Hi
 
I am trying to lean the art of mixing and I am a beginner In this department.
Firstly i am trying to mix drums which are XLN additive drums first
I have made a template with separate drum hits grouped the gain and moved to a reasonable level .
On the mixing tutorials I see the man use the Px 64 percussion strip and then to make finer adjustments use the sonitus eq.
I have had a go and reasonably satisfiedwith results.
When eqing drums ,do you take the overhead and room fader down as that interferes with the singular drum sound when eqing.
I now record the drums down to a single wave file.
I find that the recorded sound is low when you look at the wave form.
At this stage with the drums do you put ,say a Lursson on It to finally master it to the sound and crispy  level you want.
Or ,do you wait until the end of making your song??
Do some people master each section like drums ,bass etc separately to get good levels??
At the moment I am doing a lot of trial and error and It Is more error at the moment.
I put a toto drum track In of Africa and the quality of that when doing comparisons,puts me to shame!!!.
I have a way to go yet.
Any good tips from the learned ones!!! would be appreciated
 
I have also noted that there are several ways of setting up XLN drums from the tutorials  and templates that I have seen.
 
Any tips appreciated as this Is quite a jungle for me
I can play ok BUT !! "The mixing pain"!!"Oh the Pain"!! "the Pain Dr Smith"!!" I'm Lost In Space"
 
 
All the best
John

 I think it's better to wait until you're finished recording, and then mix the project as a whole.
 
You won't know quite how the frequencies will compete until you've got all your instruments together, so trying to pre-mix the kick drum is just asking for trouble when you add the bass guitar.  They may interact well, they may not.
And with every instrument (and note, really) that you add, it gets that much more complicated.
 
I've been playing for 30 years, recording for 20. I've read numerous books, seen videos, and have lots of practice, but I still can't mix worth a damn, and outsource that to a local (awesome) engineer.
 

Hi matt
 
I will keep plugin on and slugin. Excuse the pun.
I will then keep all at low recording and raise the outs after balancing the whole tune.
I have some frequency charts and try to manipulate sounds/Instruments  to their bands.
I am not going to give up as It must be doable!!
It Is puzzling how the pro's get such a defined and crisp mix.
Obviously they have been doing It for years.
 
All the best
john

Groove 3 has great tutorials on mixing. I think you are trying to incorporate too many different procedures in your mixing phase, mixing and mastering should be 2 totally different procedures.
As far as mixing ,the first place that is a good start is to simply get an understanding about gain staging , that's the first step to starting your mix session.

Good Day,
 
I'm also a self learner, and use XLN AD2 also, between the drums alone and in full mix I try to mix within AD2 mixer itself, using levels, FX and possibly switching between individual kit pieces, and try to avoid all those audio drum tracks in project, individual cymbals have to be done within "Kit" menu, as there's no individual mixer channel for each cymbal, only as overhead channel, sometimes I also sometimes adjust individual notes/hits or kit pieces and hit types in midi piano roll. I also subscribe to Groove 3, but there's not much there specifically about virtual drum mixing, mostly references features of the various drum software available and real drum recording and mixing, but some good overall mixing and mastering tutorials and examples.
 
Cheers

I get some very good results with AD and I keep it real simple. First and formost is chossing the kit and pieces that are close to your taste for the song. The pre sets are a good jumoping off point. I then use the whatever it's called to tweek the sounds a bit,,, not much and that's about it. My output is just from the AD track in stereo. There is a danger in overworking audio. You spend days and days and find out you've made things sound worse. Try simple. 
I'm coming from old school where you miked up a drum kit and strived to make the kit sound it's best through tunning and good heads. I treat AD the same way. If the sample sound trashy no point fussing.. move on until you find a raw sound that's great. I wish I had the money for more kits, but Fairfax is working out 80% for my needs. 
 
The little mixer is all I need and then most important is the velocity of the hits. I spend my time working on that, not the eq etc. There's so much can be done in piano veiw to make a good drum track in AD. 

Id agree with JohnnyV, and maybe I should have said "if" I need to adjust AD2 mix levels, (other than just overall level in Sonar track), and probably also often (rather than sometimes) use piano roll to enhance sections and kit pieces and/or add things like, tambourine, bongo, hand claps, etc.
I often use something basic in AD2 for initial writing/recording with real instruments as click track, then enhance, or replace as my song develops, writing midi myself and/or using pre-set genres, fills, intros/outros, etc., from their song or beat midipaks libraries. However, within AD2 on each kit piece or buses adjusting, FX, mic placements, beat accents, randomizing time and velocity, exchanging certain kit pieces may help get the sound you want, I've even used multiple AD2 sessions/tracks, using different kits/pieces, hit types, percussions,  etc.. (its hard to find a real drummer with 8 arms and legs, to reproduce l LOL).
Also Re: Groove 3,  I've found its worth subscribing to, (@ ~ $100/yr), many good Sonar X1-to-Platinum specific tutorials, ("Mixing with Sonar" is one, albeit X1), as well as many "generic" mixing tutorials, also many on use of, generic and specific, current and legacy, EQ's, compressors, other FX's, VI's, DAW's, even on playing various real instruments, singing , etc... 
(It may have helped me to determine I really didn't need to re-invest in Pro-Tools to do what I want).
 
Cheers     
 
 

Not much to add other than a "+1" to the above.  Keep it simple, first adjust things as needed within the AD kit itself to improve the results (where needed), and watch those velocities.   A good test is to drag a few of the delivered MIDI clips from the AD2 interface into SONAR - see where the velocities range and try to use something similar in your tracks.  I figure if XLN is delivering it that way it's probably for a reason...
 
 

Get Pro Headphones..learn to give your ears a rest. Novice arrangers tend to overarrange and overmix. Take it slow..finish the entire score first, never consider mixing midstream..

Alan Russell