gain structure and mixing aka THE MONEYSHOT THREAD

[mikeyp]

Never posted in this thread, but have used some of it's advice.

What are your guys thoughts on bouncing your track to stems (bass, drums, piano, leads, fx etc) and then remixing it in a new project?

i do that every time. it's nice just mixing audio.

[Lichee]

3 years on and i'm still coming back to this thread and learning new stuff, out to macc in particular

[RhodeRachel]

cool thanks. I cannot be alone with this but I often have my bass sitting around the same as my kick or it just doesn't bang. I often try get my tune to peak at the same level as another Dubstep tune and I will need to put the bass volumn up or it just doesn't come near where I want it too

Remember that you're (probably?) comparing to a mastered tune. I'm going to put this in big letters

DO YOUR A-B COMPARISONS AT MATCHED SUBJECTIVE LEVELS

Turn that tune down so it sounds the same level as yours, not the other way round. THen you can properly assess the quality of your mix without being fooled by the level. Once you make your mixes sound as good as those, mastering will become almost trivial.

Ah, it sounds so easy when I write it like that

Wow, such a good point! I never thought of it like that. Really insightful tip, thank you!

[Ldizzy]

cool thanks. I cannot be alone with this but I often have my bass sitting around the same as my kick or it just doesn't bang. I often try get my tune to peak at the same level as another Dubstep tune and I will need to put the bass volumn up or it just doesn't come near where I want it too

Remember that you're (probably?) comparing to a mastered tune. I'm going to put this in big letters

DO YOUR A-B COMPARISONS AT MATCHED SUBJECTIVE LEVELS

Turn that tune down so it sounds the same level as yours, not the other way round. THen you can properly assess the quality of your mix without being fooled by the level. Once you make your mixes sound as good as those, mastering will become almost trivial.

Ah, it sounds so easy when I write it like that

Wow, such a good point! I never thought of it like that. Really insightful tip, thank you!

dont want to be a dick but this is VERY basic mixing info. thats why certain compressors have a gain switch that adapts to the gain change and puts it back to unity. i suggest u read a book about mixing. do it its the best way to become macc.

[asembled]

Reading through these 2009 macc posts where he claimed you had to peak your drums at around -8db.. I just wonder, how would the pre-master sessions of modern dubstep look like?

If my goal is a super hot mix like the one in Scary Monster's one, do you really think Skrillex mixed at these quiet levels only to squash everything to death on the master and still manage to get a great sounding mix? (somehow)

In these super loud mixes, does the same principle apply? I just can't see these guys mixing at quiet levels.

[Brothulhu]

Go read the thread again, you haven't taken anything in clearly

[Turnipish_Thoughts]

Go read the thread again, you haven't taken anything in clearly

Yeah, this.

a 'loud' mix probably sounds loud because of the volume it's being played at? No but really you want to get all your layers sitting comfortably in the mix without clipping. That's purely the point of proper gain staging, squashing everything up against -0dB with heavy compression is about as opposite of gain staging as you can get. The whole process of getting a 'fat/loud' mix is in using as little compression as you can get away with, a lot of 'loudness' is usually down to creative use of the extremes of the frequency spectrum, lots of high end e.t.c. will make the tune very present, lots of low end will make it sound very full.

You really really don't need to push the levels so hard in your daw, if you want to mix at a higher volume turn ur speakers up, seriously. The point of having things sitting low enough for proper head room is to allow enough 'digital space' within the bit width of your digitally encoded wave file to encompass the amplitude of your master waveform without the clipping distortion artifacts clipping the master buss creates.

It's never about absolute volumes (turn your speakers up/down...). Its all about making efficient and optimum use of the virtual space you have available and filling it with the digital information that on a physical level exists as nothing more than a set of digital integers that have to fit in to a finite space. That information translates in to a waveform that is converted to analogue information, moving the speakers.

All you're doing by pushing things up on the faders is widening the waveform, in so doing using up way more room than you 'have' to, leaving you with far less room over all to fit in to the mix. Contrarily your mix will actually sound far EMPTIER if you push everything up so hot because you're not leaving yourself any room in that finite bit width of the wave file's encoded space.

keeping everything low enough to give you ample head room, while having it relatively loud enough to avoid the noise floor is very very important. Cool?

[Jack Little]

What Turnipish Thoughts said. If you let your mix breathe then it gives you more room to work with in finishing your track. Done properly, this will make mastering a very simple process and your final track will have more presence overall.

