Mixdown, Dynamics & EQ (and related) Topic

[ljk32]

Personally I wouldn't compress my reverb, but that's up to you. There's more than just equalizing the channels, you can add a stereo widener on just the send so that the spread reverb makes the sounds appear really wide. Also, I personally wouldn't have a delay send, but rather, would have it on the actual lead channel. The reason being, with this approach you're sending your delay into the reverb bus as well, which means your delay has reverb to it. Again, this is just another personal choice.

[Neutronic]

That makes sense could you expand on why you wouldnt compress the bus? I personally find it essential in keeping the reverb under control.

[SCH]

I rather use a soft limiter though, but that's mainly a taste thing.

[ljk32]

That makes sense could you expand on why you wouldnt compress the bus? I personally find it essential in keeping the reverb under control.

The only reason being that I don't use compressors often enough to confidently say that using it on my reverb bus would positively influence the sound. In other words, I'm not as experienced as I'd like to be with compressors.

[M Unic]

Okay so im busy with some kind of weird summerish track and i just don't understand why i can't get it to sound right

before i started derping with the mix it was like this:

- Kick sample was really really REAALLLLLLLLY soft like 'wtf is this a kick? soft'
- The layerd synths sounded really really loud. (i gave every layer a seperate channel)

When i ajusted the volumes and dit some basic eqing i mostly get this as a result:


The things i did:
- EQ'd every layer seperately cutting to about 100/200 and slight boosts in the high
- At first used a compressor to raise the volume of the kick but i scrapped this.. instead i lowered the volume of the Leads.. but if you would ask me this is the reason why it sounds so small.)

It sounds really weak to me and as if everything plays as a single sound instead of working together.

also even though the lead is layerd with 5 layers it still doesnt sounds powerfull (i panned some of them use widers etc.)

I know the sounds aren't sounding great aswell.
But if some of you could give some pointers or tips to improve these problems that would be a great help.

But i quess i made it harder for my self to work with sounds who do not sound that great to begin with.
but you got to work with the resources you have now dont you think?

[Echidna]

Okay so im busy with some kind of weird summerish track and i just don't understand why i can't get it to sound right

before i started derping with the mix it was like this:

- Kick sample was really really REAALLLLLLLLY soft like 'wtf is this a kick? soft'
- The layerd synths sounded really really loud. (i gave every layer a seperate channel)

When i ajusted the volumes and dit some basic eqing i mostly get this as a result:


The things i did:
- EQ'd every layer seperately cutting to about 100/200 and slight boosts in the high
- At first used a compressor to raise the volume of the kick but i scrapped this.. instead i lowered the volume of the Leads.. but if you would ask me this is the reason why it sounds so small.)

It sounds really weak to me and as if everything plays as a single sound instead of working together.

also even though the lead is layerd with 5 layers it still doesnt sounds powerfull (i panned some of them use widers etc.)

I know the sounds aren't sounding great aswell.
But if some of you could give some pointers or tips to improve these problems that would be a great help.

But i quess i made it harder for my self to work with sounds who do not sound that great to begin with.
but you got to work with the resources you have now dont you think?

yep, I have done engineering for a lot of artists over the years and unfortunately your last sentence is correct, you can only work with what you've got (in terms of stems )

In my opinion/experience: You need to be careful with stereo wideners, if you go too wide, the sounds will disappear when played on mono sources, and personally i think they can sound quite weak and thin as a result. You should only really use the compressor if you feel the need to keep adjusting your faders when mixing, a compressor will help hold the channel at the volume you need, creating a more stable mix for that channel.

You almost made the mistake of making the kick louder to compensate, but you are right to pull down the volume of all the other elements. This will give more room at the top, and you will gain a better mix from this technique.

In terms of cutting and boosting, there is no definite figure you should cut at the bottom end to improve your mix, its all to do with the other elements in the track. At the production stage what I do is create a hi-pass filter on my eq and slowly begin to cut away the lower ranges until i can hear the sound being effected, for example when a snare loses that punchy feeling, or if a lead becomes too thin. When i get to this point, i then roll back the filter a tiny bit.

I tend to mult a lot of my project parts, and mix them to suit the different parts of the track. For example, the lead in a breakdown I want to be nice and powerful, and if you cut away too much freqs it will sound thin, however when you bring in the kick, the low end of the lead will muddy the mix and sound horrible, so I create another layer (usually just a duplicate of the stem) and cut the low freqs more (generally around 300-350hz) so that it still sounds powerful over the kick, yet doesnt interfere with those big lower frequencies.
Also dont boost too much hi's, and personally I cut everything over 20khz, you cant hear them so there is no need for them, and they take up precious head room!

