My audiomixdown isnt loud enough, please help!

[SFA-OK]

Dear people,

Im having trouble with nuendo 2. I record and mix a track exactly how I like it, sounds great through headphones and decent speakers. When I export the audiomix to a wav file and play it through windown media player, its far too queit though. I made sure that the audiomixdown was between -1 and -6 Db and used various compressors on the instruments, however, its still far too quiet.

I tried using a compressor on the finished wave file via nuendo in an attempt to make it louder, however no such luck!

I understand there are various frequencies which cant be heard by the human ear, I wonder if these frequencies are the cause and if so, how would I get rid of them.

Is all this down to good mixing, compression, panning at individual track levels??

Thanks guys!

SFA-OK

[gainstages]

check out some of the older threads in the mastering forum, there is a wealth of information there. also, did you use a limitor, or just a compressor?

if you can't find what you need in the mastering forum archieves, feel free to PM me

[SFA-OK]

Ive checked out some of the threads, which have given me a helping hand, however, I still cant get the tracks to be anywhere near loud enough. Maybe it needs to be remixed from scratch and If so does anyone have any tips for making the whole thing sound louder and fuller. Does the compression and limiting on each individual track collectively make a big difference. I used some of the preset compressors, but should try and create my own levels. What mixing should I do to each track to make them louder, make the bass and drums fuller.

Id appreciate if someone could let me know what kind of frequencies each instrument is heard best in

Thank you people, much appreciated

x

If anyone knows of any useful archives to mull over, please feel free to let me know!

thanks

[lucasmusic]

not sure if you are able to do this but, I would get the mix to sound the way you like even at the low level volume and bounce all tracks to 2 channel stereo tracks and from there highlight the tracks and use like a gain plug in and bump it to 9 db and see what happens; if its too distorted tailor it back until all the digital distortion is out of your mix leaving you with the loudest level you can get. And if its still too quiet than you need better gear like mic pres, converters and etc.

[dropblacksky]

Originally Posted by lucasmusic

not sure if you are able to do this but, I would get the mix to sound the way you like even at the low level volume and bounce all tracks to 2 channel stereo tracks and from there highlight the tracks and use like a gain plug in and bump it to 9 db and see what happens; if its too distorted tailor it back until all the digital distortion is out of your mix leaving you with the loudest level you can get. And if its still too quiet than you need better gear like mic pres, converters and etc.

Whoa. DO NOT DO THIS! Your tracks should never be above 0dBfs. The difference between commercial tracks and home tracks is a higher RMS level , not peak level. The peak level is always 0, or sometimes -0.3 if you're having cds manufactured and you want to have less chance of errors. I would recommend you go to a professional mastering engineer to have some tracks mastered. There are lots of them around who will do it for reasonable cost these days...if you can sit in on the session, you'll learn a lot about the process.

There are a lot of threads in this forum about the basics of the mastering process. It'll do your music a favor to study and learn the craft. Learn about the proper use of compression and limiting, as these are the "loudness" tools that are too often abused these days. And don't take everything you read in forums as useful info...not everyone who likes to give advice actually knows what they are talking about.

[Greg Reierson]

Originally Posted by SFA-OK

Dear people,

Im having trouble with nuendo 2. I record and mix a track exactly how I like it, sounds great through headphones and decent speakers. When I export the audiomix to a wav file and play it through windown media player, its far [B]too queit.....

Too quite for:

A) Casual listening?
B) Client approval?
C) To send off to the mastering house?

It's hard for us to offer advice because you haven't explained why this is a problem.



Greg Reierson
Rare Form Mastering

[Fretbored]

Make sure you separate the mix stage and the mastering stage. It's not the best idea to try mastering at the same time you're rendering a stereo track. In your case, forget overall volume while you're mixing. After you're happy with your stereo mix, upload the wav file into another program for mastering (unless it's an important project that needs pro mastering which is always advised here). As for the reason of your higher db reading, I don't know. Perhaps using another program for mastering will tell the truth.

[hackenslash]

Get the Bob Katz book. It has a useful little pullout chart that defines instrument/note frequencies that is really useful, whether you're mastering, mixing or just recording.

[lofi]

Originally Posted by Fretbored

Make sure you separate the mix stage and the mastering stage. It's not the best idea to try mastering at the same time you're rendering a stereo track.

why ?

mixing for the master is not new thing nowadays.

infact. there are times when band prefers mixers master instead of the ME masters (at least with some genres and with some mixers). "we will fix it in the mastering" is not the best idea imo. or "we will get it louder in the mastering" or "we will correct anything that is wrong with the mix in the master" is not the best idea at all imo. i think problems cannot be bounced to "different stages" of the same process of production.
if material sucks rewrite it.
if raw tracks are bad retrack it.
if mix is bad remix it.
if master is bad remaster it.

but if the final mix is fantastic = its suddenly your master too (unless you really want that vinyl thing ) . when that happens is "Make sure you separate the mix stage and the mastering stage." advice still valid ????

or (quite posible) im competely mad

[Masterer]

Originally Posted by lofi

....but if the final mix is fantastic = its suddenly your master too (unless you really want that vinyl thing ) . when that happens is "Make sure you separate the mix stage and the mastering stage." advice still valid ????