[asembled]

No, I get it, what I was saying is, macc has never seen a session of the guys who are big in EDM now, he is just giving his personal opinion on the correct traditional way of mixing. These posts are 2009, "dubstep" in 2013 is much different, those where still pre-Skrillex times. If you are aiming for a Skrillex type mix, kicks and snares are sidechained to death, which means they take the whole spectrum for a fraction of a second so these aren't fighting with each other. Also elemnts of the mix tend to be simple and in your face, not a ton of layering. Just listen to modern EDM and picture the sessions of these guys, do you honestly think they mix at these quiet levels to leave a ton of headroom just to limit to death on the master and get these superloud mixes? Nope. Not even Noisia does that, proof:

[Mason]

When i make a track i have got in the habit of leaving a huge amount of headroom like 20 or so db, before i mix down i usually put a utility plugin on the master channel and boost till i have about 6db of headroom left. I was just wondering if this is a bad idea, to me it seems ok as wouldn't it be the same as increasing the output of the individual tracks? if anyone knows otherwise please let me know.

Apologies if this has already been asked.

[Brothulhu]

No, I get it, what I was saying is, macc has never seen a session of the guys who are big in EDM now, he is just giving his personal opinion on the correct traditional way of mixing. These posts are 2009, "dubstep" in 2013 is much different, those where still pre-Skrillex times. If you are aiming for a Skrillex type mix, kicks and snares are sidechained to death, which means they take the whole spectrum for a fraction of a second so these aren't fighting with each other. Also elemnts of the mix tend to be simple and in your face, not a ton of layering. Just listen to modern EDM and picture the sessions of these guys, do you honestly think they mix at these quiet levels to leave a ton of headroom just to limit to death on the master and get these superloud mixes? Nope. Not even Noisia does that, proof:

Again, re-read the thread. You haven't understood it and are making silly presumptions

[Turnipish_Thoughts]

No, I get it, what I was saying is, macc has never seen a session of the guys who are big in EDM now, he is just giving his personal opinion on the correct traditional way of mixing. These posts are 2009, "dubstep" in 2013 is much different, those where still pre-Skrillex times. If you are aiming for a Skrillex type mix, kicks and snares are sidechained to death, which means they take the whole spectrum for a fraction of a second so these aren't fighting with each other. Also elemnts of the mix tend to be simple and in your face, not a ton of layering. Just listen to modern EDM and picture the sessions of these guys, do you honestly think they mix at these quiet levels to leave a ton of headroom just to limit to death on the master and get these superloud mixes? Nope. Not even Noisia does that, proof:

Nah you're still not getting it. Each sound doesn't fill 1 single frequency, there are harmonics all over the place and within each frequency of the spectrum at any one time you're always going to have 2 or more harmonics from different elements hitting that same frequency. This increases the amplitude for that frequency. The highest point of your frequency spectrum coming out your master buss at any one time is your peak amplitude. If this goes over -0dB you're going to clip which is what you want to avoid.

The idea of gain staging is to allow room for amplitude additions in your mix. Hell the whole point of mixing (re: eq, compression, filtering, fader riding, panning) is to effectively control how much amplitude each frequency of the spectrum is hitting at any one moment in time, for technical fidelity reasons as well as creative psychoacoustic reasons.

Seriously, don't just ride up the faders and compress everything, your music will sound flat and you won't have enough room to fit enough elements in to get that 'full sound'. The harder you push each element, the less room you're leaving for other things and no, you don't need to layer everything, and yes, you can have certain single elements fairly loud, your snare example for instance, but you should still mix with, at the start, your intended loudest element hitting at around -12dB, that way you have enough headroom within your tracks bitwidth to counter in all the other tracks at a relative and mixed amplitude in relation to your loudest element.

You see if you peak your loudest element then you will not be able to mix your other elements around it properly without clipping or using masses of compression. Now you might think "oh I'll just compress it all then", well fine, do that and listen to how shit it sounds. Even 'heavy' compression is still done in a very balanced manner and with many many hours of developed expertise in the crafting process.

Mixing is an art and you really don't seem to understand the sheer delicacy and sensitivity that good mixing requires. A process that all those 'fat' mixes you seem to like so much have all had applied to them, but sure, go slap-dashedly at that surgery with a couple of sledgehammers, should be alright, right?

