Proper Mix B4 Mastering!!!

LDB

Banned
ill o.g.
Battle Points: 73
I let you guys know at the end of '08 that I got a little label deal with a company distributed by Fontana Universal. I've been grinding real hard on about 6 possible singles. I've been at the mixing stage with a couple of them for about 3 weeks now. The first one I recently sent off to be mastered, well what can I say...."U learn something new all the time"............

ILL fam...the mix before you get your music mastered is KEY.....short comings at this stage will severely affect what the Mastering Engineer can do.

EMAIL AFTER I CORRECTED THE VOX LEVELS THAT WERE 2db too loud, track was resubmitted for mastering:

ENGINEER: This version was definitely better to work with, and I've been working on it throughout the day because it was a little tough getting it to sound the way I wanted, so I wanted to give you my thoughts on the mix, as I definitely focused more on it as I was working with it.

The mix overall has a muddiness that I had to get rid off; the drums are not punching much on this mix and it's hard to say what the root cause of it is; it could be in the way the tracks were recorded and/or mixed. From mastering on neutral systems, sometimes we mastering guys can tell usually where there's a deficiency at least at the monitoring stage (which is where a lot of problems stem from, since most people don't have properly-treated rooms to work with and boost/cut due to problems with the room and/or monitors). On your mix, I noticed there was a lot of excess low end, which is part of the reason why the kicks/bass on the mix wasn't as punchy. There was also a bit of cutting I had to do around the 300Hz range, this tells me that there's probably an issue at your monitoring position around that range, since a dip there can cause you to overcompensate and boost around that range. Beyond this, I can only speculate because as I said, there's a lot that can happen while tracking and then at mixing.

I also noticed there's a bit of harshness around the lower midrange on this track, again, I'm not sure what may be the cause of this. It could be a slight overload of the converters while tracking or mixing, but it definitely sounds a little "crunched". This is something that I can't do much about as it's already part of the mix; a lot of times it can be introduced while compressing and other transient "squashing" effects; I noticed it came up a little more as I cleared the "mud" from the low end on your mix.

Overall, I feel it's a decent master, and 70% of my part when working on this mix was tone correction; from experience, the best masters are when my work is a higher percentage of working to maintain a good mix's dynamic range while bringing up all the levels

NOW!

I drop'd this to say this. This guys is truly on his game. I don't have a massive budget but look at the type of info. this guy is dropping. He's dropping jewels that will only help me mix my songs better. The lingo is so on point that without asking him what he meant I can cut and paste key words out of this email and google them to get there meaning and find out what I need to do to correct this.

What I can tell you from my experience...

1) Get that low end in check and I'm not talking about what you can hear. Use a frequency analyzer and roll that shit off 48-50khz. Drop the level down past what you think it should be!!! If it's the least bit bass intensive cut and and drop the level.

2) Especially for hip hop/rap...make sure you use the highest quality sounds you can for your bass and kicks. Layer them joints and make sure they hit because if they don't hit in the mix, they won't hit after mastering! Once again, I'm not talking about just the volume on those faders. A soft or weak sounding kick won't be helped by pumping up the volume. I had to got back, find a better sounding kick and get that joint in the right frequency range before I layered an additional kick by way of Drumagog under it. Oh yeah...."Drumagog", get it in your life!

3) that cutting he had to do in the 300 hz range was exactly because of what he said it could be, "monitoring position", of course I already new that but hell....I had to work with what I have. The thing is that if you know (and now I do) where the weak spot is in your listening area you can compensate for it. The mix after I corrected things is now my reference for any other song I mix that is similar in style to this one. I know not to boost in that range for any reason what so ever. If it sounds as though I need a boost there, thru trial an error I know based on my listening environment, "DON'T DO IT" .

4) the harshness at the lower midrange, I couldn't see it nor hear it. Neither could he when he initially listened to the mix. After ripping my track apart and watching every freaking meter whether it be a fader or plugin meter I found it. Though my master was reading -6db, most of the plugin meters were close to 0db. A definite "NO NO" in the digital realm.....didn't know it then....know it now!

Basically what I did was go back and mix the entire song again but it didn't take as long because I was armed with knowledge. On the second mix I made sure no peak meter, whether track level or plugin "OUT" went above -6db. Every track, every instrument, every vocal. Nothing exceeded -6db. I learned not to record anything into your project past the -6db mark. I thought that if you didn't clip 0db it was all good, "wrong".

We have to get the "loudness" of thing out of our work flow. Especially if you want to take your music to the next level and for most of us that next level is getting your baby Mastered so you can truly hear how it sounds side by side with the big boyz!

