I’ve learned a whole lot about mixing in the last year. I understand now that we mix our songs for tone and not loudness. However, when I export the mixed project to an MP3 and look at the MP3 file it’s really thin looking, and then when I play it on my phone or car it sounds good but pretty low in volume. Is this the norm of a song that’s mixed with about 6db of headroom? I know mastering will make the song “louder”, but I’m wondering if there’s something going on within the mix-perhaps on the master bus? Or am I exporting the file incorrectly? Or should I not fret as this is what a mixed project sounds like prior to mastering? I really need some clarity here as it’s been frustrating me for some time.
Side note* I eq and pan things so everything has there own space, compress lightly through out each channel and make sure my levels on indivual tracks are about -12DB
Any advice or suggestions here would be appreciated!
Hi GFunkEra408, a thought or two, for you:
-do a test master yourself (limiting, eq, comp, etc) or use a free online master service and print. test your worries here. use these rough masters in your car and/or reference again other tracks in multiple environments and see what discrepancies you notice. I believe referencing tracks in this manner may evaporate the worry as you will be approximating final product with as little environmental confounds/bias as possible
-just a thought on loudness: it is likely best to recall musicality and loudness are both separate concepts (which require distinct, discrete understandings of what leads up to and defines these concepts) , yet manifestation of each in the mix-context can yield synergistic results. what this means practically for the engineer: there is overlap between what makes parts of a mix (or consequently the whole-mix) musical and what also makes the mix loud.
a direction to consider here: what can One do to minimize undesirable artifacts that come from intense application of loudness approaches. Explore options there and parallels between those solutions and musicality could be found.
-you could also consider these thoughts as they relate to your approach to gain staging and thoughts about prep for mastering. Perhaps your -12dB target is simply a rough target for gain staging (the avoidance of unmusical clipping), but I deeply suggest you not adhere to that or any numerical limitation at the cost of musicality. always-always-always use ears first. this perceptual commitment will save you from an unbelievable waste of time, effort. Balance can be achieved here with a genuine awareness of your individual focus throughout the mixing process----as you apply action in the mix/master observe how you observe; zoom-in-zoom-out, repeat with musicality as the anchor in this specific context.
-Yes! master bus treatment is profound at times. If you choose not to utilize this during the mix and leave it to a mastering engineer, this is often when you get back a noticeably better product from the outside party. Here (theoretically) the mastering engineer will notice the room left for processing which can potentiate the pieces of the puzzle left to move around, so to speak. Should you choose to integrate a mixbus chain yourself during mixing (and should it be high in quality/integrity), you can save the master engineer alot of work, most likely leaving "loudness" as their prime concern musically.
*a brief related anecdote: when using pre-mastering system arrangements, There appears to be utility to using both bottom up dynamic processing and bottom up frequency processing---doing the inverse appears to yield compromised technical results as you end up fighting phase shift/dist with more phase shift/dist, and with dynamics you can end up undoing any downward dynamic work at the "top" as downward dynamics are applied to the tracks nested under pre-master routing (or perhaps just the master bus).
For unhelpful top down dynamics: this is so as nested track levels shift down below the previously set threshold at pre-master compression stages. This being said, intense (ear!) attention to gain compensation during this dynamic work can eliminate this problem with relative shift in levels per previously set thresholds. BBut should your mix or pre-master routing be elaborate (with processing and respective thresholds set at each point).. prepare thyself for some murky waters and deeply regrettable results. As goes with most contexts, the system sophistication should not be set to exceed the sophistication of the operators of, or within, the system---this being so for music engineers as well.
For unhelpful top down frequency processing: this can be so as any mistake causing unhelpful frequency phase shift/distortion at the pre-master or master will intuitively draw the mixer to compensate at the individual tracks (or any tracks feeding the pre-master or master chains), BUT given the pre-existing shifts/distortions, applying MORE frequency change will apply MORE frequency phase shift (perhaps distortion) in addition the original frequency integrity losses.
ANYwoo, think, dont think, feel, let go, repeat
that is all, and I am wishing the best
-MadHat33
