Dubstepforum.com

So I've just done a hour demo mix with 28 tracks all my mixes are sounding tight, but I was wanting to put it into ableton and give it a mastering touch. What techniques do they add to the mixes before they get put into a disk and sold(eg. mos CDs or tempa all stars)

I wouldnt do anything to it. As long as you maintained a steady meter through the mix, attempting to put any kind of settings to piece of audio so broad is gonna do alot more harm then good.

Just my 2 cents. But what your saying almost sounds as bad as mixing into a limiter

Oh ok I just would have thought they would have done mastering to the mix before it goes out for commercial sale

I guess just making sure my levels are consistant will be enough then?

On second thought, i should elaborate.

the majority of what dropped are going to be compressed and mastered anyway. Thou shalt never compress wwhat has been compressed., and thou shalt never put compression or limiting on any compressed file formats, such as mp3 or ogg, only lossless, wav, flac, ect.

But yeah man, good levels, same conept as playing out... Keep the meter steady, and from there, no need to mess with dynamics and saturation n stuff... either way, way to much variance to treat in an hour long mixtape.

Basic A wrote:the majority of what dropped are going to be compressed and mastered anyway. Thou shalt never compress wwhat has been compressed., and thou shalt never put compression or limiting on any compressed file formats, such as mp3 or ogg, only lossless, wav, flac, ect.

Why not? I'd try not to compress (in the mp3 sense) a second time if possible, but there's no reason why you shouldn't compress (in the dynamic sense) an mp3.

I'd stick it through a fairly subtle limiter to take a dB or two off the track with the most dynamic range. Realisically you'll get funny peaks if you play off vinyl, through a hardware mixer, in and out of A/D and D/A. Don't squash it by any means, but you may as well get a bit more loudness out of it if you can do so without severe consequences. Different tracks in a mix are going to have a pretty wide variety of peak-to-RMS ratios.

i'd see whatever automation (if any) needs to be put on, in order to bring some track volume up and others down.

The only processing I would do is break up the tracks for the cd so it isint 1 hour long track. If your levels are off from song to song you should just do the mix again.

Sharmaji wrote:i'd see whatever automation (if any) needs to be put on, in order to bring some track volume up and others down.

i like where this is going alot more then...

static_cast wrote:limiter

Basic A wrote:

Sharmaji wrote:i'd see whatever automation (if any) needs to be put on, in order to bring some track volume up and others down.

i like where this is going alot more then...

static_cast wrote:limiter

combination of both i would say.

FIRST: make sure your levels and your spectral balance (aka eq) is as good as you can get it!

if your mixing unmastered tunes with mastered tunes, that eventually means you d have to master some of the tracks, because they are not up to the others.
but another tip aswell try gtting the loudest tunes in the mix 2 or 3 decibels down opposed to keep pushing the weak tunes louder (meet in the middle).

SECOND: if theres a lot of unmastered tuns in your mix and you took the levels of your loudest tunes slightly down, you could try adding those 2-3 db again with mastering tools to glue it more together. BUT a) be aware that already in mastering one tune it is hard enough to find the right settings...so it will be a real task to find one setting that will make all of your 20+tunes sound better. b) mastering already mastered tunes is areal hard and mostly unnecessary job (as if your mixing good tunes they already are limited and getting more processors on already limited and possibly maxed out material means you re working with distortion soon and thats no good) c)that all is implying you have to automate your mastering compressors if you like that consistncy and here it will start to get wussy and difficult if youre not super pro and anal about it

my personal solution is to master unmastered tunes befor i mix them, make the loud tunes a litlle less loud, mix the best i can, apply VERY SOFT limiting and glueing (tape and tubes) on the master bus to compensate 2 or 3 db, no clipping, no distortion, just lift the headroom i need for mixing back on the master bus.