Pete you've been the best mixing teacher on YT. Trust me, I've spent weeks looking for information that you just hit on the nail every time. Hope you and the fam are doing better. Can't wait for more content. Until then I'll just binge all your videos. Thanks again, you're help has been monumental in my mixes and workflow. P&L
What you said about lack of information when we first started out, imagine when I started in the early 90's! Man, it was all trial and error on my Fostex reel to reel and junky Alesis mixer. I was fortunate to hang out with Billy Zoom (guitarist for X) during that time, he became my "RU-vid", haha. He answered a million questions, he was the first guy to explain what tape saturation is and natural compression. (All because I asked him why my recordings didn't sound the same when I went to those horrible ADATS). Anyway, you're right man, beginners have it easy these days! Great vid!
Very cool tips, thanks! Another one I found a lot of people doing at the beginning: Put lots of REVERB on a track with long decay times. Some times that is what you are looking for; but most of the times when you are a beguinner, you wash ALL your tracks with long reverbs. At least, I use to do it. Most of the times you have just to FEEL it, not EAR it. Listen it in context, not the track alone. And A/B it (for me, this is the key).
Great tips for those in the early stages of mixing. And especially the one on hearing. I’m in my late 40s and wished I’d take more care of my ears when I was younger - I too have the whistling when I go too sleep. All those gigs with no ear plugs is the one thing I’d change, big time. Listen up young 'uns!
In this case it is not RMS it is LUFS (Loudnes Integrated), RMS (digital) is representing the VU (analogue) and VU is more close to 300ms (average rise at 1kHz) time frame, although RMS can be adjusted on most digital meters, usually it takes around the same value. LUFS can be momentarily, short and integrated and is calculated with very different algorithms than RMS ones.
Quilty for numerous, but 6 is real... I have this from mixing live gigs, esp doing foldback mixing, sitting at a console mixing the artists ears, and being blasted all soundcheck and the gig its self... Interesting enough tho, an old bloke I met at a festival had a special set of attenuation earplugs, they were really expensive custom ones made in Brisbane, but when you make your living with your ears, job expectancy is key!. I bet he doesn't have a tinnitus...
Seano Hutton Thanks for the comment, Seano! I have a pair of the custom plugs with the filters in them and they’re worth every penny. What’s great is they allow you to hear lots of frequencies foam plugs cut out while still reducing 25db. Super useful. I wear them any time I’m in loud environments, even in a loud bar or restaurant. Hearing and not having permanent tinnitus like I do is priceless... a few hundred on plugs is nothing in the grand scheme of things. Thx again! 🤙🏻😁
your shooting for -16rms on master bus? When leveling to create enough headroom, couldn't one just bring master bus level down instead of individual tracks? (This would be before final mastering which would bring it up.)
Pete mentions tinnitus and man it ain't something you want to live with. I agree with Pete...it can be damn scary, making it hard to fall asleep, cause for some level of anxiety, etc...Don't mess around here => Take care of your hearing. Silence is a beautiful thing and hard enough to find in today's noisy world...tinnitus can permanently rob you of those silent times so important for sanity's sake!
good set of tips. I think I am growing as a mixer because all the mistakes you explain here, I did myself and now trying to get rid of it. One question I have is: by high passing every track (and I do it) I am struggling myself to sometimes bring back some low end punch (tracks start to sound too clean sometimes). How do you deal with it ?
Jan Van Sweevelt Thx for the kind words, Jan. I’m glad my vids help 😊 To get more low end back in your mixes, I’d suggest NOT high passing your kick, bass, and other low end dominant instruments. Also try rolling back the high pass filters a little on the other tracks 🤙🏻
Thanks for the great video!! I notice that you have a limiter on your mix bus and master channel. Are you bouncing down with that limiter on, or are you just mixing with the limiter to get an idea of what the mix will sound like once mastered?
I can't speak for his intentions but it is common to put a fake master on and mix into that in order to get an idea of the finished product. Also, I did for a while have a limiter on the master bus just so I had the output loud enough after gain staging.
Nick Pasquino Hey Nick. Yeah on this track I had a limiter on my Mix Buss to catch any snare and kick overages... I was then using the limiter on my stereo out as I was printing hot mixes to send to the client. Was just prob what I had on there as this is an older session. Although sometime I do use 2 limiters for limiting. Check out my vid “Why I Use 2 MixBusses” and it goes in depth. Cheers 🤙🏻😄
Why you couldnt just lower the volume from the faders. Most plugins have input volume nowadays so you dont have to worry that you are driving them with too much gain. In fact, I think if you trim the volume down too much before adding effects, some of them might not even sound so good.
using hp filters everywhere ruins your mix it will sound thin. you should really try to keep atleast 3 elements in the mix not hi passed definitely a piano it gives your complete mix more of a full sound
Plus, we're constantly told HP filtering gains us headroom, so we believe it, but you can watch his meter on Tk17 and see that this isn't true: level stays the same, and will even go up slightly due to the heavy phase alteration caused by the HPF. If there isn't a real rumble problem there, it doesn't need filtering. If it does need filtering, a low shelf will reduce it in a much less destructive way and it won't alter phase as much.
Thanks for these tips. BTW....I can't see on my 32 inches monitor as much info as you have in this video of the edit and mix areas of the daw. Also the plugins in your view are not as big as on mine. Does this has to do with the graphics card?
if lucky you have a DAW that lets you adjust the size of the userinterface, one setting for the DAW elements, another for the plugins. additionally, you can try settings for the graphic card in the operating systems. there is the general "pixel count" (which has only one optimal setting per monitor, but you can alway try to lower it) and also there might be a setting for the general font size factor.
Thanks for your answer neovxr. I have Studio One 3. I enable the High DPI mode and only let me put the scaling to 100%. My operating system is Windows 7 Pro. 16 G memory ram.
Ricardo Ayala I’m not too hip on graphics card stuff so I’m not really sure why. I can adjust the size of the window to fit my screen which is a 27”. That’s about all I know. Video isn’t my forte.
Thanks for your help Lucas. Actually, I really don't know if mine is 1080p. When I go to screen resolution, it says that 1360 x 768 is the recommended. I have seen other videos were almost everyone, whatever the DAW they are using or whatever the size of their monitor they have, I can see a lot more than on mine. Is not a big deal for me. Maybe I need another graphic card for my PC. The one I have is the one that came with the computer. Thanks again Lucas, appreciate your help.
