Hot answers tagged mixing
12
There are two paths you can go:
Use EQ to sculpt the two signals around each other (making room in the frequencies for each of them, so they don't 'overlap' as much).
Look into 'sidechain compression'. This means that you trigger a heavy compressor using another signal (in your case usually the kick drum), which in turn will duck (suppress the volume of) ...
12
You should start with each EQ band at zero db (neutral), and adjust volume to a comfortable level first using the mixer faders or volume control.
From there, you should listen for peaks in the sound, freqencies that seem to stand out above the others. Find a fader or EQ frequency that influences this particular peak the most, and apply a small amount of ...
12
There are a few misconceptions here. Normalization, in the most basic sense, raises the gain of the ENTIRE track to a nominal level. What you are trying to do with normalization is maximize signal. The relative dynamics of the track are not changed. There are actually two types of normalization, but the most common is peak normalization, where the loudest ...
11
The difference is due to something known as "panning laws". Imagine you have recorded a mono track, and it is currently panned centrally. You decide you want it panned all the way to the left. Did you want it to also drop to half volume at the same time? Probably not. Yet that is what would happen if the DAW simply turned off the signal going to the right ...
10
I agree with @AJ Henderson explanation of "Wall of Sound" concept. I'd like to add one more perspective.
Some years ago I've ran into a very interesting way to look at a mix. The concept was about thinking of your audio image as of actual 3D image. Where the space can be defined by following means:
Right\left - panning\balance
Up\Down - EQ
Far\Close - ...
9
Here's a few rules I usually think about with respect to planning:
We can't determine the direction of low frequencies, so the bass is often placed at the center of the mix. Panning the bass hard to either side would especially be noticeable by headphone listeners, and potentially very distracting unless that's the effect you're going for.
If you're ...
9
A buss is an additional output from the channels. They are very important in live sound.
Your mixer has eight pre-amps. Each pre-amp feeds a variable amp controlled by the gain slider or knob. That feeds the main (stereo) mix. Then you can control a feed to auxiliary busses through separate controls. You can feed one or more inputs to the aux buss, and ...
9
The best course I can recommend is to use the best tools and resources you have available. Headphones are not ideal, but they're better than bad speakers, and probably better than even good speakers in a bad listening environment.
A lot depends on what you're mixing and what the target environment will be. Mixing music or voice that will mainly be consumed ...
9
A snake is simply several cables bunched together. It is typically used to route all or most of the signals between the stage and a mixing desk.
There is usually a box at the stage end to plug all of the microphones and instruments into and simply cables at the other end to plug into the mixer.
Here is a Wikipedia article with more technical details ...
8
What you need is a simple mixer. It will function independently of your computers, and (unlike a y-cable) you'll have a master volume control.
If you only have two stereo sources, something small like this Behringer Xenyx 502 or a similar one from any other company will do nicely. Pick the brand based on what's most important to you (tone, features, ...
7
The lissajous shape is generated by graphing the left signal on one axis against the right signal on the other axis. So consider a few scenarios for a sine wave tone.
Mono signal: L is always equal to R, so the point (L, R) is always on the x=y line, so the plot is a straight line. Vectorscopes usually rotate the axes 45 degrees, so x=y goes straight up ...
7
I find that the answer is often rather zen-like: You need to remove some of the bassy sound in order to get a more bassy sound.
Phase problems are more pronounced with low frequencies so if you have e.g. a bass and a kick drum that both have low frequencies, chances are you loose a lot of oomph when you combine the two in your mix. That's why EQ'ing or ...
7
I am a lot more dynamic with the control room volume fader. Unless you're producing music for a very specific audience, then you need to make sure the mix is properly balanced at both high and low levels and everything in between.
One of many great lessons I picked on in mixing workshops years ago, was to frequently turn down the music to the barely ...
7
There are two questions here that I think should be addressed separately:
Question 1: "is this a bad method of practice?"
As I understand it, the reason it's considered "better" to compress individual tracks and not the master bus is because you have a finer degree of control, especially in today's digital world where you could instance a compressor on ...
7
This is confusing panning with space in the "wall of sound". There are multiple dimensions to sound. At a minimum you have placement in terms of relative "volume." You also have the dimension of frequency from low to high frequencies. You also have left to right placement in a stereo mix and if you are doing surround, you may have additional axis that ...
