[LAU] [OT] Help with mixing and mastering?

James Stone jamesmstone at gmail.com
Fri May 8 18:35:29 EDT 2009


On Fri, May 08, 2009 at 11:12:54AM -0700, Mark Knecht wrote:
> James,
>    Welcome and best of luck with what you're doing. IMO his is
> completely the right place to ask questions like this.
> 

Thanks Mark!


> 2) Learn to use busses and in general limit yourself to a single
> reverb. Try to leave a LOT of headroom in your indivdual track
> recordings as it will reduce the number of limiter and compressors you
> find yourself using overall. Using multiple reverbs will eventually
> lead to a muddy sound as every instrument starts acting like it's in a
> different room. Busses are easy in Ardour, albiet FAR more capable
> than they really should be. That said, you need them and once you
> learn to use them for things like reverb you'll probably be better
> off.
> 

I had a quick mess around with a bus with TAP reverb, and only 1
reverb.. It gave the track a more "live" sound to my ears - more
real maybe, but lacking some of the dynamics of a studio
recording.. any idea where I am going wrong?

How about compression? Is it OK to run 2 compressors in parallel
like the C* and Satan Maximizer, or is it just a waste of
resources?

> way you want your mix to sound. You don't say much about music style,
> which is cool, but I suggest that one answer doesn't fit Animal
> Collective, Particle, McCoy Tyner and John Mayall, all being bands
> I've listened to in depth this week. Maybe you're doing something
> non-pop/rock and some sort of strange reverb setup makes it work. If
> that's the case then by all means do WHATEVER works!

Well, our first studio track, which was recorded by a student
engineer in a semi-proper studio on protools, then mixed and
mastered by a professional engineer is here:

http://www.last.fm/music/kitten+cake

mp3 here:

http://drop.io/dont_call_her_baby (password: kc09)

I would like to get a similar sound with our practice-room
recordings mixed and mastered by me! .... not asking much! :) Any
hints as to how I might approach that kind of sound would be very
much appreciated!

James



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