Okay ... I had to stick my nose in ...
Hey ...
Being a producer of pop music myself (and VERY Max Martin-ish* at that), I know what you're trying to achieve.
(* Max produces Britney Spears, the Backstreet Boys, Nsync among others ...)
The much sought-after "presence" that you speak of does not come from a magic box that you can run everything through to make it sound perfect and professional. The presence comes from ... wait for it ... the MIX. You really must have a good mix and good arrangements to have presence. Let's take it from the top, shall we?
(The following is for the benefit of everyone - I'm not trying to be derogatory of your skills at all.)
In pop music, it all starts with rhythm. Actually, in almost all mainstream styles, rhythm is the key component. The vocals don't make you want to dance, the DRUMS make you want to dance. Specifically, in the case of pop music, the kick drum and snare. These two should be mixed much higher than you'd expect, the snare in particular. Listen to any Britney Spears track (I'm listening to the instrumental of "Lucky" at the moment) and you'll see what I mean.
Next, and just as important as the rhythm section (well, because it really IS the other half of the rhythm section) is the bass line. The bass line, kick drum and snare should weave a seamless groove. (If fact, most of the rest of the track is just "ear-candy" to keep the listeners attention during the breaks between vocal passages.) Try not to use biting bass (read: not a bass guitar) sounds too much, unless you're punctuating a transition in the song. Nearly all of those Swedish producers seem to use low, fretless bass type sounds during the verses. Almost no attack transients at all, but when layered on top of the kick, it really punches nicely. Go sparingly with the reverb on the bass line (none on the kick), and things will jump out a lot better.
Be careful though! Even though the low-frequency element is essential, don't mix it too loud. If your monitoring system has poor bass response, you'll often over-do the bass so that it drowns everything else out in a real-world playback medium (ie. your car or a club or your home stereo). I usually roll off the bass pretty steeply around
35Hz, as VERY few systems can actually reproduce frequencies that low. The deep bass drones you hear in a lot of hip-hop music are around 40Hz whereas the majority of "punchy" bass is in the 60-110Hz range.
Now we'll jump up the frequency spectrum just a little bit ...
To get a lot of bite to your drums, you must also have a lot of high-end sizzle. This is traditionally accomplished with hi-hats, but you can also use tambourine, shakers, triangles, and other assorted sounds that have a crisp high end - in any combination. A favourite sound in Britney's productions is a sampled breath sound - the "ha, ha, ha, ha" you hear in eighth-note divisions. Not that difficult to do, but it's a very distinctive percussive element nonetheless. My productions usually have between 5 and 8 different "auxiliary percussion" instruments. These sounds can really flesh-out a drum track.
Now ... the all important mid-range ...
The absolute key to a good pop-vocal track is ... the VOCALS. (Imagine that?) The vocals occupy the mid-range of the frequency spectrum shared by few (if any) other instruments. I mix the instruments here a little lower than you might expect to hear them. You have to make room for the vocal - unless the vocalist is awful, in which case, the mix might better be suited with way too much midrange!
Guitars, strings and keyboards/synths usually cohabit this frequency range between approximately 150 and about 4000Hz, with attack transients harmonics usually reaching above into the 10-15kHz range. Usually all I put in here is a string pad and the occasional acoustic guitar part. You don't need clutter during vocal passages.
That's about it for a decent mix, except for the ear-candy. Sweeten to taste.
Finally ... the most important step in turning a good mix into a great mix is final processing. Yeah, I know I'm contradicting myself, but you do need to polish things once you're done.
If you're not using a lot of compression/limiting or judicious EQ during your mix-down, you'll often have to pull the main outs down quit a bit just to avoid over-load distortion, and in the digital world, hard-clipping (for maximum speaker thrashing). So, your stereo master, let's imagine it's a .WAV/.AIF file, will likely not have all of the level that you need it to have. It will sound quiet and dead next to a "professionally mastered" mix. So how do you fix that?
Relatively easily actually. All you really need is a nice clean parametric EQ and a decent "look-ahead" compressor/limiter. With the EQ, you can make the final tonal adjustments to your mix that you deem necessary.
(For the sake of everyone's patience, I'm not going to get into EQ techniques, as there are plenty of sites that describe the ins and outs of EQ.)
The limiter does the miracle job of soft-clipping the peak transients (spikes in the wave file) that can exaggerate the dynamic range of a track immensely. By using a limiter, you can get quite a bit more volume (and presence) from your mix without sacrificing too much dynamic range. Be careful not to crank the limiter up too mush however, or you can squish your mix a little excessively, and you will achieve the "wall of sound" effect, regardless of how you mixed the track.
Another option is a great little plugin called "Loudness Maximizer" from Steinberg that boosts the volume of your mix as much as you want without clipping. It works very much like a limiter, except the controls are dead-easy. Just crank up the "Desired Gain" slider to your heart's content! Again ... use it in moderation. You can get some nasty speaker distortion (not necessarily wave distortion) if you crank it up too high.
And finally ... ("does this guy ever shut-up?")
Keep in mind that your monitoring system, the very speakers that you mix with, will inherently colour your mix (hey ... there is NO SUCH THING is a FLAT frequency response), so it's best to make several versions of your mix and put them onto one CD to play in all sorts of places. Play the CD in as many places as you can, and you'll eventually learn what is wrong with your mix. The snare might be too loud, or the bass is a little dead, or the high end isn't crisp enough ... whatever.
Use your ears, and experiment! If things don't sound right to you, get a second opinion. If things STILL don't sound right, twiddle a couple of knobs until they DO.
Mixing is SO subjective that it's ridiculous. Keep in mind that the above info is my personal opinion, and I'm not telling you that you SHOULD or SHOULD NOT do any of the above. Listen carefully, do A/B comparisons of professional mixes that you want to sound like, and tweak until it's right.
Finally, a few links:
http://www.waves.com/
(Makers of
L1 Ultramaximizer - a fantastic limiter, and the Q10 Equalizer. The plugins I use ... expensive but worth every penny!)
http://www.steinberg.net/
(Some great plugins here too, including the Loudness Maximizer.)
http://www.ultrafunk.com/
(For those on a budget ...
Sonitus:fx is a great plugin package.)
Whew!
Regards,
-=(stu.macQ)=-
Oh ... and you can get T-Racks for Windows ...
