about sections of the tune, one after the other?

sections one after toher other say a chorus channel only contains chorus sections or takes! same with the verses ect but all the bass channels are send to a group bass bus ;)to control overall volume i use a compress at this section!

OK, thanks for clearing up the bass track count thing.

I went over and listened to the Vital Intentions page. Is that something you mixed?

If it sounds good and translates to the real world then it's not wrong.

i did mix that yes but that was before i got real studio monitors and were mixing on HI FI bass heavy speakers!!!! With alot offffff BASSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS and i didnt know alot back then compaired to now try www.myspace.com/thepeekaboos not a brillient piece of work but i do try! its all learning

Exactly. My impression of The Vitals stuff was that there was no low end information. The speakers definitely affected your mix.

I think the Peekaboos stuff is still lacking low end. I'm listening on small speakers, but still...

Keep handy some reference tracks of a commercial release that you admire, so that you can A/B with your mix. (these things you know, but as a reminder) Check your mixes on all kinds of systems, headphones, etc.

yaya the peekaboos didnt have a bassist and the little bass on it was pretty bad in tone hopefully my enw sansamp will help nexttime