Actually, in the context of the original posters question, why not? Clearly the mix is not "fantastic" in the posters estimation or there'd be no reason to ask the question.

As advice goes, "separate the stages" is just as vague [although well intended, obviously] and just as valid as "if the mix sucks - remix it" is.





To the original poster: You should probably hire someone that knows what they're doing to help out while you improve your skills and get more experience. If you choose wisely it'll be worth every penny.

[soundroid]

Originally Posted by lofi

why ?

if mix is bad remix it.
if master is bad remaster it.
when that happens is "Make sure you separate the mix stage and the mastering stage." advice still valid ????

pretty funny.
you say 'don't treat the mix and mastering stages as two separate things'.
then you proceed and make a list separating the 2 stages.

[soundroid]

Originally Posted by lucasmusic

not sure if you are able to do this but, I would get the mix to sound the way you like even at the low level volume and bounce all tracks to 2 channel stereo tracks and from there highlight the tracks and use like a gain plug in and bump it to 9 db and see what happens; if its too distorted tailor it back until all the digital distortion is out of your mix leaving you with the loudest level you can get. And if its still too quiet than you need better gear like mic pres, converters and etc.

what the hell have 'mic pres' got to do with getting tracks louder at the mastering stage????? is this a serious cooment?

[lofi]

Originally Posted by soundroid

pretty funny.
you say 'don't treat the mix and mastering stages as two separate things'.
then you proceed and make a list separating the 2 stages.

sorry if it came out like that . im not native english speaker but i tried to be clear...

ill try again to explain my logic better :

to me mastering is what you do to masterbus and mixing is what you do to raw tracks before summing them to become "masterbus track" . thats what i ment. now if you do that at the same time these arent "2 separate stages" no more are they ??? are they still "2 separate things" (or way better term "different procedures") ? yes. i never ment they werent. diff stages ? imho no.

we can expand even more... if youre mixing a particular song and then discover bass track sucks and its way out of tune and then you retrack it then continue to mix then you go on and think "damn last part needs some key pads to double the guitar parts" then you do that and go back to mixing....then are mixing and tracking still "2 separate stages" ? probably not. are those "2 separate things" (or better term "procedures") ? yes. diff stages ? apparently not.

what if, now we are almost done,we conclude that we dont really need 4 modulated choruses at the end and 2 will be just fine.ok lets edit. wasnt that kinda "composing/arranging" at the "mixing stage" ??? get it ?? and so on.

so i guess in my clumsy way i ment this:

if material sucks rewrite it.
if raw tracks are bad retrack it.
if mix is bad remix it.
if master is bad remaster it.
if these procedures are separated then merge them into one cohesive and creative process and dont bounce problems between them phew

(ok but "if end product sucks redo it instead fixing it in the marketing" i cannot comment cos im an antiexpert on marketing)

or... go the usual routine : "my mix is too soft - ME will fix that dont worry just mix it" , later "wow its loud now but it doesnt sound like my mix anymore,initial ballances are way off and wheres my snare ? - dont worry thats ok but you got tits it will sell anyway"

thats what i ment. you dont have to agree but i hope im clearer now.

to orig post:

you (or someone else) should try to do your mix/mastering better (in this case louder if thats the only thing what is wrong with it). mind you. today masters and mixes in general are way too loud so dont assume automaticaly you are the freak in direct comparison.

[soundroid]

Originally Posted by lofi

sorry if it came out like that . im not native english speaker but i tried to be clear...

ill try again to explain my logic better :

to me mastering is what you do to masterbus and mixing is what you do to raw tracks before summing them to become "masterbus track" . thats what i ment. now if you do that at the same time these arent "2 separate stages" no more are they ??? are they still "2 separate things" (or way better term "different procedures") ? yes. i never ment they werent. diff stages ? imho no.

we can expand even more... if youre mixing a particular song and then discover bass track sucks and its way out of tune and then you retrack it then continue to mix then you go on and think "damn last part needs some key pads to double the guitar parts" then you do that and go back to mixing....then are mixing and tracking still "2 separate stages" ? probably not. are those "2 separate things" (or better term "procedures") ? yes. diff stages ? apparently not.

