swoggles wrote:this music business is a lot more complex than i first realised. I tend to drop all my levels and listen to headphones as loud as possible then arrange sounds,and set volumes (occasionally EQing sounds) then once done i normalise it! i render into mp3,shood i use wav?
as for this headroom talk i think i understand what it means but to check if i hav a sub bass and a kick,do i take cut all lower frequencies on the kick so the sub can be heard clearly? or am i missing the point
Well don't worry too much about the mastering process, just focus on getting a good solid mix. Also, don't put too much focus on making it loud, it can always be made louder later... plus, that's what gain and volume knobs on mixers/stereos are for.
then once done i normalise it! i render into mp3,shood i use wav?
Well, that's what I meant with "pre-masters" - limiting/normalising/compression on the final mix. People do different things, it's personal choice. Some just run it through a limiter and that's it, which should be fine if you have a solid mix. Don't push it too hard though, you don't want a huge solid square as your tune, there should still be peaks.
You should only be applying offline processing (as in a wave editor, outside your DAW) to uncompressed formats like .wav or .aiff. Then you can render that as an MP3 file, but always keep the uncompressed one too, and make sure your project is backed up so you can change it and render it again. FL's ZLP Zipped Loop Package is great for that.
if i hav a sub bass and a kick,do i take cut all lower frequencies on the kick so the sub can be heard clearly? or am i missing the point
Yeah that's the basic idea. It changes for every sound though, and it's really a creative decision sometimes. Think of it like carving out a room so every sound sits in its own section, from roughly 20hz-20,000khz, (but realistically more like ~35hz-16,000khz). If you have a pure sub bass going from 40hz-150hz, it's going to be clashing with your kick drums at the very least. So remove the unneeded frequencies of whichever sound you do not want dominating. It's hard to give exact numbers, but in that case I would probably apply a low pass on the sub bass and remove everything above 60hz, and then apply a high pass on the kick and remove everything below 70hz or so and adjust to taste. It will be different probably every time though, just watch where those frequencies are peaking in the spectral analysis of the EQ2 plugin or whatever you're using and you can see where they are fighting each other.
You can also use notch filters within the EQ to carve out tiny little sections, like removing only between 200-225hz, which is great for layering sounds. For example, that would be handy if it's not a pure sub bass you're using but a sound that has both bass and harmonic content you want to actually hear in the mix.
The Parametric EQ 2 is great for this, but there's some stuff that's a bit hidden. Check this pic out, the part on the upper right "Select Type" and "Select Slope" is important, but not labelled clearly:
http://flstudio.image-line.com/help/htm ... EQ2_80.jpg
The slope will allow you to make much sharper or broader adjustments as will using the mousewheel on a particular "band token". I would avoid sharp cuts when possible as you'll find it has a tendency to make sounds dull. Sometimes you don't want to completely cut the frequencies, but rather just bring them down a little.
Check this out, general info on the frequencies of common instruments/sounds:
http://cdn.mos.musicradar.com/images/le ... _dsktp.jpg
http://www.independentrecording.net/irn ... isplay.htm
