Pumping synth muddying up my mix?

L

LindenGarcia18

Guest
I have a pumping synth as my mid range sound in a jump up D&B remix I'm doing.

I've spent a long time mixing and perfecting the track and came up with something that sounded decent, and translated well on various sound systems.

the issue though is this synth.
It's an important part of the track but I just can't get it to sit right.
Without it, everything else is nice and punchy and works really well, but with it in there, it causes the vocal to lose it's impact, and the bass to sound thinner.

I've tried panning by splitting it into two tracks and going hard left and right which helps to a degree (What positions are best I'm not sure)

I took out the bass-ier notes which helped a little, and EQ'd it rolling some off the high end.

What I've done has helped quite a fair bit, but I'm still struggling to get it sitting right and not muddying up everything else.

Any tips?

Thanks.
 
It'd help to hear an example of it, but usually the solution is so simple that it's overlooked by perfectionists like you and I.

I'd first make sure that the track is high pass filtered to at least 100 hz (mayyyybe higher) in order to get out of the way of the actual bass.

Then if it's muddying up the rest of the mix, there may not be as much room for it as you were hoping for so you'll have to lower the volume in the mix so that it's still "felt" but not "heard" as much. You could compress it independently of the "pumping" to have it stay at the same level and then lower the overall track to something that sounds right.

Or better yet, take your kick drum and make a sharp cut in it's lower mids which probably contain a LOT of unneeded information. a 6 dB cut right around 400 hz always works for me and that will help everything else to come out a little bit more while the kicks hitting.

Do the same to the snare if it has a resonant peak around 300 hz and suddenly you've cleared up the mid for both the vocals and the mid track.

Just don't make the mistake of intense eq'ing the mid track in order to compensate for something else because the problem most likely lies in something much more trivial than that.

Best of luck!
 
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Without listening to it, you're probably not EQ'ing out enough out of the synth. Like you wrote, everything sounds good without it, which means that you should add as little as possible of it or carve out more room for it somewhere else. Think of it like Tetris, you have a row done and when you add anything, it's not going to be a solid row anymore, so you need to make space for it somewhere else or you need to remove enough of the synth to the point where it doesn't take away as much balance from what you already have.

In short, don't be afraid to cut more.
 
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Thanks for the tips, I'll go back and have a go at what you suggested.

thanks again. I hadn't really thought to EQ the drums.
 
Good analogy, I'll try that.

Looks like EQing this with more precision should work.

thanks again.
 
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