Radio friendly sounds - tips

the best thing you could do, would be to purchase a well-known book about mixing.

there are several.

The Mixing Engineer's Handbook (Mix Pro Audio Series)


Mixing Secrets for the Small Studio 


Mastering Audio, Second Edition: The Art and the Science




i highly recommend any/all of these.


make no mistake, pros spend a lifetime getting good at it.


if you're serious, start mixing today, and don't expect anything super good for a couple of years.

the most important part of my post:

if you're serious, start mixing today

Though I'm not downing the book thing, my belief and experience is, they just don't show you things that matter in YOUR world all the time. I have about 30 students I am curretly teaching recording right now using Sonar. If you asked ANY of them if they felt they were wasting their time with books, I'd bet my farm just about all of them would say the exact same thing which would be "yes we did". The problem with books....it's on "the author's gear" not yours. It's using hardware or some other plugin that a new person in the audio field most likely will not have. They get too deep and go astray...they intimidate...they hover and can easily lose the person that wants to learn.

To be a teacher, one must be able to communicate with people and work with them in a way that best suits that individual. A book will not and can not do this. You can grab a few tips and tricks from books...or buy something created specifically for Sonar using the tools that come with it. But me personally, I'd say I disagree with the book method for someone new to recording or even semi-experienced. Quite a few of the students I teach are super intelligent. More so than I am to be honest. They have patience...and can read these books like they are going out of style. Me, I can't sit with an owners manual for more than 20 minutes. So that tells you about my book reading habits. I can't tell you how many of my students have mentioned "I read these books, I bought these videos, I did this, I did that, I am a member on this website, that webiste...but when I went to Danny, it all changed and I learned about this stuff."

That's not a ploy for you or anyone else to hit me up, honest. My point is, it's in HOW you teach a person about this stuff that matters. If I didn't treat each student like a Doctor treats patients with different issues and just sent out a uniformed video series, they don't learn like they do when I create custom videos for them based on their needs, their level, their curiosity and above all, it gets delivered in a language they can understand using tools that they already own. No book will show you that. One size fits all is NOT the key to learning this stuff in my personal opinion as well as my professional opinion and experience. The books mentioned are all great reads that can help some people...but they can also intimidate and hinder the performance and desire of others. So read away....but just be careful because 9 out of 10 times, what you have isn't what they have. Though the techniques you learn may be the same, there are differences based on the gear used that can either be a huge difference, confusion, or a subtle to no difference at all situation.

Want to learn Sonar and cool things you can do with it, look up Scott Garrigus or Craig Anderton. If you are going to read, read about guys that know Sonar and will teach you on what you already own. Just my opinion though. Whatever works best for an individual is what they should go with.

-Danny

Alegria

"bitflipper"

2. Nothing over 15KHz matters for old folks that know how tweeters work... like me

Fixed.  

fixed  8-)  :-)

It's easy to have tweeters that go way, way over 15k.

It's almost impossible to disperse that energy evenly across a room in such a way that maintains phase coherency or consistent SPL.

After you consider that it's there alright, but it's all messed up, and not contributing to an accurate portrayal of the "image", you may decide it isn't really a great benefit for it to be there.


best regards,
mike

nuff said.

:-)

I'm back on topic.