Hopefully this helps you out a bit!

[ljk32]

Layering leads is not going to make your synth more powerful if you don't know how to do it properly. You can have 500 layers and still have a poor lead. It's good that you're eqing each layer separately but you have to understand how each layer interacts with each other. When you layer, you want to try fill up the frequency spectrum as best as you which is why you'd try to vary each individual layer. A fuller spectrum equals a fuller sound. The difficult part in this is knowing how each layer 'should' sound. You'd be surprised to find how shitty some single layers can sound, yet the entire lead sounds nice and full. This isn't something that can really be taught, it just comes down to a whole bunch of trial and error. Of course, always toggle between working on the layer by itself to adjusting it while the entire lead is playing. It doesn't matter if a layer itself sounds shit, the only thing that matters is the final product. I can't exactly tell you how to improve, that will come with time, but there are some things you could look into (though you may have heard a lot of it before):

1) Varying voicing - try to have a variety of oscillators detuned differently from each other, some with a lot detune and others with little to none. Fine-tuning of each oscillator can also help to distinguish the sound of a lead. I can't tell you how to do this because it depends on the sound you want and varies for every lead. From what I can hear in your sample, it seems as though you aren't detuning some oscillators enough.

2) Modulation - this is where you can really get creative. Modulate the fuck out of everything. Don't just limit it yourself to pitch LFO modulation. Think of morphing between waveforms, voicing/spread, LFO rates, width, wet/dry ratios, filter frequencies, resonance, distortion, phasing, etc Personally I feel as though Sylenth lacks so much in its modulation capabilities, but that's just me and I'm not even sure that you use it.

3) Varying octaves - this is key to filling out frequencies and you're probably aware of this. Don't just have every oscillator on the same octave, mix it up. If you have a mix of high and low octaves, you're more likely to have a full sounding lead.

Obviously there's a whole lot more to it than that, but there's not much more I can really help you with. You'll come to understand what works and what doesn't over time. Telling you how to make a lead won't speed up your ability to recognise errors in your productions.

With your eqing, don't be so strict on specific values. Some layers may need a cut at 200 where others may not, and eqing each layer exactly the same isn't going to do the lead justice.Also, if all your layers are too loud, turn them down. I'd suggest linking your layers to a single channel/bus. By doing this you have an overall control of the lead's gain while still being able to adjust things separately. Out of curiosity, why were you using a compressor to increase the volume of the kick? Unless there was a specific reason behind it, that's not really a practical way to do it (it still works of course, but it just seemed as if you didn't understand why you were using it).

[M Unic]

Thanks for your time to write something this big @ epidemicblack and LJK32 much appriciated!



@ LJK32

I have some knowledge about the points you gave but its never bad to reinforce the knowledge you have. it contains much information i haven't read before.

And Sylenth is idd the one used the most in this lead apart from a single massive and z3ta 2
I never tried a awefull lot on lead sounds in terms of experimentation.. i was afraid that it would sound shitty anway.. but time to look into that some more.

I also connected every layer to a single channel for the overal controle purpose like you said.

and for the compressor.. oh wel i wanted a quick boost in volume but the sound became really shitty. but the volume of the kick was that low that i thought it didn't matter but it did.

Anyway thanks guys! lots of theory to try out and trial/error with!

[Neutronic]

Yeah big props to you ljk32 and EpidemicBlack, very helpful ljk32 is there any chance that you could post and example of a lead with each individual layer playing and then all of them playing to illustrate how several bad sounding synths will form a fat lead when played together?

[ljk32]

Maybe 'crappy' wasn't the right word to use. What I mean is that the single layers can sound thin and not that great on their own, but work nicely with the whole lead. Due to me not having a bunch of leads made with a lot of layers readily available, this example isn't the best, but I hope it still illustrates the point. The leads are by no means amazing (especially the last one, but that was made a very long time ago and I thought it works well at showing how layers can sit nicely with each other). The second lead doesn't really illustrate the point that much since one layer is very quiet and the other is pretty much the entire sound. However, that first quiet layer doesn't sound that great but it compliments the main layer in a subtle way. As I said, this isn't an ideal example, but it's all I've got:



Actually, I think this lead gets the idea across:


Anyone who can demonstrate this more effectively, please do so. As I said, these aren't the best.