Mixdown advice? please

[6ense_muzik]

Basically I've read a lot about different ways to make your sound "BIG" in the mix.

I have also seen a lot of arguments as to why you should or should not do certain things to your mix from the get go.

What i want to know is the benefits of either, adaptive limiting your master channel from the start of writing your track, brickwalling the master from the start, or trying to mix everything without peaking first, then bouncing to wav and making a new project where you throw ozone or something on the whole original bounce.

What i have been doing, is the latter (sort of)... I've been writing a track with a dry master channel and trying to push the most out of it without anything peaking, then putting an adaptive limiter on the master and bouncing the track.

Then in a new project, drop the audio file in, using a minimal amount of distortion in camelphat, which also brickwalls the signal (something audio explains in his tutorial) and throwing ozone after that and limiting the hell out of it. This doesn't seem to be causing me much distortion and my tracks are loud when compared with others, I'm simply asking if I'm going the complete wrong way about it and there is a much easier way to go.

Thanks in advance for any responses!

[fragments]

Stop brickwalling everything. If you brickwall everything to death nothing will sound big because everything will be the same volume. There are no benefits to mixing everything close to the red in the digital realm. I'm not saying mixing into something on the master can't work. I mix most of my tracks into Slate VCC and VTM. But if you mix into a limiter that is set to "FUCK DYNAMICS MODE" my guess is you won't know what is really going on in the mix.

Got for mix down that peaks -3 to -6dB of headroom and you can get all the loudness you want later. If you want to get that super compressed sound I'd recommend compressing individual elements a little bit, bussing things together and compressing a little bit again, and maybe even do some further bussing before the master and compressing a little bit again. Less chance of unwanted distortion that way. Also parallel compression is your friend! Get that compressed to hell sound w/o loosing all the dynamics of your instruments.

I could be talking totally out of my ass though.

[Kronix]

I prefer to produce a track with nothing at all on the master channel.

I get my mixdown sounding as big as possible first, by applying correct EQ work, panning, mono / stereo of sounds. Making sure along the way nothing peaks over 0db. If you get this stage done correctly you can make everything sound bigger in the mastering stage. I'll render to wav then re - import if I'm doing a home master.

Also if you do it this way, and mix with a dry master channel, you have the added bonus that if a label picks you up and wants your tracks, you don't have to go back, take all the stuff off your master channel only to find out the mix is all over the place!

[Artie_Fufkin]

so basically, if you're gonna compress:
1st-individual tracks or parallel compression
2nd-bus groups
3rd- mastering engineer compresses the master after you're done.