Hello everyone, trying to get a mix to the finish line and I’ve brought in several reference tracks. It’s got a lil bit of a 80’s dance vibe with big guitars in the hook.

I’ve brought in several reference tracks: Get Lucky, Foster the People, Arcade Fire, and Queens of the Stone Age for the guitars etc. they’ve been volume matched.

The issue here is my kick and bass are generally either a little quieter or louder than the references so I assume they’re okay. But my midrange is consistently too loud and harsh.

I’ve got 6 guitar tracks playing either the same riff or an octave up. I’ve gone in and tried to clean up the offending frequencies/lowering the volume. Then I’ll go back to my limiter and adjust so I’m hitting around the same decibels as before. The limiter just ends up undoing any EQ volume changes and my midrange is still too much.

Literally chasing my tail here while I consistently make my mix quieter and quieter with no real tonal changes being made.

Advice please!

Hello r/mixingmastering, of course, I don't want to be biased by just my mom's feedback, so I'm coming here.

My references for this song were Take On Me by a-ha and As It Was by Harry Styles. I was going for an upbeat 80s- 90s-inspired feel, not new-wave like my references, but I wanted the vibe and tone they brought. I wrote, recorded, produced, and mixed the track by myself. I am an amateur mixing engineer.

Here are my main questions:

How is the stereo space in the track, since I panned lots of things?

How is the frequency spectrum balance? Is it too high or too low in an area, or overbearing?

Is there any other feedback? (I appreciate any feedback)

Thanks

Thanks for recent feedback, here is an updated verson: https://vocaroo.com/1nR9Tlpx1202

i’m a guitarrist and also play some bass, and i have this post-hardcore solo project. even though I’ve been playing guitar for quite a while, I struggle to stay perfectly in time so, while the programmed drums are at the correct BPM, my guitar and bass tracks end up being off-beat. do you know of any techniques, or perhaps a video, that explains how to fix this during the editing/mixing process? reaper is my main daw btw
:)

It’s not writers block, it’s mixers block. The feeling I’ve had for years of excitement digging into a mix has basically been, not around; almost like I’m bored. There’s something in me that knows what needs to be done to a mix, but I almost can’t bring myself to do it. I’m wondering if this is common. What is your process when this comes about? How many breaks/ear rests do you like to take? Most importantly, how do I get my Mojo back?

Hey all. Been making music for a little while and I have a few songs that I have been trying to do everything diy. So far I’ve really been fighting with my mix. Especially feeling either muddy, hollow, or thin.

My biggest influences are pop rock and new wave bands like The Cars, Duran Duran, Talking heads, Djo (more modern), Icehouse, etc. i have posted some tracks looking for feedback in the past if you are curious feel free to take a look.

What I’m looking for is a mix down of my first song “Away Tonight” which is based on the cars album “heartbeat city”

Thanks all, feel free to reach out/ask questions.

Does anyone know a way to make it so a compressor only adjusts the output gain when the threshold is met and compression is applied. I think that this would be helpful when mastering because I often find that if I throw a compressor on the master it will be to quite during loud bassy parts so I up the output gain but then find that my song is overly loud when the bass/loud parts arnt happing to engage the compressor. What should I do???

so i have an album i'm about to release and i realized when i was going to master the songs my mixes are very loud. i already planned to go really light on mastering anyway, because i personally believe that the mixes usually speak for themselves and there's not a lot i've ever done on the mastering front. however, my question is should i go back and fix the mixes to allow some room for mastering and loudness or should i say fuck it and just release the songs and have streaming services normalize the loudness for me? and just do some eq and compression for the mastering. i understand i'm not doing everything perfectly right i just want some guidance is all. thank you!

How could i use a reference track for leveling my drums in fl studio? I have tried isolating the frequencies with a fruity parametric eq 2 but it only worked with the low end instruments and hi hats and i do not want to use a ai stem separator. if y'all have any tips or plugins it would help thanks!

