How Is My Mix & Master? Less compression, more Dynamics.

F

fworks

New member
Hi Everyone,

I actually just signed up to the forum and want to share my songs with you, and get some opinions most specifically on my mix and master. Yes, I know, it's not good etiquette to simply post ones music and get clicks, but I hope to get in some thoughts so I can decide wether to re-master my songs or leave them be.

I got my songs mixed and mastered, which I am very happy with. After uploading on Soundcloud I quickly realised that, in comparison, my music has less loudness. I love my mix, because it is dynamic, the quiet bits are quiet, and the louds bits come in with a bang (which I love). But having my song on soundcloud, it instantly feels "cheap", only because it is less loud.

Now, I'm contemplating wether to get my songs pushed a bit more, and to make them louder. Wondering what some you guys think, wether export or new producers, of course I how you like my sound, but also the mix and master itself.

Check my Homepage link to access the songs. Thanks!

Regards,

f
 
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Hi, It sounds like the tracks aren't mixed with a lot of punch and detail. Not saying they're necessarily mixed bad, but they lack transient detail in the kick and snare, which makes it sound slightly subdued. It's just coming through as a wall of sound & already smashed quite loudly. They're great ideas, but you could try getting them mixed differently perhaps. Don't want to discourage you, curious where you got them done? Please PM
 
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fworks said:
it instantly feels "cheap", only because it is less loud
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Let me ask you a question. Do you care whether a song is loud or quiet, when it sucks? This is not to say that your work sucks (although it might), because I have not heard it (could not find the link to it). But the point I am making here is that when you say you like other music, it's louder, what you are saying is really that you like that music. The gain is just an amplification of that music that you love. Of course there are then great gain staging processes by themselves, but the end result is mostly not due to mixing nor due to mastering, so it does not really matter what your gain levels are - do not blame the zooming glass, blame what's underneath it.

So, having told you that hard lesson - what the take away lesson should be is remember to create much enough quality early enough. You will thank me for having saved you a number of years of gain staging battling by saying this. Yes, its true that components in the signal chain are limited by their signal headroom and it matters to have high power high headroom gear, it matters a lot, but these things are set right early in the process, as early as when you decide on a great monitoring setup, before you even start to record. It is too late to bring in the power at mixing and mastering.

Cheap mixes are cheap sounding because they are bad sounding, not because they are loud or quiet sounding. A typical example of this is a synthetic/sample driven dry mix done on some random headphones. You cannot make chicken salad out of chicken shit. Here is the formula:

(Monitoring 1-3)^5/5 * (Production 1-3)^(4/5) * (Recording 1-3)^(3/5) * (Mixing 1-3)^(2/5) * (Mastering 1-3)^(1/5)

The reason why this is more true than ever before in history, is because these days it is what is left after all the cuts are done, which counts, the amount of cuts have never been this great. You see, the music industry figured this one out, the rich cats wanted ways to create greater contrasts between expensive made music and cheap made music, so to enlarge that contrast even further they started cutting on the average listening formats down to mp3. So now those home studio guys would really not stand a chance. But I am now letting you know how to combat this - remember to have as much quality "left" after the final cut, and that you do by maximizing the quality of the first input.

When you evaluate the quality of sound, do so with radically downgrading filters applied, so that you can tell what's left after all the cuts. In this way you will get a better understanding of what kind of content you should be recording. And I'm telling you, it's about authenticity of music. Real good musicians playing real good music with real good instruments.

So basically stop thinking of the gain now, and start focusing on your monitoring. Monitoring does not mean to buy a set of expensive speakers. Monitoring is a sophisticated PROCESS just like mixing is a process, the monitoring process is probably more sophisticated than production, recording, mixing and mastering combined. You should be learning the monitoring process, not how to gain a mix.
 
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Hey, yeah, I agree with what you say and I get what you mean. I do in production make sure that all sounds are the way I want them, and are placed within a given spectrum that doesn't interfere with other sounds. It is about authenticity, man, that's all I try to go for, my own style.

Actually I mix on Genelecs, the smaller ones and subwoofer. I've had them for years and I love them to death, they're great for at home producing and mixing to a certain extent that my environment allows me to. So, I do go for quality.

My mix does sound powerful, it is, maybe even for a lot of people too aggressive. BUT, the fact that my music feels less loud, than even just a young producer trying out his first songs, makes it loose some of its quality on a platform such as Soundcloud. Because you listen to music that at all times is quite pushed, then you listen to another song that is great, but quiet in comparison, it doesn't seem as professional, even if it might be the exact opposite. You know what I mean? The listener might even make an assumption before actually really listening to the music. That to me is kind of off-putting, because I personally get that feeling. So, I kind of want to give up my dynamics a bit, and slightly head in for the loudness war. Maybe it's somewhere in between that will make it work.
 
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fworks said:
Here are my tracks
https://soundcloud.com/frontality
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I just had a listen to both of your songs and I definitely did not miss any loudness. For the particular genre it was fine, I mean you could throw this into a game, make money off of it and people would like it in that context. But it is this kind of music that you turn down in volume after a while, I mean it is cool but up to a point. If you want this kind of music to become really musical sounding, then it has to stay nice and warm when you turn up the volume. It is that kind of stuff that these mixes need in my opinion and then we are talking monitoring and we are talking hardware instead of plugins, and we are talking real instruments instead of samples. Do you know what I mean?

You see, it is really not about the loudness. Great sound has dimensionality and sweetness.

I think that your best route forward from here, is really throw garbage on the two bus to hear how bad sounding it becomes, then adjust your focus so that you improve the sound earlier in the process, through monitoring, through use of hardware instead of software, through use of not only real sound sources, but really good sounding real sound sources in a really good sounding room. Please try to remember the word "dimensionality", that is what you are after, not gain. Trust me, gain will come your way, but dimensionality might not.

It is a matter of staying authentic towards music and about music. And I am sure you are doing so. I mean this mostly as a guiding principle. We tend to compromise the music we make, by handling it rather "roughly". This process of replacing stuff that kills the dimensionality, by stuff that adds dimensionality, that's what it is about. And that's a process of discovery as well. But you will find that "real" stuff works better, and that "early" works better... And along that path you are going to build an authentic relationship towards music, because you are constantly working closer to it, you are not messing with software limiters and that kind of stuff, you are focusing on real stuff.

Study contemporary country music, that's all about "real" and that's what all other genres need to breathe as well. So it's not gain, although yes high voltage capacity gear makes the music fatter and more real sounding, so that's why it is used... But you see, the voltages of gear can do only so much, we still need to do much much more and much much earlier before we start to get millions of plays...

So it's all relative to your goals. But you see, the difference is in what comes out at the other end of the gain stage. The gain stage itself too, but the input much much more so. And it is the input you should focus on.
 
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Thanks for your input, Red. I guess I'll leave it as is for now and keep the dynamics as they are.

I get that authentic sound in a Mix, although I produce only electronic music I love the mixes of Soundgarden or let's say The Dead Weather type of stuff, just feels so real. I wanna go for that!
 
fworks said:
Thanks for your input, Red. I guess I'll leave it as is for now and keep the dynamics as they are.

I get that authentic sound in a Mix, although I produce only electronic music I love the mixes of Soundgarden or let's say The Dead Weather type of stuff, just feels so real. I wanna go for that!
Click to expand...

That's exactly what you should be going for, life is too short to spend chasing an unreal sound, when you throw yourself at this with passion and authenticity, then that is a true artist at work. It's about letting the music shape you into your most real being that you are, the sound of that is sweet.
 
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