Live recording, mixed and asking for any advice please!

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danthevan
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2012/07/05 04:38:35 (permalink)

Live recording, mixed and asking for any advice please!

Hi All, I'm a bit of a novice with sonar, and this is my first mix that i'm reasonably happy with, so wanted to post it on here for any feedback or tips you guys can give me. I originally bought sonar essential about a year ago so I could play my electric drum kit through it with Addictive Drums (midlife crisis and all that!) Every year my local pub have a charity music festival with a few bands playing. This year we managed to get a rather decent digital PA and mobile stage (rather than just playing in the garden) so thought we'd try and record the performances. I didn't use Sonar for the actual recording, but used a Zoom R16, mainly because it was a 'hit record and forget about it' piece of kit, then dragged the wave files into sonar for mixing. Well, this is my attempt at mixing. http://soundcloud.com/dan-roberts-18/moondance Out of all the bands we had playing, this was probably the worst raw wav files I had to work with. The singer insisted on using her own mic, which picked up EVERYTHING on stage except the guitar. Her vocal mic produced better sounds from the dumkit than all the mics around it! Basic mic set up / track set up for this band(8 track) was; Kick drum, Snare, Hats, Drum overhead, Bass through DI, Guitar amp with a mic, same for sax, and vocals. Setup in my 'music shed'; Win7 Ultimate 64bit, 1tb hdd, 8gb ram, sonar producer (just upgraded, this was mixed on studio), Alesis Multimix Usb2 as a soundcard / interface, M audio (something)40 monitors. I've only just got the monitors set up. Wow was that an eye opener! It was like hearing music for the first time ever! Any tips, advice, suggestions welcome!
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    Guitarhacker
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    Re:Live recording, mixed and asking for any advice please! 2012/07/05 08:34:14 (permalink)
    is it my system or is the level really low? 

    I had to crank it up to hear it clearly. 


    live recordings are a bit tricky. 

    My website & music: www.herbhartley.com

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    danthevan
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    Re:Live recording, mixed and asking for any advice please! 2012/07/05 09:54:11 (permalink)
    Could well be! That's something else i need to know, what do you set the overall level to? As high as you can without it going into the red?
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    Lynn
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    Re:Live recording, mixed and asking for any advice please! 2012/07/05 11:06:48 (permalink)
    As Herb said, the level is too low for the times.  The actual song is a nice rendition of "Moon Dance", and I like the singer's voice.  As for getting the level up, when you're in the mastering stage, put up a commercial CD to get an idea of the volume level you need.  Be sure to compare to something that's similar to your music.  Then play with your limiter or compressor's make up gain until you get close in volume.  Be sure to listen carefully for over compression or limiting.  You'll know when things start to sound squashed because by then, the dynamics will be lost.  At that point, back off the gain until the song breathes again.  It may take several efforts to get there, but that's the way many of us do it.  It's hard to say, though, without knowing exactly what you are using to master with, but there are numerous people here who can help you.

    All the best,
    Lynn

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    danthevan
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    Re:Live recording, mixed and asking for any advice please! 2012/07/05 11:19:49 (permalink)
    As for mastering, all i'm doing is mixing in sonar til it doesn't make my ears hurt, then exporting it to mp3. Don't know if this is the best format (probably not!) but that's the way i'm doing it so far as that's all i've picked up! As I say, i'm a complete noob really. There were 14 bands over the weekend, so aiming for 1 or 2 songs from each of them to put onto CD to sell behind the bar for some extra £££ for the charity. I know it's way past my capabilities to get it perfect (which helps with it being live i suppose!) but would like to get a 'very reasonable' CD done!
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    Guitarhacker
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    Re:Live recording, mixed and asking for any advice please! 2012/07/05 16:20:22 (permalink)
    You might want to look into something like Ozone. It is marketed as a "mastering suite" and it does a pretty good job on sweetening the mix and getting levels up to radio ready levels. 

    I use Ozone. I put it in the master buss.  I work on the mix to get all the levels in balance and not in the red.  Then I export. I will often normalize that wave..... and I know I'm probably gonna catch a ration for saying that. But that will squeeze a db or two, sometimes more, out of the wave. I normalize to 96%.  That allows headroom when I convert to mp3.  

    Take a listen to the music on my site.... it's all done that way. 


    gotta run... lights blinking and a storm coming..... 

    My website & music: www.herbhartley.com

    MC4/5/6/X1e.c, on a Custom DAW   
    Focusrite Firewire Saffire Interface


    BMI/NSAI

    "Just as the blade chooses the warrior, so too, the song chooses the writer 
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