Mastering your mixes

[Kush]

Okay, so though I have a decent amount of experience putting together a mix, I am a complete novice when it comes to mastering. Let's say you use Mixcraft, Sony Acid, Garageband, or any of these programs we talk about on here (I'm talking from the perspective of Mixcraft, though). What Project Level plugin's are you running for your mixes, do you use Classic Master Limiter? If you do use this feature, which basically ends up boosting all audio levels, how do you manage to keep certain soudns you want lower, down? Basically, say you've blended all your songs, added your effects and made a mix ready to blow our ears away... what do you do to finalize and master it?

 

[Jason]

equalize, normalize and compress

easiest program to use to normalize and EQ at the same time is mp3doctor or something like that and u can compress the mix after using acid...if your mix is mad loud just make sure it doesnt clip. dont EQ and normalize the entire mix as a whole but rather each individual song-mix thats in ur final project.

 

[DiddleMyDhol]

For sure , going through each track individually is the best way to bring consistency to a mix. Especially when most of the times tracks always have different bitrates and volume levels at the time they were either recorded or ripped. It takes a little longer but going through each of the problem areas one by one and just tweaking volume levels and eq settings makes a world of a difference. Then its all trial and error , make three different versions , slap those badboys on a cd play it in the car and see which one sounds best!

 

[Kush]

normalizing and placing a master limit basically do the same thing, limiting the threshold your sounds can reach, but how do you avoid sounds that you want to be somewhat diminshed or in the background from coming up too far? this is my problem when i normalize. Though it makes teh whole thing sound cleaner, you can loose layers that you want. Or maybe i'm jsut doing something wrong... how does normalizing each track make a difference? I do equalize for individual tracks, not across the mix.

 

[DiddleMyDhol]

You dont really need to normalize each track, just get enough the EQ and volume tweaks sounding good in the master work file in whatever program you are using. Once you get it sound clean enough and its sounding pretty steady slam that sucker into mp3 form and then normalize the whole thing in one shot. Its kinda like running water through a Brita filter twice, once to get it clean and twice just to make sure!

 

[Kush]

Yea, i do equalize my individual tracks and adjust the volume, but simply adding a master limiter makes a world of difference. I guess i'll just add quieter effects to a mastered mix