Hi. I wonder if anyone has any advice, how to handle sub frequencies, so they don't feel overpowering in cars. I mix and master quite a few songs and they sound good on headphones and speakers, translate really well. But sometimes I ran into problems, when listening to these songs in cars and the sub just feels too much. Are there any frequencies, that cars don't handle well? I usually check that the crest factor is correct and that spectrally everything is alright, but still the problem in cars stays.

So....I think no. Even a cheap cable thats not broken and working as intended should sound the same as a high end cable.

Is this wrong?

I understand cheap cables won't last as long, can have defects, or not stay 100% functioning as long as an expensive cable. But that aside, is the situation not binary? Full signal arrive great, doesn't matter over what cable is arived. am I crazy?

I know I should stay off the internet, but man those youtubers and their great sounding cables....

Hi, im a bit stuck with a problem i was hoping to hear some other perspectives on.

I finished mixing a track to my liking and now that im mastering it im stuck on around -18.6 LUFS and a -1.5 dB headroom.

While im scared of losing some of the dynamic of the track im guessing its better i get to do it manually and to my pleasing rather than letting a streaming platform squish it or leave it quiet?

As far as i know a compressor seems like a decent way to balance this out pretty effectively at this stage but since i have kick and sub-bass sounds that i dont want to be neither "longer" nor "shorter" in its sound, ive had trouble using a compressor wether normal or multiband succesfully on a mastering track.

But im a tad bit shit at compressors so i may very well be missing something there.

Thanks ^^

I've seen some pro engineers put 2 limiters on the master and say "the second one is to take the load off the first limiter so it doesn't work that hard". And I was wondering, what do they mean by that? Wouldn't just one limiter suffice?

Also seen people use 2 compressors on the same track one after another and I don't see the reason for that. Can someone explain please?

I've been making & mixing music now for well over a decade and still find choosing and dialling reverbs the part I avoid the most due to it being so nebulous.
I'm working with Ableton on a Macbook Pro.

1. What’s your workflow for dialling in a reverb fast?
2. How do you decide on room vs. plate vs. hall for a given source?
3. Do you EQ or compress the reverb return, and how?
4. Plugin recommendations?
5. Any good tutorials or exercises?

Novice here - any basic advice (or direction towards relevant sources) appreciated.

I'm aiming to make a song in Ableton and have ripped some of my own vinyl records into Audacity and then Ableton. I've isolated loads of short motifs - be it breakbeat sections that I'll chop up and loop, string sections, orchestra stabs etc. etc. (I've also downloaded a load of other FLAC & WAV breakbeat loops sourced from Soul, Funk & Jazz songs which I believe are also vinyl rips).

I'm just wondering how I should go about mixing these samples. Particularly in the case of drums/breakbeat. Whilst I've reordered particular parts of the break to make them my own pattern, I don't want to chop up every single stroke/note in the break to process it individually as this might stop these milliseconds-apart strokes flowing into each other (each instrument is overlaid over each other anyway so I'm not sure how I'd do that, and I want to avoid using AI).

I'd like to be able to amalgamate different break samples together as well in a way that will feel coherent.

I'm new to mixing, and if possible would like to just go about this with as few non-Ableton stock plug-ins as possible.

Any mixing fundamentals and tips appreciated, thank you in advance.

Sorry if this seems like a novice question but I've been trying to understand how on a lot of my reference tracks, the snare and kick are very loud yet when I turn my kick and snare to the same level, the transients far exceed those on my reference track despite being the same perceived volume. It may be important to mention this is for recorded drums on a heavy rock track. I have tried saturation, clipping, and many forms of compression yet nothing really achieves the loudness I'm looking for while preserving headroom. I still wish to preserve dynamics with the kick and snare just without the spikey transient. Any tips?