what if, now we are almost done,we conclude that we dont really need 4 modulated choruses at the end and 2 will be just fine.ok lets edit. wasnt that kinda "composing/arranging" at the "mixing stage" ??? get it ?? and so on.

so i guess in my clumsy way i ment this:

if material sucks rewrite it.
if raw tracks are bad retrack it.
if mix is bad remix it.
if master is bad remaster it.
if these procedures are separated then merge them into one cohesive and creative process and dont bounce problems between them phew

(ok but "if end product sucks redo it instead fixing it in the marketing" i cannot comment cos im an antiexpert on marketing)

or... go the usual routine : "my mix is too soft - ME will fix that dont worry just mix it" , later "wow its loud now but it doesnt sound like my mix anymore,initial ballances are way off and wheres my snare ? - dont worry thats ok but you got tits it will sell anyway"

thats what i ment. you dont have to agree but i hope im clearer now.

to orig post:

you (or someone else) should try to do your mix/mastering better (in this case louder if thats the only thing what is wrong with it). mind you. today masters and mixes in general are way too loud so dont assume automaticaly you are the freak in direct comparison.

understood. thanks for your explanantion.
however I believe that the 2 procedures should not be blurred into one. when you're mixing, you've got enough to think about, let alone trying to pseudo master it at the same time. I still feel treating the 2 stages as separate procedures yields better results.
also, if your mastering engineer compresses your mix so much that the intial balances are now 'way off', you really need to find another ME. even at todays hot levels, a pro ME should not distort or skew the balance of you mix so much that it no longer sounds like your mix. that's just amatuer and often a symptom of the a quick and thoughless mastering job.

[eyesore]

Originally Posted by soundroid

also, if your mastering engineer compresses your mix so much that the intial balances are now 'way off', you really need to find another ME. even at todays hot levels, a pro ME should not distort or skew the balance of you mix so much that it no longer sounds like your mix. that's just amatuer and often a symptom of the a quick and thoughless mastering job.

This is simply not true. Even the greatest mastering engineer cannot drastically change the apparent level without changing the mix to some degree. (In fact my italics indicate that I don't believe a mix can be made louder at all if you try to take it past simply normalizing it to 0dB; rather parts of it will be brought up at the expense of others in a way that I guess the average person might percieve as louder, but not drum lovers like me. But we don't even need to get into that here.) There is always some sort of tradeoff. If you search the board you will find plenty of posts where well-known mastering engineers state this.

Lofi is right on with everything he said.

I would suggest that the original poster probably doesn't have his mix sounding as much like he wants as he thinks. For someone with little experience, slapping a limiter on is usually not what they need to make the greatest gains in apparent level. I know this from my own experiences.

I understand there are various frequencies which cant be heard by the human ear, I wonder if these frequencies are the cause and if so, how would I get rid of them.

It very well could be the case that there is some bass buildup. We haven't heard it so we can't tell. The best strategy is to post a clip up and people might be able to pinpoint the problem.

sounds great through headphones and decent speakers

By decent speakers do you mean studio monitors or consumer stereo speakers? What does it do on something like a boombox? The lower mids are a region that will often have too much going on too.

I remember how great I thought my first mixes sounded in headphones. I thought they were better than other peoples'. And then I played my stuff through different sets of consumer speakers and realized how bad they really were.

How good is your monitoring environment? ..How do other songs compare through the same monitoring system? Turn commercial reference songs down to the level of your mix and THEN compare. You may be surpriseda t what theirs sounds like at that lower level. Room treatment might better help you hear what is going on. If you are using stereo speakers, some proper monitors would help as well a lower end second reference (boombox).

[lofi]

Originally Posted by soundroid

I believe that the 2 procedures should not be blurred into one.

Originally Posted by soundroid

I still feel treating the 2 stages as separate procedures yields better results.

i had same belifs and feelings too. until i tried it myself and grabbed facts instead of belifs and feels. i will probably never go back. i mix for the master and im not the only one (if that should be an argument at all)

Originally Posted by soundroid

also, if your mastering engineer compresses your mix so much that the intial balances are now 'way off', you really need to find another ME. even at todays hot levels, a pro ME should not distort or skew the balance of you mix so much that it no longer sounds like your mix. that's just amatuer and often a symptom of the a quick and thoughless mastering job.

not quite my friend. they usually have NO CHOICE. do you think they dont hear that overcompression and clipping and distortion ? oh they do. they are usually finest ears out there with finest gear or they wouldnt last a minute. but mastering is a compromise. unfortunately all mistakes accumulate from "all stages" and end up in mastering session. why do ya think they get more and more vocal up mix, drum up mix, less verb mix, stems mixes, blah blah... after all.. stem mastering is...mixing ! not settling for final mix and sending many variants is emmm.... mixing not finnished !!! imo.

