Mix / Volume questions
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Posted on Sep 05, 2007 04:02 am
greendate
Joe
Member Since: Jul 27, 2007
Hi Guys
nearly finished my recordings of which thank you for your guidance you have gave me from start to finish, i am looking forward to getting them on here for your opinions. i am in a green day tribute band and we are recording a full green day tribute album - 18 songs.
www.greendate.co.uk
i have 2 more questions, if anyone is kind enough to answer them
1. the music is down, would you start to make it "sound good" at this point or would you wait for vocals to go down?
2 on final mixdown and render, what do i need to do to get a good volume (a normal volume and not a quite mix, so ya av to turn stereo up really loud to hear it?
i am mixing in the computer and im using reaper.
thanks loads.
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GeoffSM7b the Chuck Noris of Mic'sContributor
Since: Jun 20, 2002
Sep 05, 2007 07:00 am the 1st Question : I guess by "sound good" you mean adjust levels, notch out EQ, add effescts, ect..Well I like to get a nice rough mix for the vocals so they can have something to listen to in there headphones while they're being recorded, nothing too fancy just something for them to get a good listen and goove going. I tend to do 90% of my mixing once i have all the tracks down . I like to treat the vocals just like any other instument.
As far as the volume thing goes, this is a very common issue with home recording . You can use a few things from a nice compression plug in on the whole mix. I tend to use waves L2 ultramaximizer and afew choice plugin on my masters to get the volume up to snuff with "normal" Cd's, But a good compressor plug in that you already have can help out a lot too. Also while you're mixing, have a refrence CD handy ( like say Green Day's Dookie ect) so you can A/B your mix with there levels and volume .
WaltChief Cook and Bottle WasherMember
Since: May 10, 2002
Sep 05, 2007 07:26 am Hey Geoff, good to ready you!
Ya, what he said. Every once in a while I will find a piece that I just get enchanted with and make a real good insturmental out of it prior to Vox, knowing that I will change things when the Vox is applied, but for the most part, I just get things 'roughed in' to make ready for the vox.
Here in the tips section there are some articles on mastering. That is where you will find quite a bit on what Geoff is talking about regarding making things louder.
Sep 05, 2007 07:58 am thanks guys
a great help.
by compressing the whole track,do you mean after the final render and i just have one final track then compress??
WaltChief Cook and Bottle WasherMember
Since: May 10, 2002
Sep 05, 2007 08:45 am Yup, Mix it down to one stereo track, call it a pre-final if you will. When you run it through a brick wall compresser or loudness maximizer the highest amplitude points of the waveform will be folded back into mix doing two things: 1. Bringing up the total volume of the mix and 2. Increasing the density of the waveform. Density is also directly proportional to volume as is amplitude. The process will introduce some degree of distortion, usually with a plug like the L2 very little that can be preceived. The process will also diminish the overall dynamics of the piece. That is just the trade off for LOUD.
Sep 05, 2007 08:58 am vheers for that mate, i will give it a try
pjkPrince CZAR-mingMember
Since: Apr 08, 2004
Sep 05, 2007 05:48 pm Hey Greendate, I've done some final work in reaper, and here's a few things I've done.
Mix together and get it were you like it.
Render the track down but render it in the same sample rate that you recorded (for instance, I record at 48khz, 24bit, so I render the same way).
Now you'll have a stereo track, save your project, and open a new project for the stereo track (i call these 'song-name_master.rpp). I never open this in the same project, as I'm too paranoid about not having a clean slate to start from for the master.
In the new project, I add reaXcomp (in the few last versions) which is a multi-band compressor. It's way easy to use and figure out what's going on. You'll want to have a good accurate idea of what your hearing (good monitors, or ones you trust). With this you can really beef up parts of the sonic picture that aren't up to snuff.
After reaXcomp, I put on Scott Stillwell's Event Horizon 2. This is a limiter of sorts. Actually it's a soft clipper, i've read, but I use it as a limiter. Set the output ceiling (I use -.3 on most things), pull the threshold down, and you'll hear the volume go up. There's other things to tweak, but I've just used it for it's volume maximizing. Tweak those sliders till you have a good mix between loud, and still dynamic. Too far and everything comes out the same LOUD volume, so go easy on it.
Next I put on a dither plug, loser's dither. I will probably start using a different one, but I'm using this for now.
On the reaper board, someone said that when using a dither plug, to leave the master fader at zero, and then render down to your 44.1khz/16bit for CD audio.
I believe you can also create a MP3 when you do the final render, I haven't yet, but I think there's a setting in there for that.
I've gotten some pretty sweet finals this way, not that I'm doing everything right, but at least it's a place to start. Maybe save you some time in trying out a bunch of plugs that aren't explained very well.
Sep 06, 2007 03:51 am thanks for that mate. im loving reaper at the minute, really worth the money and soo cheap but so high quality.
