A few common mistakes.....

[miro pajic]

i know another one

sh!t in = sh!t out

doesnt matter how much u liked that particular sound .. if its sh!t in the mix, its sh!t in the mix... Delete it and find something else.

Don't stick too much with your starting samples... just refresh and dare to delete sh!t u started with.

what does this have to do with the topic??????

[Roqqert]

im talking about common mistakes people make with producing. I'm not interested in the loudness war or whatsoever. I know how to make my tracks loud as possible without overcompressing stuff.

like i said. sh!t in = sh!t out.

If you use samples that fit togheter then you don't have to do anything as in processing.

For example... Patchpark doesn't even eq his kicks.... he just looks till he find 1 that fits. Instead of compressing, eqing, distorting the kick to get it louder or 'better' and let it fit into the mix... get rid of it and find something that fits the mix/track.


sh!t in = sh!t out.

searching samples is like mic positioning. Find a way of character and how it fits everything togheter.

For example bob marlys first recorded tracks weren't really processed. They just placed the mics really well till everything fell in the right place.

edit :

compression can make great transients... transients are also dynamics. limiting a whole track is a different thing. That's what the whole loudness war is about. Not about using compression in your mixdown.

[coldfuture]

You can have something be loud as hell and still sound good but in order to do that you have to be able to mix your record really well. These guys at the top can afford professional engineers who really know how to get the sh!t in there without killing the dynamics. Allot of them also use some outboard equipment that none of us on this board can most likely afford. Your computer is not going to even be in the same league with a Neve or a SSL mixing board. Allot of them are using top quality A/D convertors to get the sound into pro tools and top quality D/A convertors to run the sound out into one of these top mixing boards and then mixing and recording the final mix from the board. Nobody here has the kind of money they need to do that sh!t unless they are already selling hit after hit and playing all over the world every weekend. So if you can't play the game on that level yet just make sure it's mixed down as good as you can get it and let it be at a lower volume so it still sounds good and let the dj turn up the gain. If you try to shortcut up to that loudness level you're just going to kill the dynamics totally and end up with just a noisy overcompressed piece of sh!t. There is no shortcut to great sound, there never has been and there never will be.

This is all very true, and let me add this: I can tell you from personal experience that even having top quality Metric Halo converters running into a stack consisting of patchable top quality stuff: Cranesong Trakkers, Api 2500, Summit DCL200, Neve Porticos (an entire mini-console), SSL clones, DBX 260sl, Distressors, Manley stuff... using Great River Pre's and Chandler Germaniums to track...

overuse will still kill your mix, no matter the quality of your gear.

Spending money won't save music either. Each of us, beginning with me solidly deciding not to be a daft prick, manning up and learning to make a proper mix with humility... this will save music.

Just had to get humble and learn from the beginning all over again how to do it right. Had to get out of the loudness game.

In fact, we put quite a bit of that stuff up for sale and condensed to a workflow that forces us to simply get leveling and EQ right.

We also took on trying to record our tracks live in takes like a band and mixdown live. Nothing can replace emotion, dynamic, and feeling.

Don't get me wrong, top shelf gear sounds amazing, but it can also be used to abuse the music and make people go insane and deaf with loudness.

Great post, great thread.

[Brankis]

I do agree also with what miro and roqqert are saying. I don't think you need all this expensive outboard gear to get a great sound. If you understand frequency ranges and balance then all this sound quality stuff is easy. There are people delivering high quality material with nothing but a built in soundcard on their laptop and desktop speakers. And the end product is not going through any additional engineering or mastering before being released. No one would be doing live pa if getting a good sound depended on spending money with some pro engineer.

Also, I think alot of what makes a track sound loud or big is the music itself. Alot of people making minimal don't have any musical training so they view the loudness thing as a part of a technical process and not a musical thing. Certain scales can sound absolutely massive to the ear without actually being so loud. If the music itself is solid then it shouldn't take much to get it to a finalized state

[steevio]

Also, I think alot of what makes a track sound loud or big is the music itself. Alot of people making minimal don't have any musical training so they view the loudness thing as a part of a technical process and not a musical thing. Certain scales can sound absolutely massive to the ear without actually being so loud. If the music itself is solid then it shouldn't take much to get it to a finalized state

exactly

[lejockey]

Hi

I was reading through this post with a lot of interest, and subsequently went away to see what the rms level in my tracks, post compression was.

Following this I have a question. People seemed to agree that about -13db was a nice rms level. I was using the waves PAZ Analyzer and saw that if I had the refresh rate set to 5000ms my rms level was down at the minus 16db level, if I took it up to 1000ms it was around th -13db level. If i took it to 50ms it would be at -6db.

What refresh rate should I pay attention too? I dont believe I have over compressed my tracks and have never had any complaints from people I have sent the too. I was just wondering what other peoples thoughts were on this?

Thank you

[New Guy]

I don't know about the paz analyzer but in wavelab(and im guessing in all other audio editing programs) for example you can do a statistical analysis of the track. Within that you have a section which shows the RMS level of the audio and if that is around -13 than that is what you should pay attention to.

[lejockey]

the rms value will change depending on how frequently you measure the peak value. Thats how it is worked out. What I was asking is what the frequency people use is