Moseph

Oh, interesting. I can hear the influence of that Lamb of God track in the original mix that you posted -- it helps explain the relative lack of mid-range focus, the wider guitar panning, and the prominence of the kick drum. I focused the guitars in the mid-range, and the Lamb of God track (and your original mix) spread them out a little more. The static-y sound that I mentioned cutting out of the guitars would actually have helped them to sound like the Lamb of God track. Oops. My thinking for the track was more along the lines of (really more hard rock than metal), so my guitar sound tends to be more mid-range-y and up in your face.Glad it was helpful.

This was mostly typed as I mixed. It should help you get an idea of how I approach things. Here's the finished mix. Here is a list of images: Console view in Sonar Kick effects Bass effects Guitar 2 effects Guitar 1 effects Hats effects Overheads effects Snare effects Toms effects Multiband compressor MIXING (Things are shown in the order that I did them) I begin by mixing the kick and the bass with everything else muted. It's generally a good idea to build a mix from nothing, gradually adding in tracks rather than trying to deal with everything all at once. Kick EQ Very low frequencies rolled off to reduce muddiness. High frequencies cut because the kick sounded too treble-heavy to me, but leaving a spike to catch the noise of the beater. Mid-frequencies generally left alone. I suspect the drum VST you use has samples that are already mixed to sound pretty good. Often I have to cut the 400-900 Hz area to reduce the cardboardy sound that sometimes shows up in kick drums, but I didn't have to do that here. Kick compression The initial idea was to bring out the tail of the kick drum sound just a little bit, but by the time I was done mastering, the kick was basically just really squashed so it wouldn't clip things too badly. I hate mixing kick drums. Bass EQ The bass is extremely overpowering in the mid- and lower mid-range area, and that's where I want the guitars to be. I've cut accordingly and again rolled off the low bass to reduce boominess and mud. Bass compression I have, in effect, shortened the bass's attack just a bit (which is to say, the compressor kicks in before the bass's plucked attack has finished -- see the 115.8 ms attack value), which gets rid of some flabbiness in the tone. I put the guitars in the mix before dealing with the other drums. We have here two tracks of what sounds like different amps and/or distortion on the same guitar signal. I'm no guitarist, but the tone strikes me as pretty similar between the two channels with guitar 2 having just a touch more bite. I panned the guitar tracks 50% left and 50% right to fill out the soundfield a little bit. Guitar 2 EQ I'm emphasizing the 1k-2k Hz range to catch the bite that I mentioned. Guitar 1 EQ Kind of the inverse of guitar 2's EQ. Here I'm slightly emphasizing the mids. The effect of both of these EQ settings together is a marked reduction in that static-y sound in the guitars (a sound that I don't particularly like, which is why I'm glad to be rid of it). Hats EQ Low-end rolled off because I didn't need anything more down there. Hats and cymbals are mostly about high frequencies. Highs boosted slightly for more sizzle. Overheads EQ Basically the same idea as the hats. Snare EQ Again, the lows can be rolled off. Slight boosts in the mids and again between 2k and 4k Hz. These tighten the sound, bringing out the ring and the stick hit, respectively. High-end is rolled off because I want the cymbals to dominate there. Snare compression Relatively aggressive compression. The snare badly needed more impact -- it sounded like someone tapping his pencil on the table -- and this fixes that. Toms EQ Rolled off lows and highs because I did't need them. Slight mid-range boost because I like the resonance that it adds. Toms compression Just a bit to tighten the sound. Reverb I'm pretty conservative with the reverb here because I think the mix sounds pretty good dry. I'm not sue what the conventions are for metal. I'm using the SIR convolution reverb plugin (freeware) with a hall impulse response. It's mostly the drums (minus kick) that I've bussed to the reverb, and a very little bit on the guitars. I don't want much on the guitars because I want to keep them up at the front of the mix. For the bass and kick, it's generally best to avoid too much reverb (I'm not using any) because they tend to get really muddy if you use a lot. MASTERING I always put BlueTubes Analog TrackBox on the master because I like the faux analog distortion. I also use a multiband compressor. Really, I have no idea how to use a multiband compressor properly, so I generally just solo out each band, play with the compression settings, then unsolo to make sure the changes I made make the mix sound better. I've found generally that when I get a band's compression settings right, it makes the mix sound, I don't know, more compact is the only way I can think to describe it -- like that part of the frequency spectrum doesn't have extraneous jagged edges on it. Then I make sure the limiter is on and boost the gain on the output until I hear distortion in the cymbals, then back the gain down until the distortion goes away. The whole process takes a lot longer than it sounds because I always have to go back into the mix to tweak levels and compression to get it to the point where I can push the multiband's output gain really high. Then I view the mastered mix's waveform in a wave editor and check it against other recordings. If the level isn't comparable, I continue to tweak things.

