Hi everyone! Now that summer is almost over, our attention should turn to ….PHL3! LOL!!
There is an amazing article about preparing a mix properly, how? By revealing the most
common mistakes. This article is from the UAD website. I do use UAD product, but please
don’t take this as a solicited endorsement…it isn’t! But this website is amazing in terms of
the information it has in it from some of the best audio engineers and producers.
You can check out the website at your leisure (www.uaudio.com) – but there is one article which
might be of great help to anyone preparing some music for PHL3. Here is the link:
http://www.uaudio.com/blog/studio-basics-mastering-mistakes/
I’d like to highlight two of the 8 important “mistakes.” Please don’t take me the wrong way, I’m not
trying to be a “know it all” – but these three items have been the source of a lot of face palming
in my mastering experience and they are the most common “mistakes” I have heard. In some cases, these mistakes
are so prevalent that the mix can’t be mastered. I mean, it could be mastered but it would sound
horrible.
#3 No dynamic range….this is a biggie….there is a problem internationally with recording and it’s called
“the loudness wars.” A more detailed article about this can be found here –
http://forum.recordingreview.com/f8/how-hard-you-fighting-loudness-war-3 and here –
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war (ya I know it’s wikipedia, but it has a really cool graphic to explain
this topic!!
When you are mixing you should be using your ears, but in most DAWs that we use, you can also see the sound wave.
If the final sound wave of a mix looks like a big blue rectangle (or some other colour)
– then there probably is not much of a dynamic range. This is one of the reasons why I ask the final wav file
to be mixed at approximately -4 to -6 dB. Read this part of the article closely….the lack of dynamic range
could make a mix sound horrible, especially at the mastering stage.
#4 Lack of panning – this was something I had to learn early in my recording experience. Sometimes mixing every track
in stereo can render you mix awful. It’s good to use some mono tracks. If everything is in stereo and run up the middle,
you are missing out on using a wider stereo field and this should be done. Panning can make the difference between
an okay recording and an amazing recording!
Anyhow, I hope this article proves valuable and that there is some benefit as you are mixing or finalizing your mix!
If you have any questions or comments, feel free to email me at dave@catholicmetal.com
Yours In Christ!
dave
PRAY THE ROSARY EVERY DAY!!