So like most of us intermediate Almost Advanced Mixing Hobbyist, I struggle with getting the appropriate depth on very dense mixes. I find that it's hard to get the exact amount of depth without being too washed out or not enough and everything sounds like it's fighting for the front wall of the dimension.

I have found a technique that I feel like is working and I'm wondering if anyone else has tried it or if someone is willing to open up their d a w and try this to give me their honest opinion. I'm just making sure I'm not introducing very low level phase shifting that is problematic. I don't have the greatest monitoring setup at the moment because my room dimension is a perfect square once I bought my new house and I have not modified this room so I'm mixing and headphones lately. Anyway, here is the technique I've been doing

Duplicating a track, delaying the waveform by physically moving it later in time typically around 8 to 15 milliseconds , using a crush / Distortion style plugin like sound toys devil lock, turning the track down by 30 decibels or so to where it's very quiet, and then sending that to a desired Reverb. I can really notice that it's giving a three-dimensional sound. And my hypothesized reason for trying this is because analog gear creates very low level harmonics that are also phase shifting your source in the slightest way that gives it a pleasant three-dimensional sound. This is not exactly a proven statement but I am saying but I am beginning to wonder if the reason why analog sounds so good is because the slightest shifting in phase creates more dimension. Anyway let me know what you think and if anyone else does this and if there is actually already a name for this technique. I find that I can just control the depth with the fader of this duplicated track. The further you turn it down the deeper it gets. You will notice when you mute that track it's it is obvious that it is less dimension

Hi guys, noob here. Cowbell jokes aside, I'm a bitt puzzled when trying to figure out what's going on with the mixing and panning of Blue Oyster Cult's "Dont' fear the reaper". In the intro, it seems that there is only one guitar at the right side, and that (maybe?) just reverb from that guitar is heard on the left side. Or maybe it's two guitars and one of them only plays one note?

Same happens in the chorus: is there another guitar at the left or not? Are there two guitars panned or is it one on one side?

Also, percussion-wise, I seem to hear guiros and/or castanets? Or maybe it's a vibraslap?

Note: wrote "r-eaper" in the title to bypass the Reaper (software) auto-block.

Hey, I'm an artist/mixing engineer working out of my college dorm, and I'm looking to upgrade my headphones to a more "professional" pair.

Currently I'm using the Focusrite SH-450, the one that comes bundled with the Scarlett 2i2 Gen 4 interface and microphone, and it's served me well so far (my mixes seem to translate well), but it's not the most durable, and I believe that there's better options for producing/mixing.

I searched a bit and found the K240's for $99 (well within my price range), alongside very mixed reviews and a frequency response graph that did not look appealing in the slightest.

So I thought I'd check and see what y'all think of this as an alternative to the Focusrite SH-450 headphones.

Also, out of curiosity, what's the general consensus on the SH-450 as proper mixing headphones?

I never learned music theory but I've still been writing songs for about 16 years now by just playing around, trying stuff out, seeing what works and what doesn't.

But with mixing, it feels like there is so much to consider, to do wrong, so many things you could do but don't even know about, that it feels like a chore to me.

Does anybody maybe have some tips on how to make mixing just another fun part of creating a song?

I'm sorry if this is the wrong subreddit for this discussion. I'm a huge sucker for great video game soundtracks. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has one of the greatest video game soundtracks to come out in recent years. But why is the mixing and mastering on this soundtrack so atrocious? The best example is the boss theme Une Vie À T'aimer, which has nasty clipping throughout. (The part from 4:12 is a good example.) It's also weird, because the in-game mix has less clipping than the release for some reason? [Here's a recording of the boss fight.] Heck, even the live Performance at The Game Awards sounds much better than the original version. Personally, I think it's because Lorien Testard doesn't have much experience in professional audio production, and the video game director Guillaume Broche was "willing to trust the talent he saw rather than the experience that he didn't." There's nothing wrong with letting newcomers shine, but I wish Lorien Testard had brought in more experienced help, because I think he has great talent.