Garret, check the tempo on the individual drum tracks. They run too slow and are out of sync with the guitars, bass, and mixed-down drums. EDIT: Actually it's not the tempo. The guitars/bass/mixed-down drums are 32-bit and the individual drums are 16-bit which is (maybe?) making Sonar screw up when I import them all into the same project. I'll see if I can figure it out and hopefully you won't have to re-upload things. EDIT 2: Mmmkay, never mind. The problem was that Sonar randomly decided to turn on groove-clip looping for the drum tracks which messes with the speed that the audio files play.

Not necessarily. I think at this point, the hardware requirement for Pro Tools is basically a holdover from the days when you used to need a lot of high-end external equipment to run a recording studio. Digidesign has been constantly scaling the hardware down for prosumer use -- I think they're down to a single-input interface as the cheapest one (it's been a while since I checked). At least in theory, having to use a specific piece of hardware should make the program more stable and easier to trouble-shoot, but I'm not sure if that's true in practice, and I think the downside of being tied to hardware that you may not like outweighs any potential benefit. The hardware bundled with Pro Tools isn't any better than hardware you can buy independently at a comparable price.

Sweet. I'll see if I can pull something together in the next few days.

I tend to like studio recordings simply because I love listening to how things are mixed. I frequently get as much enjoyment from the production aspects as I do from the strictly musical aspects.

You definitely should keep the drums separated. Mixing the drums down to a single track before putting effects on them may actually be one of the reasons that you're having trouble getting a good overall mix. The issue is that when the drums are all on one track, you can't apply effects to specific elements of the drums; for example, you can't use separate compression on the snare and the kick, you can't apply more reverb to the cymbals than to the kick, etc. Any effect you put on the drum track affects all of the the drums, and that means that you can't fine-tune the sound of the drums to the extent you ought to be able to. It's best to think of the kick, the snare, the toms, and the cymbals as being four completely separate instruments and to deal with each separately instead of mixing them down to one track. Separating the drums before putting effects on them should also make it easier to control the waveform spikes that are messing up the loudness of your mix because it will let you compress each type of sound individually -- it will let you, for example, reign in the snare drum spikes without affecting the way the other drums sound.

Demos, demos, demos. Most DAWs have some sort of demo or trial version, so look around and give some of them a try. Try to find one that fits your workflow, and be willing to invest a little time in whichever ones you look at, since you'll need some time to figure out how everything is supposed to work before you can really judge whether it's right for you. (I always find when trying to use a new DAW that everything is just familiar enough to make it really, really frustrating when I can't figure out how to do what I want to do.)

I can attempt a mix with the single-track drums, but it may not turn out well and I won't be able to give any meaningful commentary on drum mixing. I need multi-track drums to do a proper mix. When you mix, do you do the compression and such on the individual drum tracks in FL before mixing them down to one track and bringing them into Audition? Because if you're doing the compression etc. in Audition after the drums have been mixed down to a single track, the drums will be really, really difficult to deal with. You need to be able to get at the individual parts of the drumkit and put effects on them separately, so you really need individual tracks to do a good mix. Things don't necessarily need to be entirely split up -- you can usually get away with having all the toms on one track (or two tracks divided between high and low toms), all the cymbals/hats on one track (or maybe the hi-hat on its own track), the snare on its own track, and the kick on its own track.

Any chance that you could zip the unmixed audio files for the individual tracks and upload the zip file to Mediafire or some similar host for me to download? I'd kind of like to take a shot at mixing/mastering it, and if I can come up with something high-loudness that works well, I can screencap my plugin parameters and write a few paragraphs about what I did to make the mix sound like that.

Did you install any hardware or software that you can remember at about the same time the crashes started?

Did it just randomly start happening one day or has it always been this way?

