I understand the link may not be working...this should work here 2012-09-10 EP Final Mix.mp3

nice playing however, it sounds like it was mastered on earbuds or a tin room, like there is nothing below 200 or anything above 10k. very metal rash sounding and mid dominant.

Try remixing it and possibly fix your room acoustics which are effecting your monitoring.

Hope that helps.

Not that bad... but the tempo is killing the music, IMHO its too "tight", maybe not enough headroom?

my opinion-drums need more presence and expansion. Probably phase correction couldn't hurt.

lol, sorry, my bad. My youngest came in the control room and cranked all the headphones to 11! This is what I was hearing, ROTF. Needless to say, someone got a talking to and I hear a lot more bottom end now.thumb

I love these Track Talk threads.

For fun,

I ran a few bars through my analog system and expanded the drums, well the song because I can't obviously do them separately. This is how I would rather here it but its only a test of course ( In/out and 2 minutes of tweaking). I took out a bit of the mids, added a tube here and there for colour, a bricasti for more space but don't quite like what I did on the mid dip.
I think just remixing it again and experimenting on creating more space via panning and some toys would help. It sounds too crammed. If you spaced it out, I know it would be cool.

Its also really compressed. I guess thats the sound you are looking for but it does loose some excitement when its this much on an entire song.

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Thanks for the tips everyone, zilus what exactly did you mean by it sounds too "tight"? like too compressed perhaps? and audiokid you had me worried there for a second haha, I'd say the low end is what i'm most happy with on the track so far. When I went to check out the dropbox link you posted I got a 403 error however :/

as far as panning goes i have the guitars hard panned R and L. Bass, Kick Drum and Snare in the center, oh's hard panned L and R. High Tom panned 26% right and floor tom 39% left. Any tips on where you would begin to add space?

Ya, that was hilarious,. I had 4 headphones cranked around me and my monitoring down low so the majority of the song was coming from all the headphones, and it was loud but as you can imagine, pretty thin.

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Cheers!

Not my style of music but creating some layering and using a few verbs to create some space. Everything sounds like you are maxed with headroom too. And this causes a really dead sound. You can still get the in-your-face impact but if you allow more headroom on your tracks, they will have a more open sound.

Kurt, Max, others, have you any suggestions?

I use analog gear to open my sound up. Phase issues maybe? You are on Sonar X1 yes? Nice DAW. But I don't know its abilities and the ability to hear individual tracks.

wow I like how the expansion helped the drum sound alot, I know it was applied to the whole track but seems to make the biggest difference in that department. For doing that in the box would you recommend busing the drums out to a stereo bus and hitting it with the expander or place expanders on the drum tracks as inserts? I've got about 7 buses running as of now so Idk if more routing would cause issues or not

wow I like how the expansion helped the drum sound alot, I know it was applied to the whole track but seems to make the biggest difference in that department. For doing that in the box would you recommend busing the drums out to a stereo bus and hitting it with the expander or place expanders on the drum tracks as inserts? I've got about 7 buses running as of now so Idk if more routing would cause issues or not

gah sorry for the double reply lol But yes I'm on Sonar X1, and completely out of headroom i believe lol. Like I stated as of now I'm just using a simple temporary mastering chain. I have a couple different expander vst's Im going to play around with and see what we can come up with here

is adding headroom something as simple as bringing things down in the mix and letting mastering take care of the needed overall loudness in the end?

hmm... I don't do multiple DA AD for example ( individual bus track DA> analog gear> AD > 2-bus master) or individual inserts of any given track OTB.
I mix ITB> group> stem> DA> ( bypass the DAW 2-bus) do the analog thing > AD master to a second PC.

I do not agree on going back and forth DA>AD on the same computer. Once I'm OTB, I stay there until the mix is done and then save it all as a 2 track to a second recorder that is setup for the end result. No sample rate conversion. I do believe this helps.

If you are able to group your drums, bass, guitars, keys, Vox, effects ITB and work on those groups before the 2-bus ( master track), I think you will get a better mix.

sharkfistsound, post: 393512 wrote: is adding headroom something as simple as bringing things down in the mix and letting mastering take care of the needed overall loudness in the end?

Yes, but let me ask this:

Ah, this is a big issue for you, and now you are going to ROCK if you can start allowing for a lot more headroom. Are your individual tracks hitting close to red or 0?
Did you normalize them ( individual tracks)?

sharkfistsound, post: 393510 wrote: wow I like how the expansion helped the drum sound alot, I know it was applied to the whole track but seems to make the biggest difference in that department. For doing that in the box would you recommend busing the drums out to a stereo bus and hitting it with the expander or place expanders on the drum tracks as inserts? I've got about 7 buses running as of now so Idk if more routing would cause issues or not

Yes, as mentioned above, group the drums and create space with your tricks. Could be a few reverbs ( an early reflection added with a hall or plate), an expander ya... maybe, detuning or eqing a left and right channel slightly. I used two types of expanders because your drums are so compressed. Expanders can also do other things too. Like offset a phase slightly. Chorus effects and so on.

audiokid, post: 393508 wrote: Not my style of music but creating some layering and using a few verbs to create some space. Everything sounds like you are maxed with headroom too. And this causes a really dead sound. You can still get the in-your-face impact but if you allow more headroom on your tracks, they will have a more open sound.

Kurt, Max, others, have you any suggestions?

I use analog gear to open my sound up. Phase issues maybe? You are on Sonar X1 yes? Nice DAW. But I don't know its abilities and the ability to hear individual tracks.

i think it's perfect. i wouldn't change anything. i like the note at the end.

Kurt Foster, post: 393519 wrote: i think it's perfect. i wouldn't change anything. i like the note at the end.

hehe, you are an easy date. And maybe not too expensive since you are in a Van at Wal-Mart ROTF.

there really is a note at the end .. you just have to listen.

For the drums what I actually did already was send them to a main room verb, and from the main room verb its going to two seperate delay buses, one emulating early reflections and the other emulating late reflections (all by using delay). I just now bused the snare and toms to an expander and It seems to help fill it out a little :) the experimenting continues! Kurt, you're agreeing with audiokid on the mix needing more space and headroom yes?

it sounds fine to me on my lap top and it sounds fine in the cans ... if your happy then so am i. i can hear all the instruments and the performance without distraction. if you think it needs something more / less try it.

leave some meat on the bone for the ME.

Kurt Foster, post: 393521 wrote: there really is a note at the end .. you just have to listen.

Yup, I know. :)

Will do sir, trying not to suck the life out of the mix at all but I have a habit of trying to make every mix sound like a $30,000+ album :p One day i will get there! thanks for the input, and audiokid thanks for all your time I really appreciate the advice

sharkfistsound, post: 393522 wrote: Kurt, you're agreeing with audiokid on the mix needing more space and headroom yes?

Are your meters hitting red or near 0 on most of the tracks?

not at all, the only section thats even near the red zone is the master bus because of the limiter I placed on the end of the temporary mastering chain

try mixing it without any master bus limiting or compression.

do your limiting as inserts on the channel or in subs or better in parallel and leave a fair amount of dynamic range for the ME.