Here is Bury the Light, another video game soundtrack song also sung by the same vocalist, Victor Borba, in a similar genre, but mixed by Adam "Nolly" Getgood from Periphery. The difference between the two is night and day.

It's such a shame because this soundtrack has some of the best compositions in modern video game history. The bad mixing and mastering really detracted from the experience. I don't think there was ever a soundtrack this great that was mixed and mastered this badly.

Edit: Someone in the comments pointed out that the in-game mix has less clipping than the release, and it does. Here's a recording of the boss fight.

Hey guys,

I'm currently mixing an album and have found a great studio nearby. It's also the only affordable option in my rural area, and the room has high-end monitors and plenty of acoustic treatment.

There's one issue, though, and I'd love some advice from anyone who's experienced something similar.

Because of the room's rectangular shape, I'm finding that I can only properly hear the low end (let's say 100 Hz and below) when I push my chair back from the desk and sit further into the middle of the room. At my normal mixing position, near the desk and speakers, the sub-bass sounds noticeably reduced - I'm mixing bass music, so getting the low end right is important to the genre..

I've spoken to the studio owner, but moving the speakers isn't an option. For now, I've improvised a sort of mini workstation further back in the room, balancing my mouse on a couple of boxes, but it's uncomfortable and not really practical for working on an entire album.

Would it be reasonable to do most of the mixing at my normal desk position, then move back to check the sub-bass and make low-end adjustments? Is it also perhaps a possibility because of the treatment that the middle is overly bassy and isnt actually flat and i just prefer that?

I'd really appreciate any advice! Cheers

Hi,

I tried producing a country track this time, but I don't think the mix feels quite right (or maybe it's my sound selection?).

I'm going for that modern Nashville country sound. I'm finding it hard to mix because the guitars take up a lot of space and cover a wide frequency range, but with only the guitars, it sounds thin. So the track ends up feeling a bit heavy and squashed.

https://voca.ro/1aNv9DLz1gBO

Hey!!!

I’m trying to get similar results to this drum break I absolutely love and so far I have come up short with every test I’ve done. Wondering if anyone in here can help get some of the qualities I’m hearing. https://open.spotify.com/track/3hilNpBLALtQVAHwhYSLs8?si=PDybsch1Sk2qVFpXKt-tCQ&utm_source=copy-link

The drums come in around 16 seconds. It’s a classic (or maybe not so classic) Kevin Parker drum sound. I have mini meters setup to analyze the stereo width, spectrum and audio file and so far what I’ve gathered is it’s very “compressed” and controlled sounding but the peaks are clipped or limited to bits. It’s also not mono whatsoever.

So far my tests have been 4 mics. Kick, snare top, shell and overhead and mainly hearing the shell and kick in the reference. What I’ve tried so far is shell mic into a Dbx165a and set the knobs in a way that sounds pretty good. But it’s very much lacking the attack and body/release in the reference. Specifically on the kick drum, to me it sounds like some parallel stuff going on with the kick drum and then the shell has the 165a on it and then slightly panned to the right. The other thing that’s confusing is I’m hearing some reverb on the snare, to me it sounds like a plate verb, and maybe on the track itself before the 165a and so therefore mono but panned to the right and then the kick is more in the middle giving that width.

This is by no means a “professional” drum sound but it’s baked with character. I know I’m not going to get 1/1 recreation but I want to nail the little nuances I’m hearing in the ADSR of the sound.

Any tips/insights are very much appreciated!!!

Moved from recording over YouTube beats a couple of years ago to actually recording full band instrumentation over the last 2/3 years and feel sort of stuck.

I want to release more music but I feel like my mixing is holding me back imo

Could anyone take a listen to this mix and give me any pointers on what to improve?

Recorded everything myself in terms of instruments and vocals, drums are programmed.

At what point could I call this release ready? Is the balance okay? Am I lacking low end?

Appreciate any feedback, thank you :)