Am I right to mix my tracks like this?

T

Tinseltopia

New member
I usually tend to have a fair few elements in my tracks, but I seem to follow the sames rules for all of the elements and I'm not sure if this is how everyone else mixes

I have a limiter on every bus, and usually I'll peak the kick and the Snare at -6dB, I'll have Pianos/Pads/Synths peaking around -8dB, Hats and Cymbals roughly the same -8dB for Open hats, -10dB for Closed hats, The Bass and Sub Bass, depending on the track will be -10dB/-12.5dB, Rides and White noise usually -20dB.

Just wondering is this normal? Is this a similar approach to everyone else? This peaking is usually after compression (if any is used) and all elements are EQ'd so there are very few clashing frequencies.

I have it set this way so that the track won't be too 'hot' for a mastering engineer (whenever I make a track good enough to warrant that)
 
Tinseltopia said:
I usually tend to have a fair few elements in my tracks, but I seem to follow the sames rules for all of the elements and I'm not sure if this is how everyone else mixes

I have a limiter on every bus, and usually I'll peak the kick and the Snare at -6dB, I'll have Pianos/Pads/Synths peaking around -8dB, Hats and Cymbals roughly the same -8dB for Open hats, -10dB for Closed hats, The Bass and Sub Bass, depending on the track will be -10dB/-12.5dB, Rides and White noise usually -20dB.

Just wondering is this normal? Is this a similar approach to everyone else? This peaking is usually after compression (if any is used) and all elements are EQ'd so there are very few clashing frequencies.

I have it set this way so that the track won't be too 'hot' for a mastering engineer (whenever I make a track good enough to warrant that)
Click to expand...

Wrong, very wrong even, I would say. You are basically dictating to the content what the content should be - but isn't. Never ever get in the way of the music, let the music speak to you. You should not follow a limitation formula towards great sound, because it won't sound great. During the rough mix, put a great number of dithering algorithms on it and just turn up the volume to -6 LUFS. Now, authentically answer whether you like what you hear or not, and you should be VERY critical. Forget about the limiting, it is the type of limiting you do right now, that is the root cause of your limiting habit. Proper gain staging is controlled by the monitoring process.

One more thing. You have to start looking at your monitoring habits.
 
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Before passing judgement on your method, what is the purpose of the limiter? If it's just to catch peaks, that's fine. However, if it's to maximize the volume of each track to a specific level, that might be a little problematic. I've done similar to what you've mentioned. Prior to using the limiter, I decided that I wanted my kick & snare to be louder without changing it's peak level too much (compression is the perfect tool for such a task). When doing this the dBfs reading didn't matter that much. The focus was on how loud it sounded in comparison to everything else.
 
If you always use the same sounds, then these figures might work...for you. But while I won't say it's "wrong", it's totally impossible for anyone to say whether it's right either. The numbers don't tell us how it sounds, and there's no point sticking to them if it ain't good.
 
It's not wrong in the sense that if it sounds good then it's good, but I wouldn't live by those numbers because every sound is different. Unless you're using the same exact snare every time, each snare is going to have a different punch, high end, snap to it so the EQ curve will be different so the volume may be the different. You can't just set a specific number to something blindly. Listen to the sound in the context of the song and always mix accordingly. Some times you may need to the saturate the hell out of a snare to get it to cut through how you want it, other times the ∂ry sample will be good enough. I would advise agains't putting a limiter and setting definite db levels before anything.
 
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