Here's a link that helped me tremendously http://www.eqmag.com/article/mix-bus-how/feb-08/33427...that along with having a good Mastering engineer that's not afraid to share his knowledge will make my next track to be mastered even better. For those of you that have the Waves PAZ Analyzer or something similar USE IT. Throw that bad boy on your master fader so you can monitor frequency, the stereo field and peak meters! RMS is not your friend when mixing for mastering.
 

Vice

9ine 2o 5ive Live
ill o.g.
Battle Points: 71
I let you guys know at the end of '08 that I got a little label deal with a company distributed by Fontana Universal. I've been grinding real hard on about 6 possible singles. I've been at the mixing stage with a couple of them for about 3 weeks now. The first one I recently sent off to be mastered, well what can I say...."U learn something new all the time"............

ILL fam...the mix before you get your music mastered is KEY.....short comings at this stage will severely affect what the Mastering Engineer can do.

EMAIL AFTER I CORRECTED THE VOX LEVELS THAT WERE 2db too loud, track was resubmitted for mastering:

ENGINEER: This version was definitely better to work with, and I've been working on it throughout the day because it was a little tough getting it to sound the way I wanted, so I wanted to give you my thoughts on the mix, as I definitely focused more on it as I was working with it.

The mix overall has a muddiness that I had to get rid off; the drums are not punching much on this mix and it's hard to say what the root cause of it is; it could be in the way the tracks were recorded and/or mixed. From mastering on neutral systems, sometimes we mastering guys can tell usually where there's a deficiency at least at the monitoring stage (which is where a lot of problems stem from, since most people don't have properly-treated rooms to work with and boost/cut due to problems with the room and/or monitors). On your mix, I noticed there was a lot of excess low end, which is part of the reason why the kicks/bass on the mix wasn't as punchy. There was also a bit of cutting I had to do around the 300Hz range, this tells me that there's probably an issue at your monitoring position around that range, since a dip there can cause you to overcompensate and boost around that range. Beyond this, I can only speculate because as I said, there's a lot that can happen while tracking and then at mixing.

I also noticed there's a bit of harshness around the lower midrange on this track, again, I'm not sure what may be the cause of this. It could be a slight overload of the converters while tracking or mixing, but it definitely sounds a little "crunched". This is something that I can't do much about as it's already part of the mix; a lot of times it can be introduced while compressing and other transient "squashing" effects; I noticed it came up a little more as I cleared the "mud" from the low end on your mix.

Overall, I feel it's a decent master, and 70% of my part when working on this mix was tone correction; from experience, the best masters are when my work is a higher percentage of working to maintain a good mix's dynamic range while bringing up all the levels

NOW!

I drop'd this to say this. This guys is truly on his game. I don't have a massive budget but look at the type of info. this guy is dropping. He's dropping jewels that will only help me mix my songs better. The lingo is so on point that without asking him what he meant I can cut and paste key words out of this email and google them to get there meaning and find out what I need to do to correct this.

What I can tell you from my experience...

1) Get that low end in check and I'm not talking about what you can hear. Use a frequency analyzer and roll that shit off 48-50khz. Drop the level down past what you think it should be!!! If it's the least bit bass intensive cut and and drop the level.

2) Especially for hip hop/rap...make sure you use the highest quality sounds you can for your bass and kicks. Layer them joints and make sure they hit because if they don't hit in the mix, they won't hit after mastering! Once again, I'm not talking about just the volume on those faders. A soft or weak sounding kick won't be helped by pumping up the volume. I had to got back, find a better sounding kick and get that joint in the right frequency range before I layered an additional kick by way of Drumagog under it. Oh yeah...."Drumagog", get it in your life!

3) that cutting he had to do in the 300 hz range was exactly because of what he said it could be, "monitoring position", of course I already new that but hell....I had to work with what I have. The thing is that if you know (and now I do) where the weak spot is in your listening area you can compensate for it. The mix after I corrected things is now my reference for any other song I mix that is similar in style to this one. I know not to boost in that range for any reason what so ever. If it sounds as though I need a boost there, thru trial an error I know based on my listening environment, "DON'T DO IT" .

4) the harshness at the lower midrange, I couldn't see it nor hear it. Neither could he when he initially listened to the mix. After ripping my track apart and watching every freaking meter whether it be a fader or plugin meter I found it. Though my master was reading -6db, most of the plugin meters were close to 0db. A definite "NO NO" in the digital realm.....didn't know it then....know it now!

Basically what I did was go back and mix the entire song again but it didn't take as long because I was armed with knowledge. On the second mix I made sure no peak meter, whether track level or plugin "OUT" went above -6db. Every track, every instrument, every vocal. Nothing exceeded -6db. I learned not to record anything into your project past the -6db mark. I thought that if you didn't clip 0db it was all good, "wrong".