6
The problem with electronic music is that you can add several drum tracks, pads, leads, arpeggios, vocal bit, aux percussion, etc. Then you'll apply some efx and you have a huge mess. If you are really having issues and can't make a mix work, think about composition as well. Maybe two pads are not needed while that organ is also going on? Or maybe you're ...
6
Analog and digital processors work in fundamentally different ways and therefore will always have some differences, however minor they may be in some cases. It seems to be generally agreed that you don't "need" outboard hardware any more per se, however if you want the sound of a particular hardware unit, or if you want an 'analog' sound, there's no better ...
6
Try to find the sweet spot in each and give it a little EQ boost, while cutting that from the other tracks. Also, cut areas where the tracks have no contribution, e.g. below 100hz for vox/guitar, and above 10khz for the guitar (e.g., you'll have to play with it).
A more advanced trick is to use side-chaining compression between the vocals and one or both ...
6
I understand why sampling at 44.1 KHz
means frequencies approaching 22.05
KHz begin to suffer from sampling
artifacts due to the Nyquist theorem.
I can't tell the difference, to be
honest. Once my signal leaves the
digital domain, my analogue gear
probably masks a lot of the details in
this region and my hearing is
definitely not ...
6
Thought about how to answer this for quite a while. It's a bit hard to describe some of these things without sounding like David Gibson in "the Art of Mixing" but he has a point: maybe we can point out the first degree of panning and stereo image as a way to clear the picture. Strangely enough, the ghost images that appear on the sound field can still mask ...
6
So, what is the law when it comes to doing a remix?
It's pretty cut and dry: unless the copyright holder on the performance has licensed it under a remix-friendly license like the Creative Common's license that allows reuse of the work, you're going to need to seek out and obtain permission to use any portion of the recording (even as little as three ...
6
You should use an expander when an outright gate will sound really unnatural (and that is not the desire). For example, if your vocalist has a really distracting breathing sound when idle, an expander will reduce that without completely eliminating the attendant ambiance that makes a track sound coherent (which is why it's important to record a minute or ...
6
Well, there area lot of things that can affect this. #1 is what you're listening to your mixes on. I wouldn't say it matters, so long as the "what" is not just one thing.
On ALL testing speakers, you want to use something as a reference. Some professional recording that you think does a good job of accomplishing what you want, and then your tracks.
On ...
6
The important thing about such sounds is that the sources aren't coherent, neither the deviations in rythm and frequency nor the actual audio phases and amplitudes follow any predictable relationships. That's unlike the extra signals normal chorus/delay/phaser effects add, where the modulation is usually at best periodic and the relation very simple, only ...
6
Ah, the old question: How do I make the vocals heard over a band with a tiny PA? It's not always easy.
Compression won't help you; it may actually make things worse by making feedback more likely. It sounds like you're using underpowered PAs, and if you want the vocals to be loud enough you'll need the band to play more quietly. But the band has to want to ...
5
I tend to prefer something higher than 44.1KHz because (like you said) it's pretty close to the minimum useful frequency (according to Nyquist), and I try not to assume that I'm going to be using the audio in the same way all the time.
The best example I can think of is timestretching algorithms. I'm a big fan of Ableton Live's warping, and at some point ...
5
You can often make your own passive "mixer" similar to a Y-cable. You just need to put isolation resistors in series with each output before tying them together, or the two outputs will see each other as short circuits and destroy each other. The resistor method is not as good as a real mixer, but it can work in some circumstances.
Why Not Wye?
5
This is going to depend greatly on each individual person's creative sensibilities.
For myself, I'm always doing rough mixing during the creative process, because I want to see how a new sound "sits in the mix." So the mix is an integral part of my song-making. But this works better on "old-school" equipment (outboard synthesizers, effects and mixers), ...
5
Well, I don't know for sure, but I wonder if the statement is even correct.
How often do you see a piano where the player face the audience? In most cases people encounter real pianos (ie at home) the piano faces the wall and the player has his/her back to the audience. In concert situations the pianist usually sits with his side to the audience, so there ...
5
Yes! The effect is referred to as a binaural recording. The idea is to capture and playback the audio stream in a manner similar to how your ears would have heard the audio stream to begin with, were you sitting in the room when the capture was made.
Take, for example, someone walking from left to right across a floor that is over your hear. If you're ...
Only top voted, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible
