Volume and Mixing tips

A studio recording will have been mastered. Your WAV may look big enough but you are just seeing an overview, a mastered piece of music brings the whole track up to a higher level. If you could see the "density" of the WAV it would look much different.
There's a recent thread about mastering software - T-Racks and Ozone etc - they make a big difference, but also general mixing skills help.
I didn't listen to your track as YouTube isn't the best medium to judge/review a piece of music with any kind of critical ear.
 
Grum.  

This should work.

http://home.mi-connection...mullen/music/Party.mp3

Don't quit your day job. 5 seconds was all I could take.

Ouch. Off your meds, again Dave?

OK, so the style ain't my cup o' tea, either. Nevertheless, I would not discourage you, Kronx. Everybody starts somewhere. Just keep at it, it doesn't suddenly become a great mix just because you found some magic button - it's a slow, gradual process.

What I can say is lack of a mastering limiter isn't your problem. Your mix is loud enough. It's also not entirely about volume levels, either. Getting to know your equalizer is what you should be concentrating on right now.

What's lacking is clarity and separation. Your mix suffers from what's commonly referred to as "mud", meaning too many things are competing for the same spectral space, especially in the lower mids. You need to listen to the bass drum, bass guitar and rhythm guitar and decide which one is going to own that frequency range, as there isn't enough room there for all of them to duke it out.

As a starting point, I'd take some bottom out of the guitars, some extreme low end out of the kick, and add some high end to the bass, perhaps using a distortion plugin. The drums in general need more high end across the board and less around 300-400Hz. The snare sounds like it has towels on it (great for 60's pop but not metal).

Don't get discouraged, Kronx. Every little incremental improvement is a milestone to savor, and add up enough little things and eventually - as Charles Dye says - it sounds like a record.

Thanks. Looks like I have a lot of tinkering to do.

Kronx


Thanks. Looks like I have a lot of tinkering to do.

...but it's worth it. In case you have somewhat decent monitoring loudspeakers you'll get the basic idea in a year or so. If your monitoring device is really poor (something like external computer speakers) you'll not make it.

Taking a commercial track for the reference in the SONAR project and comparing the EQ-curves is one good way to develop your ears.