On the first one (garretmetal1), I'd say make sure your drums aren't peaking too high. It looks like a lot of the spikes on the waveform are coming from the drums, so you want to try to bring those down if you can. The snare drum and toms in particular sound to me like they could stand to be compressed (or be compressed more if you're already compressing them). I'm not sure if this will help the overall loudness issue, but I think the lower frequencies (~20 Hz-800 Hz) are too dominant (as you've noticed). I'd say roll off everything below ~80 Hz, cut everything below ~800 Hz by at least 4 dB, and see if that lets you pull the overall level up a bit.

http://ocremix.org/forums/member.php?u=38025 All three posts advertise a website. EDIT: n/m, Rozo already covered this one.

Looks like a problem with the Realtek audio drivers? Do you have the most recent version of the drivers installed?

I'd say it's more a situation where you just need to know what to listen for. Like Zircon said, depending on the bass sound, you may want some mid-/high-end to catch the pick/finger noise. Same may be true of the kick -- you might want mid-/high-end to catch the noise of the beater. All of this is situational, though. A spectrum analyzer might help you balance the frequencies, but it'll tell you neither which parts of the spectrum to emphasize in which instruments nor whether the balance you've achieved "on paper" is actually compelling as a mix. I don't generally use a spectrum analyzer to mix, although I'll sometimes check mostly finished mixes with one to get a different look at how my mix which already sounds pretty good at that point sits in the total frequency spectrum and may make minor tweaks depending on what I see. EDIT: The point I'm trying to make is that ideally you shouldn't need to consult a spectrum analyzer to tell whether the frequency spectrum is balanced. If you have decent monitors/headphones and are very familiar with how things sound on them, you should be able to hear spectrum balance issues just by listening to the mix. (Obviously, this is something that comes only with practice, and consulting an analyzer may help you to develop an ear for frequency balance and to catch things that you didn't notice or that were masked by deficiencies in your monitoring setup.) EDIT 2: Also, just to be clear, I have something of an anti- visual mixing bias, so don't let me dissuade you from using a spectrum analyzer if you think it will be helpful to you.

Sweet. Now mine will be polished and awesome instead of unpolished but still awesome.

On the keyboards we've linked, the 88 weighted keys are the main reason why they cost $400+. You can get semi-weighted keys for less, but they won't feel quite like a piano. It's hard to find inexpensive dedicated controllers with fully-weighted keys -- since the weighted action is one of the most expensive elements of the keyboard, that's what gets cut out to reduce the price. I'd recommend not writing off digital pianos just because they aren't solely controllers. Any digital piano with MIDI connections can do as much as a basic controller, and with the lower-priced digital pianos, it's the number of keys and the action that are bringing the price up, not the internal sounds. If you're okay with semi-weighted instead of fully-weighted and want to risk buying M-Audio, the Keystation 88es, which is solely a controller, is about $200. I've never used it, so I can't say if it's any good.

Oh yes, I went there.

When it's used sparingly and tastefully, I think it actually sounds good (e.g. Cher's "Believe"). When it's constantly applied to entire vocal passages, it's annoying (e.g. most hip-hop uses I've heard, Daft Punk, etc.)

It's great for correcting wrong notes (like it was originally intended for). The Cher effect, which is what everyone now thinks of when they hear the term autotune, is, however, over-used and obnoxious.

I have a Casio CDP-100 that I've been pretty satisfied with. The downsides are that the internal speakers are lousy and there are no true speaker outs, only a headphone out, but if you're going to primarily use it as a MIDI controller, that wouldn't be an issue at all. I really like the action on the keys. No pitch bend, mod wheel, or aftertouch, though. It's also not USB. You'd have to use a MIDI interface, which you can get for around $30-$40. I second what Snapple said about M-Audio. I have a Radium 49 -- the build quality is cheap, a few of the keys stick, and I had to disconnect the pitch wheel because it went out of alignment and was sending pitch bend signals in the zeroed position. Only go with M-Audio if you're on a really tight budget; you'll get what you pay for.

♥♥♥ Melodyne Editor Pretty sure there are freeware pitch correction plug-ins as well, although I don't know them off the top of my head.

Do you have to upgrade to 7 to maintain upgrade pricing eligibility for when Komplete 8 is released, or can you just sit this one out?

Also, if you haven't done so already, learn to differentiate the different parts of a drum kit. Learn the difference in sound between a ride cymbal and a crash cymbal, etc. If you're going to listen to existing music to find things to imitate (and you should), knowing what type of percussion hits you're hearing is important, because it will make reproducing the sound on your own much easier, and you'll have labels to put on the sounds you remember (e.g "open hi-hat off the beat" instead of "some kind of cymbal off the beat").