Quote:
Originally Posted by Lrmusic  You have to start with it down, and then make it bang.
At loud volumes, your ears naturally compress sound, making it sound better. In addition, as I read in the acclaimed Mixing Audio: Concepts, Practice, and Tools by Roey Ishaki, Fletcher and Munson showed that at higher volumes, you'll be proportionately more sensitive to lows and highs (compared to mids), which will make it sound better. So when you lower the volume it will suck. Souljah Boy disagrees.  |
yeah, I've been mixing a lot lately, and I find my mixing has gotten exceptionally better when I learned that loud does not = better. Try to get your mixes sounding as good as possible at low volumes, heck even push down the meters of your tracks to prevent any clipping (even internal clipping inside plugins).
If you can make mixes sound good at low or moderate volumes, making them sound good loud is a peace of cake... you can just throw on a decent limiter from there or better yet, send it off to get mastered.
It's pretty easy for someone who knows some mastering to get a mix to sound loud, if it's a good mix. Go to the mastering section on this site, and check the before and afters. I think loudness is best achieved by the mastering guys then the mixers. If you insist on getting them loud yourself, study up on mastering.
Some people are skilled at making things loud and clear when they mix, but I think that takes a lot of experience. It's best to take the mixing and making things louder (mastering) as two separate steps.
Too often, I feel that less experienced mixers spend too much time trying to make their shit loud instead of focusing on the mix. In the end all you get is a distorted, over-hyped piece of crap...instead of a pretty good mix. You can get a half-decent guy who will master the songs you want to run with for pretty cheap....and the music will sound 10X better if you go that route. Any idiot can make a mix bang by peaking all the faders.