Drawing a distinction between '2009' mixes and '2013' mixes really shows your naivety. The mixing process has been around much longer than 4 years and is in essence a physical, technical science regarding aural transference and reception, it doesn't 'move with the times' nor is it genre specific; there's no such thing as a 'dubstep mix'. There's just a mix, and it's either good, or bad.

I would really advise you go and learn a lot more about mixing before drawing any more unfounded conclusions based on conjecture.

Oh and by the way. Macc doesn't have to have seen a mixing session of the guys that are big in the EDM scene right now (although he most definitely has many times). He is a very well established Mastering engineer that works in a professional studio, he does this stuff every day and deals with the kind of clients you're talking about, and more, all day every day and has done for years. He knows what he's talking about, and what he is talking about isn't opinion, it's advise based on his years of experience and expertise in the subject. Questioning the wisdom of your authorities really is a fools errand.

Edit: I just scanned through your 15 posts.... It seems your knowledge of dubstep basically equates to Skrillex.



You do realize what he makes technically isn't dubstep, right? Stick around long enough and you'll begin to notice all the hate towards a guy who robbed a name and slapped it on somethin' else to get rich off all the scene kids.

Dub (dub reggae) Step (2 step garage). fyi Check out some Benga/Caspa/Coki/Darqwan/Digital Mystikz/ital tek/kromestar e.t.c. (actual dubstep) You'll see the difference and realize where the name comes from.

[Turnipish_Thoughts]

double post...

[Perej]

Just had to ask because i dunno if I've been doing the right thing for the last 6 months, but with regards to the theory that drums should hit at about -12db is that on their own individual tracks or on the master? My kicks in Ableton sounds relatively quiet as it is and they are hitting at 0db. Logic is much more even however.

[SunkLo]

On the master. If the kick's pegging at 0 dB and sounds quiet, try turning up your speakers.

[blinx]

Just had to ask because i dunno if I've been doing the right thing for the last 6 months, but with regards to the theory that drums should hit at about -12db is that on their own individual tracks or on the master? My kicks in Ableton sounds relatively quiet as it is and they are hitting at 0db. Logic is much more even however.

Right or wrong ; In ableton, i run -10db usually on my drum buss, then ill have each element/hit mixed to the desired level (to create an even sounding drum kit using my ears) inside my drum rack. Somes snares are at 0db some are at -5db, same with kicks. I use my ears and adjust the kit to sound cohesive and mixed like a real kit (panning cymbals/toms slightly L/R). Then ill compress/process the drum bus and all that jazz again adjusting its level to make sure i dont ride over -10db on that drum buss.

Essentially if your drums bus is -10db on its own, and your not processing your master at all it should read -10db on your master too if it was the only element playing. If your single track and master are different than some further processing is happening somewhere in that signal chain.

[_helix]

No, I get it, what I was saying is, macc has never seen a session of the guys who are big in EDM now, he is just giving his personal opinion on the correct traditional way of mixing. These posts are 2009, "dubstep" in 2013 is much different, those where still pre-Skrillex times. If you are aiming for a Skrillex type mix, kicks and snares are sidechained to death, which means they take the whole spectrum for a fraction of a second so these aren't fighting with each other. Also elemnts of the mix tend to be simple and in your face, not a ton of layering. Just listen to modern EDM and picture the sessions of these guys, do you honestly think they mix at these quiet levels to leave a ton of headroom just to limit to death on the master and get these superloud mixes? Nope. Not even Noisia does that, proof:

implying Skrillexs songs sound good
implying Skrillex doesn't limit and compress the shit out of everything
implying Skrillex magically changed the way a goodmix is done
implying Skrillex is Dubstep


He does mix how you are saying and it sounds like shit. Fucking retard.

Don't become a victim to the loudness war.

[Turnipish_Thoughts]

Just had to ask because i dunno if I've been doing the right thing for the last 6 months, but with regards to the theory that drums should hit at about -12db is that on their own individual tracks or on the master? My kicks in Ableton sounds relatively quiet as it is and they are hitting at 0db. Logic is much more even however.

Are your meters actually registering 0dB, or is it that you've set your track fader to 0dB? If it's the later and your volume still seems low, make sure you're normalizing your source audio as this is usually the problem with oddly quiet stuff.

If it's the former then just turn your speakers up. As a rule of thumb (in my opinion anyway I'm sure other people have different approaches) keep your master buss at 0dB that way it remains transparent and your relative volume are accurate to the volume of each track. Say you have your master at 0dB and your kick channel at -12dB, your absolute volume will be -12dB. No problems there.

