Mastering question

Well i have some problems in the final mixes. In Ableton on Master always have a red spectrum. I use some comprension in everything and if i put less volume on kicks or whatever sound the final mix doesnt sound great.

How i can solve this problm and get green or master? thank u

do a mixdown. lower the volume of everything and bring each channel up in order of importance in the track.

You can always put a brick wall limiter on the master, but that wont matter in the end. Mastering engineers dont want anything on the master.

[quote]howiegroove (14/12/2010)[hr]do a mixdown. lower the volume of everything and bring each channel up in order of importance in the track.[/quote]



yes i do that. but i feel the track lose the power. for example the kicks aren’t so punchy.

Mate this is such a broad tpic its not your mastering that gives you punch etc you need a good MIXDOWN first! My advice is watch all the tutorials and pay specific attention to the mixdown/mastering parts. Your question cant be answered with a simple do this then that answer. it takes years of experience and hard work to get mixing mastered!

Yes, it is difficult to get right when you are learning. But what howie said is the only way to do it. When you turn your levels down, turn up your monitors to compensate.

This is what I do:

Turn everything down, then turn up your kick (I go for about -10-12db on the kick channel). Then turn up the bass, then everything else one by one so it sounds balanced. This should give about -6ish db on the master. Then pop a limiter on the master, turn the threshold down whilst listening to the busiest part of the mix so that there is just a little compression (it is usually set to about 8-9bd).

Bounce to wav then listen on a few other systems, take a break, listen again then start tweaking. Repeat ad nauseum.

If anyone has a better way of doing it, I would be interested. My mixes are gettting better, but I still have some way to go.

Loads of other things you can and probably should be doing along the way too. Move things around in the stereo and spatial field.



This moves the sounds away from each other and creates more space in the mix. It’s not as simple as panning this left, or that right, or putting reverb on to move things backwards, but those are basic starting points.



The more space your mix has then it will give you a bit more headroom too rather than having everything front and centre (and therefore sounding flat and dense).

thanks 4 the tips guys. and yes i see the tutorials but im sure i can check them again.



once again thank u

I agree with all the comments above. now also having proper Volume levels and properly using compression makes lots of difference. but yeahh check more of the videos . they have tons of good mixing info .

Ive made a little checklist to help you out. First turn everything down and slowly start bringing up your parts as mentioned above by Howie. This should give you the ‘relative’ volumes of your parts. Try putting a utility on each channel and turning eveything to mono, the test for this is that if you turn it to mono and it drastically changes the sound then keep it stereo if however the sound doesnt really change keep it mono! Next you can start checking which parts use up the same frequency range and use your eq’s to cut and boost to help the sounds come through better. Next you can use compressors to give stuff some more weight and punch or a bit of volume and of course keep the peaks under controle. Now you can start looking at the space in your mix start messing around with panning, reverbs, delays etc. Once you have this done chuck a limiter on your master and start squeezing. Obviously this is a very basic way of doing things but it should get you in the right routine and as you get better you will start developing your own things and trying out different things.

Thank u