14
You're likely to find that artists that have basslines that stick out well on both proper studio monitors as well as crappy laptop speakers are utilizing a bunch of layering of sounds to create a cohesive bass sound that spans various frequencies (besides the low ones you'd expect). Even when I'm using a bass sound that is essentially a sub (sine wave) bass,...
13
There are a few misconceptions here. Normalization, in the most basic sense, raises the gain of the ENTIRE track to a nominal level. What you are trying to do with normalization is maximize signal. The relative dynamics of the track are not changed. There are actually two types of normalization, but the most common is peak normalization, where the loudest ...
8
There are two questions here that I think should be addressed separately:
Question 1: "is this a bad method of practice?"
As I understand it, the reason it's considered "better" to compress individual tracks and not the master bus is because you have a finer degree of control, especially in today's digital world where you could instance a ...
8
This is just a limited (or clipped through distortion) sound wave added through the normal mixing process, to a lower frequency soundwave.
I've created a simple example to demonstrate what I mean.
The higher frequency sound wave; Let's pretend it's a nice brass instrument:
The brass instrument is then clipped for whatever reason:
The ...
7
There are 5 stages/phases in a Album production: Recording > Editing > Mixing > Mastering > Printing.
It's worth naming "Pre-production", which is before the 5 steps and can be very important to make things go better. Pre-production can be a wide variety of things. All from making the music arrangements, defining artist identity, vision, and intention; to ...
6
There's possibly not really enough space in a stack exchange answer to actually get to the root of the problem ... though I see the other answers have made valiant efforts, and no doubt you should study these, and they may indeed cover the answer, but still ...
The fact that you a) notice, and b) have the humility to ask shows me that you both have an ear (...
6
Your real problem is most likely recording technique and possibly the gear you're using. A good sound recorded properly doesn't need any EQ to sound professional.
Where you place your microphone is the most important thing in capturing a sound and works just like EQing when in the right hands.
5
To get the Kickdrum out of Laptopspeakers -> Layer a small click sound, rimshot, hi hat, etc.
To get the Bass out -> layer it with saws or use parallel distortion or fm to get some higher harmonics out
edit: also the right amount of white and pink noise can give the impression of a burst -> helps with those edm genres to give a big bass drop on small ...
5
No, that doesn't make much sense. The point of a maximiser/limiter is to exploit the 0dBFS range as thoroughly as possible, but 0dBFS is only a meaningful range at the very end of the mastering process: it's the highest level that can be expressed by the consumer format you're exporting to. OTOH, digital plugins use floating-point arithmetic internally, ...
5
Back in the days of analog & vinyl, rolling off the extreme bass frequencies had three primary reasons .
No-one would ever hear it
the needle would tend to get thrown out of the groove with extremely low frequencies, especially if it wasn't centred, or was out of phase.
There is far more energy needed to shift bass than treble, so the overall volume ...
5
Here, is there any common low-end level that every song should has?
No
or Does it just set by ear?
Yes. In fact, it should be set by ear, not by eyes. Don't bother with what the spectrum analyzer tells you, it is dumb and doesn't know or say very much. You have to listen for the right sounds.
or Does it depend on the music genres?
Definitely. Hip-...
4
You can use something like Waves MaxxBass or RBass to create upper harmonics that can be heard on smaller speakers. You could also saturate or distort the mid to high end on a separate track and blend it in with the original.
4
One thing that would help us help you a lot better is you posting your kick+bass mix, and the kick and bass separately. That way we can solve the issue and tell you how we did it and what you probably were doing wrong. Otherwise we are stuck around a thousand possibilities of who knows what is your problem. I suggest you to do this so we can give you a more ...
4
In addition to jdlugosz's comment about its effect when the sound is reproduced (which should be an answer) it also provides additional headroom in the (digital) recording itself. The sub 30Hz content could push higher frequency content above the top of the scale. Since it's not going to get reproduced, there is no harm in removing it, and there is the ...
4
You will note that this emulates the effect of a DC blocking capacitor, in a record player on clipped vinyl... i.e. no 0Hz being passed. This waveform's clipping slopes exclusively the same way, towards zero. Unless this were a mixture of a triangle, and a square (clipped) wave, of the same frequency, with a phase difference of 90 degrees, Marc W's example ...
4
This is a very big topic, I will start by redirecting you to a very useful site/article: Mastering for Vinyl from Recording magazine.
Also I would like to state that I'm not a mastering engineer, I'm a mixing engineer only working with analog gear, so I'll try to tell you what we keep in mind when going for vinyl. The article is far more detailed and ...
4
"I mix everything as loud as possible". There is your problem. Right there.
Mixing music is not about making it "loud". If you think it is, you are focussing on the wrong thing entirely.
There are any number of resources available to you to learn how to mix - too many to list here.
One tip I will give you is to focus on spectral balance and dynamic range....
3
Dull and muffled sounds to me like frequency space. That is, there aren't high frequencies where you would expect them. The low frequencies are lacking, etc... Within Reason, that is probably an issue with EQing.
The volume issue is likely related to something called gain structuring. Imagine, instead of Reason, you actually had all of that outboard ...
3
I found boosting the basslines in the 800hz area helps on laptops and only gives a little more clarity on other systems without making it overpowering.
3
Using an EQ for mastering should be a corrective process; so you need to know what you are trying to correct in the sound. Don't just use EQ or dynamics because that's what you think mastering is. If the sound is working, then leave it alone. If it isn't working, then you need to figure out what is wrong and what tool you need to use to fix it.
If your ...
3
this is a pretty good starting point for you: http://www.jetstreaming.org/2012/09/05/an-introduction-to-sound-effects-mastering/
Once you have read that article explore the rest of the jetstreaming blog, as a lot of it will be useful info for what you are tackling.
3
Dither, Noise Shaping, and Bit Quantization. These are the reasons for the separate mastering passes. All of which do not need to be considered when mixing/bouncing the audio in the native digital format it was converted to (24bit/48khz).
Also, it sounds like he will provide you with individual "HiRes" native files OR Will downsample for you and create a ...
3
I find what coaxmw says to be true when I don't have a lot of music, so with primarily voice over.
Regardless of Lufs and other standards for loudness, you should be mixing/leveling with your ears not meters. Have you calibrated your speakers and tuned your room acoustics?
If have a monitor setting for commercials and another one for 'softer' material.
Do a ...
3
If you want to do good mastering you at least need to buy monitor speakers.
That's my answer and will solve your problem.
The following are just for discussion and will not solve your problem:
Also you say
But when I listen to this on a desktop computer, the sound SUCKS!
You mean using the same headphones on the desktop computer, or do you mean you ...
3
GIGO [garbage in, garbage out] does apply...
...however - a good mix, master or especially restoration engineer could pull apparent newness out of a low quality file - that's essentially the same task as recovering a track from an old 78 RPM record, or remastering the Beatles albums from the original multitracks.
You work to eliminate the 'bad' & ...
3
You have kind of answered your own question. You don't have monitors.
The difference between monitors and home (Hi-Fi) speakers is that the first are designed to be as flat as possible. By flat we mean that they don't attenuate or amplify certain frequencies. 'Flat' refers to the frequency response.
The reason we use them to mix is to get as 'honest' a ...
2
"I export the Fx, Dialogue and Music stems as .wavs and deliver them to the editor"... sadly THAT could be your problem right there... Editors have been known to forget things like panning the stereo stems left and right, which can result in a 3db gain increase. Or they think it's "too quiet" in their suite, and bump everything up... the NLE doesn't ...
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