We have to get the "loudness" of thing out of our work flow. Especially if you want to take your music to the next level and for most of us that next level is getting your baby Mastered so you can truly hear how it sounds side by side with the big boyz!

Here's a link that helped me tremendously http://www.eqmag.com/article/mix-bus-how/feb-08/33427...that along with having a good Mastering engineer that's not afraid to share his knowledge will make my next track to be mastered even better. For those of you that have the Waves PAZ Analyzer or something similar USE IT. Throw that bad boy on your master fader so you can monitor frequency, the stereo field and peak meters! RMS is not your friend when mixing for mastering.

nice drop LDB.... I think If I was to submit something to a label, I wouldn't even mix it myself... I'd pay for that as well.....just for it to come out as clean as possible. This guy def has some great pointers in there for you though.
 

savage_g

ILLIEN
ill o.g.
.. this tells me that there's probably an issue at your monitoring position around that range,..
This.
Most problems come down to the room. I've noticed this ever since I moved to a new place. The sound of the room sucks, and there's very little I can do about it (unable to really alter the room due to landlord). My old room produced infinitely better mixes.
Thanks for dropping that though man, gives a good idea of what kind of shit to look out for.
 

Sucio

Old and dirty...
ill o.g.
Battle Points: 304
I have the PAZ analyzer on the master and I was doing ok with one of my beats in terms of where it should be......but just like you, LDB, the plugins were near or on 0db. So I made the adjustments on the low end...and I'm currently working on the mids and highs to see if it sounds better....


Edit:

I adjusted everything....doesn't sound nearly as loud....Guess sometimes less is more???
 

LDB

Banned
ill o.g.
Battle Points: 73
I have the PAZ analyzer on the master and I was doing ok with one of my beats in terms of where it should be......but just like you, LDB, the plugins were near or on 0db. So I made the adjustments on the low end...and I'm currently working on the mids and highs to see if it sounds better....


Edit:

I adjusted everything....doesn't sound nearly as loud....Guess sometimes less is more???

Oh, it'll become MORE.... you just have to let music mastering nature take it's course....the "more" comes at the mastering stage! It's amazing how much better, bigger and stronger they can make your mix sound when you leave them the proper amount of head room all the way around. It seems that the main area they enhance is the low to mid range. You want those drums to punch through and hit hard as opposed to be LOUD. If you already have it" jacked up" in that range you leave them no room to work there magic.

I swore my vox were going to be too low when I sent them the -2db drop but they came out perfect. The vox presence resides in one of the main areas they enhance. They would have been ear drum busters had I left them like they were.
 

Ash Holmz

The Bed-Stuy Fly Guy
ill o.g.
Battle Points: 207
never mix for volume.. mix for balance and clarity... and as a rule of thumb its good to have your mix peaking at -6 to -4db. remember .. mastering enhances mixes, but it also enhances any problems problems with your mix x2. if an element is slightly out of balance on your it will be way out of balance after mastering.

punch and volume are two different things... proper mixing can get your shit nice and punchy and hard hitting without actually being loud. Thats what u want to strive for mixes.

i would tend to lean to the clean side of things as well. i think in general the more clean mixes come out better as masters.. be careful with "saturation" type plugs because they just tend to distort your shit if you push it too far.
 

UNORTHODOX

Father Timeless
ill o.g.
Battle Points: 44
Good info, can we get an A-B comparison listen or something
 

God

Creator of the Universe
ill o.g.
LDB - I'm curious to know:

- Why you didn't choose mixer other than yourself for the project?

- Did you not choose a mixing engineer because of monetary cost/benefit analysis or b/c it is simply a personal choice?

Look forward to your reply.
 

LDB

Banned
ill o.g.
Battle Points: 73
LDB - I'm curious to know:

- Why you didn't choose mixer other than yourself for the project?

- Did you not choose a mixing engineer because of monetary cost/benefit analysis or b/c it is simply a personal choice?

Look forward to your reply.

Exactly! I'm balling on a budget. I went to school for it somewhat, it was apart of my studies to get a Music & Entertainment degree from AIA. Limited funds limits how far outside I can go with this project. I have this deal but it's provides for no budget other than my own. They'll just put out what I send them. We co-op on the promoting of the singles or project once Fontana/Universal gives us a release date. 70/30 split on sales. Pretty good deal to have my records sitting beside all Universals other Artist I think. And the deal is non-exclusive so if someone else comes knocking I can work with them as well.

The mixing Engineer said I was 70% there with the mix. Practice makes perfect so I'll keep chugging along.

p.s for those wanting an A/B comparison...can't do it....I'm actually trying to put these records out!
 

UNORTHODOX

Father Timeless
ill o.g.
Battle Points: 44
I'd like a listen also, thaks
 

Sucio

Old and dirty...
ill o.g.
Battle Points: 304
Me three..
 
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