John T

Heh, well, yeah, it's a juggling act somewhat.

Bear in mind that I didn't say "give it more mid range", I said just hack off the bottom end. I see you're already in the habit of cutting more than boosting. This is good. It's not a hard and fast rule, but if you've got good sounds in the first place, then just dealing with the overlaps and removing them can get you most of the way home.

Guitars, especially distorted ones, have a really, really wide frequency range, and it's amazing what you can hack away and have them still sound like a guitar. And the same thing I was saying about the bottom end applies equally here. Kick drum / bass note / guitar chord all hitting together with a lot of frequency overlap tends to be weak sounding mush. Same thing with most of the overlap carved out hits like a bad-ass well drilled SWAT team.

For an extreme example, check how little low end there is in the guitars on this:

http://www.youtube.com/wa...nQ&feature=related

(The YouTube quality is lame, so if you can look it up on Pandora or Spotify or something, that would be better.)

Not a very modern mix style, kind of dry and "live", and I'm sure not the sound you're after. But my point is that when everything is going, they get a pretty forceful overall sound out of really radically separated and - especially in the case of the guitar - rather thin individual sounds.

If you want a big solid chunky mix, it's far easier to add that back in various ways once you've got clarity, than to start with every instrument super chunky and fighting for space.

kjs00333

Skyline_UK


If each track is not overloaded  but your mix is, then try pulling all the tracks down proportionately so your bounced mix is not  overloaded, and instead has bags of headroom.
It was a breakthrough for me when I realised that my pre-mastering mix needed plenty of headroom (c. -6db I aim for) before it's presented to TRacks3 (in my case) which will then  have a proper opportunity to do its thing. 

All my tracks do not go above -6db. I try to keep all my tracks out of the red for head room if needed. Only problem with this is the instruments have no balls..and totally weak sounding if the EQ isn't boosted up, which is what I don't want to do. Only track that is well below -6db is the bass guitar because the lows tend to just get sloppy if it's too loud. The mix levels look right on the meters..definitely not in the red.

I guess my main problem was the approach going in. I have been in many professional studios that say they use multiple pre amps to get a nice hot boosted signal going in.  Which is why when I was recording, I wanted my levels to be as hot as possible without clipping

John T

Several things here:

First, how are you figuring out the range things are covering? If you're some kind of analysis tool, you can look at where the most energy is in a sound. The bundled Analyst plug in is good enough for this purpose.

Even if the overall range is the same, I'll bet you'll find that they have their core energy in slightly different places, as you've already touched on:

Yes, I am using an analyst tool but not the bundled one. I am using the one by TrackS. Seems to be doing what I want it to, except there are many different settings that can be viewed with the tool. Is there a specific view that the analyst should be in so I can see more accurate results? Or is this default view the one to use. The TrackS default view shows peak levels and where energy hits harder on the frequency scale.  Which is why on major peaks, I try to cut a bit to make more room. This what was bringing me to my question I was asking before if frequency collision is based on same frequency gain, versus just same frequencies.

Secondly - these are massive ranges. Some of this content is probably not necessary. Once you find the centres of energy for the different tracks, you might decide that the extreme low or high away from that energy is not really doing much that matters, and you can just ditch it.

 I have actually cleaned up a lot of unnecessary highs and lows which have helped drastically. From the analyst meter read out, I used a HPF and LPF for anything that was not showing a significant amount of energy on the scale.

Thirdly - EQ is one of the most effective methods of creating separation, but it's not the only one. How is all this panned? Vocals centre, guitars off centre can be good, from slight pans to really wide extremes. Also, subtle delay on vocals can elevate them above the rest of the track quite nicely.

I have noticed that as well.. delay, reverb and chorus change the EQing a bit. I want a nice thick vocal without sounding like a robot...which seems to be the results I am having. Everyone seems to have an opinion on making vocals fit right, but I just haven't had luck making things thick without the vocals sounding "effect saturated".. if you know what I mean?  I've noticed things tend to get squashed when doubling vocals and sliding one track a tiny bit forward for a more natural sounding chorus.  Is there a plugin you recommend for a thick vocal sound? I have used a few bundled plugins as well as Izotope Nectar, but still not having desired results. My mic is pretty good as well..It's not a blue bottle, but still a nice Shure condenser mic, so I'm not dealing with a garbage in - garbage out situation.

bitflipper


Sounds great to me, kjs.

I'd personally back off the hats a bit, but that's just a personal preference.

As far as dynamic range and compression ratio: I don't think you need to push it any hotter. It seems genre-appropriate to me. I measure -7.4db average RMS, which is right in the pocket for this type of music.

Regarding bass levels: It could actually stand a smidgin more on the low end. Not too much, just a couple db. (Beware that if you boost the bottom you may need to raise your limiter threshold accordingly. Classic metal doesn't pump; leave that to the kids and their quantized dance music.)

Skyline_UK


This is what I meant by 'ominous bottom end':
http://johnsongs.co.uk/Push2.mp3
I notice when I applied some bottom that all of a sudden I could hear the neat double kick drum work, which I hadn't picked up on before.  I also put the track through FabFilter ProL limiter.  Apologies for doing a little remix - I don't mean to offend. 
 
John 

kjs00333


however when I turned the guitars down 1db and raised the vocals 1db.. it seemed like the guitars weren't even there.