What should the mixdown sound like?

[christiannokes]

Greetings my associates.

I was thinking about it.

A lot of mixdowns sound like they do when you listen to a band play without a PA. It's kinda harsh or something. One time I heard a version of "Back that Ass Up" by New Found Glory (no, I don't like New Found Glory), and the way they recorded it sounded like they were trying to go for this sound.
The amps sounded harsh, the drums did too, the vocal were weird.

Was this because it wasn't mastered, or were they purposefully putting mics in wrong places, doing shitty mixing, using bad equipment, etc.?

The rest of the songs on the album didn't have this quality, so it's almost like they were being comical by producing that one song in this way.

Can mastering alone fix this? Give me a word up mates.

[cyrusjulian]

How's it going Christian! There are a ton of other people on this board who can give better advice on this one but in my opinion, you want to try and get the mix as good as possible before mastering. A few months back, I wanted to send a mix to this really good mastering guy and he told me that at best, a good mastering engineer can raise the grade of the recording by one letter I think. Meaning if you have a mix that sounds like shit (D) at best the engineer could bring it to a C so you definitely want to get it right before hand. Same philosophy with recording. Record a better sound at source as opposed to fixing it in the mix. It'll make things easier to mix when you have good sounds. It will make a mastering job easier if you have a good mix. Oh well, just my opinion.

[Rodgre]

This subject line is great. I'm not 100% sure how to answer your specific question, and I apologize ahead of time for hijacking your thread, but here goes.

I'm self taught. I started recording when i was a young teenager, and since day one, all I've done was try to make my recordings stand up when compared to my favorite records (for the most part....)

With that point, I think a lot of us do this: we mix, and while mixing, reference certain examples of CDs that give us a clue to whether we're in the ballpark. These records that we compare to are most often mastered and sound awesome due in at least some part to great mastering, and at the very least, some limiting/compression to make them louder.

I have always mixed to sound like they've been mastered. That's always been my goal. Put on my mix and it should sound like a record. It should sound like a finished product. Since I'm self-taught, no one took my by the hand as a fresh 14 year old and said "no, son. Leave something for the mastering engineer to do. Don't print your mixes so hot." etc. I wasn't an intern. I didn't go to school. I never attended someone else's recording session until well into my own engineering career.

So when I worked on a record a few years back with a "name" engineer, in "big name" studios, and heard the final mixes.... I was less than impressed. They were dull, unexciting, and by most standards, very quiet. Then these tracks were mastered by a "big name" mastering engineer and they definitely got loud, and a bit more exciting.

This just baffled me. How do you train yourself to mix to the point of dullness and unexcitement, instead of trying to take it out of the park, as they say, and make it sound like a finished product?

I've learned to split the difference over the years. After hearing complaints from mastering engineers that my mixes are already too compressed that they couldn't do anything to them, I've learned to back off on that.

Still, I will always send the client away with a "smashed" version that they can listen to in their car and get all excited by, and thereby love me to bits, and then give them a 24 bit unsmashed version to take to mastering, hoping that the mastering will make it sound like my limited version, only better.

I'm sure many of you feel like me, that you want your final mix to be as close to perfect as you possibly can. It's your vision (with the client, of course) and if you hear this song as a compression-fest, or you hear it with bomb-shelter bottom end, then that's your intention. I really have to remind myself, that if a client is having it mastered, I have to leave a lot of it to them. That's scary, but I trust my guys.

Roger

[christiannokes]

That's cool. That's what I was hoping. I don't like the idea that I would have to wait to hear a good product until after the mastering engineer finished with it. No offense to mastering engineers (I think I understand that mastering is a very important step). My worry is mostly drums. I never want to record drums that sound like shit. I've never even recorded drums, but already I'm a nervous wreck about f***ing them up. I don't want to have to pay 10's of thousands either to be able to make good quality recordings. Just nervous...that's all.

[trashy]

I've never even recorded drums, but already I'm a nervous wreck about f***ing them up.

If you've never recorded drums you'll fuck up - but that's part of the fun. Recording drums is the single hardest thing to do (except for inhaling a piano into your nose). But you don't need to slap 10 g's down to do it either. Just keep your ears open and your chin up and you'll be fine. Like the rest of us. Just fine. (trails off into incoherent mumbling)

I TOTALLY agree with everything Rodgre said. I've never worked with a mastering engineer, and can't see that happening too soon, so my mixes sound like masters, too. I have no idea how to do it any other way. I think my mixes sound pretty damn good. I've heard great DIY mix/masters from some other TapeOppers in my area - just know that you can do it, and other people do.

The DIY MixMasters is going to be the name of my next band.

[JohnDavisNYC]

my personal philosophy to mixing is to make it sound good, with the balance and color and depth i'd want to hear on the cd, but not the hotness... granted, i love large dynamic ranges in music, so i just mix it so it breathes and sounds nice. i figure that way, if it's getting mastered, the mastering engineer can just enhance it a little, if they see fit, and make it hotter, but they don't have to try to 'fix' anything.

cheers,
john

[dr.ona]

great subject!!!
i am new to the digital home studio recordind and as for mastering...should i take ALL my eq, compression and limiting off of my songs? i record direct into the computer and then do all the processing afterwards. does a masterer add reverb? also....if you have your typical "pop/rock" song with lets say drums/bass/2 guitars/vocals.....what would that cost to have it mastered by a "pro" so to speak?

thanks!

robert

[Rodgre]

should i take ALL my eq, compression and limiting off of my songs? i record direct into the computer and then do all the processing afterwards. does a masterer add reverb? also....if you have your typical "pop/rock" song with lets say drums/bass/2 guitars/vocals.....what would that cost to have it mastered by a "pro" so to speak?

I feel you should do all of your effects, like reverb and such on your mix, and never leave that to mastering. That was a thing that a lot of mastering engineers would do in the 80's.... Add reverb to your mix. Not cool.

As far as leaving compression and EQ off your mix, we're talking about putting such things across the entire stereo mix, not individual tracks. How I've been training myself to split the difference is to do two versions of my mixes, as I was saying. I'll record my mixes into Protools. One will remain unaltered and uncompressed at 24 bit. Then I will make the "listener's" mix by taking that mix and limiting and EQing it if I need to. I'll reference these on different speakers to adjust it to sound best.

Sometimes this opens up the can of worms that my first mix could sound better, so I will sometimes remix that after hearing it squashed.



As for how much to expect to pay for mastering, they are like studios. You can find penty of them that will do it on the cheap, and some of them will be really good. Others will be no better than yourself with and EQ and a Maximizer. Waste of money.

I like to use a few guys in Boston that typically charge about $150 an hour, give or take. A friend recently mastered a full CD with one of them a few weeks ago and it cost him around $1500.

Roger

[antilog]

I try to get mixes sounding as final as possible with nothing across the 2-buss, then put some eq, comp, limiting on the mix for the clients to get an idea of how the final product may sound.

[supafuzz]

the real question should be why pay so much for mastering?

If you're not on a major label with lots of money to blow..i think it's a mistake to spend $1500 on mastering...yeah you'll get a really good sounding cd but is it going to sound 75% better than a $500 mastering?

Probably not...

There are so many other things to spend money on.....
If perchance your cd is wildly successful you can always re-master it for a later run....

my 2,000,000 cents

harley

www.harleyfine.com

[antilog]

the real question should be why pay so much for mastering?

Thus, get the mixdown to sound as good as possible.