Hi Everyone,
This is my first post on this forum. I'm a mastering engineer from South Florida. I've been at the mastering game a few years. So a couple of things are working against you friend. Let me go thru them systematically, and be as helpful as I can.
My recordings are pretty close to what things sound like live but whenever I mix something down, it always sounds thin and quiet when compared to an "actual" recording from a decent studio.
So having a thin recording. has to do with appropriate recording techniques, at appropriate levels. Understanding things like impedance matching on microphones to get the best results. Understanding what makes something sound good with what equipment, and how to record to obtain the best performance and capture of that performance is important. Then at the mixing stage, it has to do with having a room that allows for balanced listening to identify what frequencies need to be bumped up or subtracted. This will affect how "thin or fat" or "clean or unpleasant" a track will sound. understanding dynamics and how to compress or limit different material is important, so it fits in a mix. Remember we only have so much headroom and everything has to fit!
My room is pretty bad but I'm getting decent results so far.
Great! Good to hear that you are getting decent results. Acoustics are of utmost importance. You may not realize but a lot of what your struggling with may have to do with several components. First of all your acoustics. Yes It may not look like it's doing much, but a good room does take the guessing out of the judgment calls, but with out it, it's a guessing game. By that I mean, how much lows, , how are the highs reacting, and even how your music translates to other systems. The next things that is affected is your ability to determine how much time you want to put into the guessing game. Let's face it, we don't all want to travel back and forth from the car or another system 1000 times to identify how our mixes are translating. It's time consuming and not a lot of fun.
Next experience. We don't all start out knowing how to mix or master a Grammy record. Don't worry. Things are going to be bad. Don't let that discourage you. Learn from it, and keep performing and recording. When you can pick other peoples brains, hire professionals and learn what you can. The more you learn and read the more your mixes will improve. As for the mastering, same thing, it's time, experience, and effort. As you improve your ears will become more attuned to different things and you'll know how much you can push or how little you can push certain elements in a song.
Finally and definitely last. equipment. Guys in major studios and mastering rooms, have access to equipment that, lets face it, is out of a lot of people's price range when they are starting (Sometimes not). They also know the tricks and what to listen for, and what equipment to use when to optimize the music they are working on. It's part of the fun of learning our craft. Learn about the basic stuff, how electricity affects your equipment, move into signal flow, then learn about dynamic, and phase based effects, and gradually learn how to use plugins and external gear to optimize your tracks. I hope that help man! Forums are great places to learn from different people and ask questions. See ya around on the forums
Lui
