gain structure and mixing aka THE MONEYSHOT THREAD

[SunkLo]

The drums hitting at 10 dB thing is just a benchmark when you're starting a mix. In most scenarios, if you start your mix with the drums and set them at 10 dB, that's taking up about a third of your headroom, leaving you enough to fit the rest of the elements in. If you have a super sparse mix and your drums are thin you might want them hitting higher or vice versa for a crowded mix.

The takeaway here is to be wary of your levels while producing instead of just whacking more and more effects on and getting fooled into thinking it sounds better just because it's increasing the volume. "Add a compressor here, crank up the makeup gain, ooh that sounds good. But everything else seems a bit quiet now, I'll just turn that up, and that up, and that up. Yeah that sounds much better than before!" When you're minding your levels, you'll be matching volume before and after any processing in your chain.

Something crucial is to map the effect bypass button to a hotkey or button on your controller and use it constantly. When you're compressing for instance, A/B before and after and adjust the makeup gain until they're the same loudness. NOT reading the same on the meters, but subjective loudness. Obviously compression is going to reduce dynamic range resulting in it being able to be turned up louder to read the same peak value. Don't compare peaks, it's a trap. Don't even look at the damn screen, just have one hand on the bypass button and one hand on the makeup gain knob, and flip back and forth until before and after sound the same volume. Then you can accurately assess whether the compression actually sounds good or whether you were just being fooled by Fletcher/Munson.

Once you're mixing at the same subjective loudness, all your processing becomes a lot more objective. You're able to judge what you're doing much better, and this is in part what contributes to better mixes. It also helps prevent ear fatigue since your listening level stays constant. If you're turning shit up and up and up, your perception of balance is going to be skewed and you'll be chasing your own tail. There's a reason broadcast sound guys mix at a set calibrated volume. Consistency.

Looking up to other producers is great in the composition and production aspect. But don't judge what they're doing on some quick production video as the best practices for mixing. A lot of people get all their production done and then mix separately with bounced down audio. So while some guy on youtube might be red-lining his shit while he shows you his favorite synth patches, that doesn't mean he's doing that during the mixing process. Also some producers may be putting out quality tracks in spite of their mixing habits, not because of them. What works for someone else may not work for you. And assuming you want to get the best possible mixes instead of just doing what everyone else is doing, you should follow the advice in this thread. Match your levels, keep your gain staging tight, monitor at consistent levels.

Don't get caught up in the mob mentality of wanting to make your tracks shit-hot so they're louder than the next youtube producer who started 2 years ago. Go back to the roots, take yourself to school, get it right at the source, learn how to get a clean mix. And then you'll be miles ahead of these other jokers in terms of audio quality and will only have to worry about composition. And for fuck's sake, stop thinking mastering will fix all the faults in your mix. Mastering engineers may seem like wizards but they can only work with what you give them. Take responsibility for your own audio quality and do the damn mix properly.


Brush up on Macc's posts if you still don't get it.

[Perej]

sweet, thanks alot guys

[Yemperor]

extremely helpful thread, thank you to macc especially