But say you've got your master buss at -12dB, suddenly everything is -12dB quieter, so now your -12dB kick track is reading -24dB on the master, same goes for every other track. The volume of your master buss will subtract/add to the volume of every track, as the amplitude signal running from a said track will be processed by the fader on your master buss before it hits your speakers.

Keep it simple, keep it at 0dB and just ride the individual track faders. Same goes for (in my workflow) all buss channels/group channels. I'll mix, say, all the individual drum hit tracks through the drum buss so the beak amplitude is reading -12dB. As I've kept that buss fader at 0dB I know that it's a transparent representation of my drum mix. I mean you can boost/reduce using the buss, but once you've got your actual mix on each channel, and ideally once you've written your track and bounced everything to stems, that's when you mix each channel properly.

But for simplicities sake I'll keep all 'through' channels (busses/groups/master) 0dB and set all 'active' tracks to -12dB as default and mix around that, using the amp knob on my monitors to turn the volume up/down. That, and making sure all your source audio is normalized are pretty standard points of workflow imo otherwise mixing and doing all the amp maths becomes a bit of a headfuck

[Perej]

Just had to ask because i dunno if I've been doing the right thing for the last 6 months, but with regards to the theory that drums should hit at about -12db is that on their own individual tracks or on the master? My kicks in Ableton sounds relatively quiet as it is and they are hitting at 0db. Logic is much more even however.

Right or wrong ; In ableton, i run -10db usually on my drum buss, then ill have each element/hit mixed to the desired level (to create an even sounding drum kit using my ears) inside my drum rack. Somes snares are at 0db some are at -5db, same with kicks. I use my ears and adjust the kit to sound cohesive and mixed like a real kit (panning cymbals/toms slightly L/R). Then ill compress/process the drum bus and all that jazz again adjusting its level to make sure i dont ride over -10db on that drum buss.

Essentially if your drums bus is -10db on its own, and your not processing your master at all it should read -10db on your master too if it was the only element playing. If your single track and master are different than some further processing is happening somewhere in that signal chain.

There is a shit ton of processing. Normally parallel compression + Saturation + Exciter + Transient Shaper + layering samples etc. I also never know what to put my velocity at and shit keeps spiking because of it.

I'm too tired to understand fully what the replies have been thus far but basically what you guys are saying is that all drums should be hitting at an absolute maximum of -10 db on the master, otherwise they eat all the headroom? And the final mix should sit at -3db on the master with everything included like synths etc?

To me that seems awfully quiet... In alot of 'masterclass' videos the producers don't seem to give a fuck, they've got claps and snares hitting at 0db etc....

thanks

[skimpi]

Just had to ask because i dunno if I've been doing the right thing for the last 6 months, but with regards to the theory that drums should hit at about -12db is that on their own individual tracks or on the master? My kicks in Ableton sounds relatively quiet as it is and they are hitting at 0db. Logic is much more even however.

Right or wrong ; In ableton, i run -10db usually on my drum buss, then ill have each element/hit mixed to the desired level (to create an even sounding drum kit using my ears) inside my drum rack. Somes snares are at 0db some are at -5db, same with kicks. I use my ears and adjust the kit to sound cohesive and mixed like a real kit (panning cymbals/toms slightly L/R). Then ill compress/process the drum bus and all that jazz again adjusting its level to make sure i dont ride over -10db on that drum buss.

Essentially if your drums bus is -10db on its own, and your not processing your master at all it should read -10db on your master too if it was the only element playing. If your single track and master are different than some further processing is happening somewhere in that signal chain.

There is a shit ton of processing. Normally parallel compression + Saturation + Exciter + Transient Shaper + layering samples etc. I also never know what to put my velocity at and shit keeps spiking because of it.

I'm too tired to understand fully what the replies have been thus far but basically what you guys are saying is that all drums should be hitting at an absolute maximum of -10 db on the master, otherwise they eat all the headroom? And the final mix should sit at -3db on the master with everything included like synths etc?

To me that seems awfully quiet... In alot of 'masterclass' videos the producers don't seem to give a fuck, they've got claps and snares hitting at 0db etc....

thanks

well thats the thing, alot of people dont give a fuck lol, people adhere to these strict numbers when making tunes, but you dont have to, just do what sounds good.

Also they may be working with it clipping but then bring evertyhing down when it comes to bouncing. I have stuff clipping all the time when composing and arranging, but once im finished with the tune, i then bring everything down so that theres plenty of headroom on the master.