Something that's been bothering me: Harderstyles mastering.

[repeat]

Most people don't understand what is involved, and make statements which are more relevant to mix down.

[Legacy]

It's the difference where a hardstyle drop has a kick, a bunch of layered leads/pads, sometimes a vocal, and later on some cymbals, where as techno might also have a hand full of stabs and different synthesized sounds, tons of percussion, and a lot of automation to bring the track to life.

So what are you trying to say? Doesn't hardstyle have lots of synthesised sounds, percussion and automation?

I think both genres (most genres even) have their own complexity. Furthermore I must agree with the point Euphorizer is making. It's very subjective.

[Euphorizer]

Your way of addressing any of his issues was that it was all to do with his perspective and nothing else when i assume that seeing as you are a producer you understand the basics in psychoacoustics,frequency content, masking etc and could have gave a less snidey pig headed answer (the opening statement didn't help) and give a more informative, educated answer like the majority of people on this thread .

That's the issue though.. lol. OP's perception is skewed because he is used to a completely different type of mixing. What he calls a good mix can seem like an empty mix to me, and what he calls noise is in my opinion not noise at all. Don't you realise that it's a question of perception? You can't seriously sit here and imply that excellent mix engineers like Noisecontrollers don't know how to mix properly..

As I said - you don't compare apples with oranges. Now stop with the nonsense.

Also is it not common practice that once you mix down a track to play it on multiple different reference monitors (going as shitty as you can such as a car stereo) to find make sure that the music sounds good in every environment ?

Yes it is. But once again, if you think that most hardstyle pro tracks are poorly mixed you don't know what you are talking about. The mastering, I can agree with. The loudness war is a very real thing. Mixing, nope.

[TJOAudio]

I stopped reading once you said no bass. Must be a troll.

[SCH]

I stopped reading once you said no bass. Must be a troll.

He brings a valid opinion as everyone else, it's just that everyone but Echidna and OP needs to take a step back and stop arguing with their musical taste on their mind and be more objective in their writing.

Keep it civil and I wont lock this, because this here has potential to be a very good discussion, and we don't see them often in this subforum.

[Euphorizer]

I stopped reading once you said no bass. Must be a troll.

He brings a valid opinion as everyone else, it's just that everyone but Echidna and OP needs to take a step back and stop arguing with their musical taste on their mind and be more objective in their writing.

Keep it civil and I wont lock this, because this here has potential to be a very good discussion, and we don't see them often in this subforum.

OP is literally being subjective. And I'm trying to point just that out, lol. But I'm not going to bother anymore. I've made my opinion clear and I'll probably just derail the topic by continuing the arguing.

[UNIFITE]

I surely aint no master-genius, but i do know the general difficulty of a perfect mixdown that of course will lead to a perfect master.

Hardstyle has compared to other genres the well known distorted-kick which takes alot of time to fit in to a mix.. Why you ask? Well first of all the kick is simply longer. A techno/club kick is maybe half the length of a hardstyle kick which is focused on both the punch, mid and the high for the crunchy tail. It takes so much time to understand how to work around that kind of kick, when you also want you percussion to be heard.

My recent masters of my unreleased material is done by A-lusion. A guy which for me is really talented in what he does. Also he gives the opportunity for making your master more personal regarding bass, warmth and loudness. Its only a month ago i send a DJ-tool for master, and wauv that sounded loud when it was returned, but i could easily hear my stupid mixdown mistakes stand out. So i corrected the reverb-mistakes, the vocal mistakes and ended up with a really loud and powerful track that still had focus in details.

To sum it up for my point, is that i dont think that hardstyle is mastered incorrect in general. But the tracks are made for being played at venues, clubs and bigger events - not necessarily in Iphone headphones or a small carstereo. The tracks will always pump out on the big sound-systems - where in opposite i have heard alot of dance/techno tracks that miss the same low-freq-drive when being busted out on the big stereos.

-But keep the discussion informative and mature. Its sad to see how fast the tides turn in a good debate here now a days. It kills the purpose of the forum..

[Nitrax]

Yeah yeah I exaggerated some words and statements to put my point out there, I'm sorry. But why jump at those words when my big question remain unanswered?

@Euphorizer: I was comparing the styles purely in the way they are being mixed and mastered. They're still very different, hell I've produced both so I should know, but I compared them to explain how one does it without limiting the crap out of the track and still maintaining the dynamics. But I'll leave that comparison as it is, I don't think I can make it much better Actually, looking back I do feel like an arse comparing the two. The techno forum I visit better not find out I compared the two

On the point of quality, I've said it a few times in this topic: A master that changes the dynamics of the mix so drastically that sounds start to fade away for the sake of loudness frustrates me. Maybe the mix was bad to begin with, maybe it was not, you can't really know I guess. The mixer volume can be turned up if you want the track louder at a party, but you can't undo a master that is too loud if you want to listen to the track at home through your hifi system or high quality studio monitors. That was basically my question for this topic.

I took a moment to listen to some of your techno tracks. They sound quite nice, so kudos to you! But once again, there is a world of difference between your techno tracks and modern hardstyle. In your mix, you could make a single hihat one of the main items in it. Hardstyle usually doesn't work like that, it appears I also definitely disagree with your statement claiming they have more clarity and detail than "nearly every hardstyle/core track" you have in your collection. But then again, maybe you only have shitty producer's tracks in your collection.

Oh but those tracks on my soundcloud aren't very good examples of well mixed tracks haha. Techno doesn't have to be minimalistic by the way, there's a wide range of styles where tracks are filled across the spectrum.

But as most points have been answered I'll leave it at this Forgive my subjective writing!

[Euphorizer]

Yeah, and admitedly it is a lot more difficult to mix hardstyle compared to techno because you have to deal with a silly kick covering the whole frequency spectrum.

[Nitrax]

Especially when your name is Code Black and your kick is so bright there's no room left for cymbals.