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Mixing and mastering to get clear sound


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  • 2 weeks later...

It's going to depend alot on your source material , whether it's mostly live recordings , VSTis , etc.

Generally , the more elements you have in a track playing simultaneously , the more complicated your mixing will be , so use your elements wisely and try not to have too much going on at once (4 elements at any given time is usually a good average i.e. percussion , main instrument , background instrument , bass , some effects). If you have much more than this , try to bring them in and out in different sections with volume fades , filter cutoff automation , anything that ramps up the levels smoothly in and out. Use EQ mostly to CUT frequency ranges out that take space for nothing. Boosting frequencies means boosting your overall signal level . The same perceived boost in a range can be had by cutting out areas surrounding the range you want emphasized. Use your EQ by ear and sweep around the ranges until you find a sweet spot you like that no other instruments might be using too heavily , then cut a bit around that sweet spot to open up that space. This is one example. There are a dizzying number of ways to do this and everyone works differently.

Use some compression when you have an instrument/element whos volume level isn't consistent enough for it to stay balanced and you need its level to stay relatively constant. You can also compress drum tracks to make them fuller , or make use of attack times to have the striking part "snap" and cut through the mix.

As for the entire track , you would definitely want to bring in a brickwall limiter to push the levels of the entire track up without anything going over the peak limit (anything over 0db on a digital track = nasty-sounding distortion).

There are alot of tutorials on the net. A good place to start would be here:

TweakHeadz Lab Electronic Musician's Hangout

They have an entire "course" on everything audio. Take a look.

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  • 1 month later...

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