Hey, guys
I am mixing a synth-oriented song with distortion (heavy-metal type) guitars. I have 2 guitar tracks panned hard left and hard right. The issue with them is that 2 tracks were recorded on different days and have slightly different levels. I made them sound approximately equal, but I do not understand why...
 
Why do I hear guitar in Right headphone, when a track is paned all the way to the Left and Soloed? The same with the tracl panned to the right- I hear some in the Left headphone. Shouldn't it be gone completely to the one side? (It was not recorded as a stereo track- it was 2 independent mono tracks.
 
Another question is- what effects do you put on it to make it strong and loud like major release metal band, yet- let the synth (percussions, flutes, filtered synth, arpeggiated synths) to cut trough?
 
I do not have any extras- only Sonar PX3 and Komplete 9 Ultimate. Thank you!  

Make sure the track is mono and you have selected mono. Turn of any effects. Any effects you have, send it via a bus. Hopefully that sorts out the panning issue.

EQ is what will separate and define your instruments esp in a metal mix. Get the technique right and it will sound professional but its hard to explain a whole field in just a few posts. To summarise though each sound needs its space and with EQ its generally about what you cut out rather than what you boost.

I strongly recommend EQ explained and compression explained on the groove3 website. There's even panning explained and effects explained on the site. Oh and native instruments stuff on there as well. Get yourself a year pass and go through the Sonar tutorials as well. There's just no way to explain everything in these forums, spend an hour or two every day watching and copyingcatting the vids. Maybe in a few weeks or a month you will confident enough as a sound engineer to answer other peoples Q's here. Cheers.

I have been doing it for a while. My first full release was in 1999, this is my 4th album. My mixes are very busy, and I thrive for complicated sound. The down side of it is that at the end it sounds like a wall of sound. I just took song from last year for mixing and increased levels of each track by putting compressor (the old one that came with Sonar) on every track. I am listening how the mixes changing around the world. Depending on what mood I am and "who" I want to be, my mixes change as well. One months I think- I am a rock star and in a metal band, so I would bring guitars up. Another month I am thinking- Oh, my- everybody is so ahead on electronic music- my song sounds 5 years old. Ok- it is 5 years old. I have 15 songs to mix and record vocals. Been putting it off forever. So I have been on electronic wibe for a while and I noted that most electronic bands have their synth sounds loud and out there. But I want that guitar to feel good. It is best of 2 worlds- if you like heavy electronica and heavy metal- you get both- that's the idea. But it does not sound like major release.
 
My problem is- there is no time to watch videos. I have day job and I am in the graduate school (medical). So I get some time between 12 am and 2 am, and then I have to get up at 7 am... I have no "me time". "Me" time is to study, and it is not Sonar- it is pharmacology and things like that... This is why my songs are 5 years old... I had great time mixing it tonight, but time is very hard to find...
 
Alex, I see you have Komplete. I did not find any use for it yet other then Kontact and Massive. Did you? Not for mixing or mastering... I had WaveLab 5 for mastering, but it wont install on Windows 8, so I have to mix and master in Sonar...  

"My problem is- there is no time to watch videos"
 
So you think that those award winning tracks are made in no time?
It`s hard to do something that good with one pair of ears and quickly.
The only way you can get closer is to keep testing your mastering on different sound systems and that takes a lot of time.
Peace

Vlada I'm spending my time on the Groove3 NI tutorials trying to go through every feature so I've only used it for a few synth parts right now. There is just tons of stuff you would never see that Groove3 points out, as I spent so much money on it I'm keen to optimize the value of my investment.

I would really suggest you've got to make time to learn. I totally sympathise though sounds like you have a tough gig already. Even 3 hours a week would be time well spent. These forums are great for real world advice, experience, troubleshooting, and for tips. But won't help you much in improving your mixing skills, videos are great for this... If only you could see the bags under my eyes right now...

Oh and to add, I used to work in recording studios every day in the early 90's. I got a lot of experience but I swear these videos give me more knowledge in a few weeks then I got over several months looking at a manual, reading books and asking (way before the internet was useful for this).
 
BTW Right now going through the Absynth 5 tutorials, horrible looking UI but it's extremely powerful away from the presets.

Sadly it takes time. Time to soak up the information, time to practice techniques, time to troubleshoot, time to research and learn; everything takes time. So much to do so little time.

Being a composer, musician, producer, mixing and mastering engineer as well as distribution agent and probably desktop publisher is a huge assignment. When you have to add another career if music is more of a past time than a job, there really isn't much time left.

With Komplete 9 Ultimate you also have some very handy fx that you could use for mastering instead of the ones that come with Sonar.

If it's not worth the time to make sure you do it right then why bother? I agree that watching those videos will help you on your way to achieving your goal. Your asking us to teach you in a few posts what many spend years and years learning.

A free resource is "the recording revolution" on Youtube.

Are the guitars going through a stereo reverb? Either by way of a send to a stereo reverb bus, or perhaps you have a stereo reverb insert on each track itself and have the tracks set to stereo instead of mono. Either way, when you pan a guitar to one extreme you're going to hear it on the other side in the form of reverb.

Also, if you want the synths to sit well with the distorted guitar then you can achieve that through a mixture of panning and EQ. The settings will depend on which elements you decide are more important in the mix. If the guitars take priority then you may try something like aggressively high passing the synths so that they don't clash with the "body" of the guitars when you bring them up in the mix. Synth sounds generally have a lot more high frequency content (eg above 8K) than guitars, so take advantage of this when painting your frequency picture.