another thing. what if you could do some changes to your mix after its mastered ? cos simply you couldnt hear end product while mixing. would you do it ? if you could ?


heres an trivial example. few months ago i did one jazz trio. sincerly, other than miking them up and doing monitor mixes and setting up the system i wuz doing nothing at all. why ? i didnt need to. i just enjoyed great music live and on playback from monitors once we listened up.

those guys did all by themselves : impovising/songwriting/arranging on the spot, playing/tracking with no glitches...perfectly in tune and time and feel...

they even sorta "mixed" they stuff while performing if you know what i mean. they did all they balances right by playing their instruments the right way at proper moment in song. switching pickups, turning knobs on theire instruments....no riding faders on this one. and after picking the best passes of each song - that was our master. all stages at once firmly gripped and interlocked together.

i was like a blowfish tapping my feet like crazy. again music is great fenomenon.

now what would happen if we separated those stages cos of ones feeling, belifs or tradition ??? would that get us better end result ? maybe. or maybe not. im just saying try it. then A/B. then decide.

maybe not the best example in the world but best i got so far. glad you understand my point

ha.. i bet great mastering engs can mix like crazy and their mix would need almost nothing in the mastering "stage". also the best mixers out there are doing that all the time. they just send it to ME for "aproval" and downsampling so to speak.

read this

Opinon of clipped or distorted releases????


different "stages" all blaming eachother for bad results. back to topic.

[soundroid]

I feel you,and the previous poster missed my point entirely.
I even quoted you in italic when I said 'WAY OFF'.
I never said mastering at todays levels does not change the mix 'at all', I said it sould not, EVER change the balance of a mix detrimentally.
The best MEs today are able to master albums at current levels and leave the mix relatively as it was, snares, kicks and vocals still 'pretty much' in their original balance, with only subtle shifts, if any, in the balance.
that's why their 'top' mastering engineers. you must be talking about back yard mastering MEs. if top MEs radically changed the balance of a mix, they certainly wouldn't last a minute. simple as that.
you seem to imply that if you present a mix to an ME, then you should expect it to come back quite different to the original mix. I think that's totally incorrect. as I said, this may be the case if you're simply strapping an L2 on the mix and cranking it to oblivion.

I still stand by my statement, that if an ME drastically changes the balance of a mix un-necescarliy, in order to simply raise the level, then it's really time to find a new ME.

[drakewire]

Im having trouble with nuendo 2. I record and mix a track exactly how I like it, sounds great through headphones and decent speakers. When I export the audiomix to a wav file and play it through windown media player, its far too queit though. I made sure that the audiomixdown was between -1 and -6 Db and used various compressors on the instruments, however, its still far too quiet.

I tried using a compressor on the finished wave file via nuendo in an attempt to make it louder, however no such luck!

Either you ripped off the software or this is your first day of class with a very expensive editing suite... Most novices start out with Cubase... Not to be mean but Stereo Pan Law and Limiting are two different things... Chances are if you went into the Project settings your project setting is at -6 db. So if you get a mix down from that, and nothing is clipping your file will probably be average of about -15 to -19 db... Which is very low... In fact this is a perfect headroom for a mastering engineer to come in and do the tweaks needed to do the mastering process.... If however, mastering is not your thing.. You need to Limit the Track.. If loud is all your going for just download a limiter pull the thresh hold down until it clips t0 about 3. You will see some attenuation of the peaks in the frequencies. This however, is a terrible mastering process, but you said all you wanted was loud...

"The War is over if You want it" John Lennon talking about the Loudness War

[Coyoteous]

- sorry if this has already been said (just skimmed the thread) but, JUST TURN UP YOUR AMP!!! If you want it to be loud and good a low volume setting, hire an ME.

I've been mixing some extremely well recorded tracks for the last few months. For reference CD's I just do a fairly high quality SRC, bring the level up to about -0.3 and TPDF flat dither - no limiting, EQ, compression or clipping - and turn it up.

Listening to these ref's is like is like listening to vinyl on top of a mountain! And you get to use more than 10% of your volume control! It's different - at first it seems like something's missing - like you're in a house without a ceiling and the mixes can seem really flawed.

Then I started finding real pockets for the instruments and started riding elements that seem to pop out or get too buried. I know, how old school! Now pretty much everything else I listen too seems squished. I've seen the the light and I ain't going back!

I say: don't psuedo-master your CD ref's - just turn it up. If you don't like what you hear, tweak your mix until you do.

[lofi]

Originally Posted by soundroid

I still stand by my statement, that if an ME drastically changes the balance of a mix un-necescarliy, in order to simply raise the level, then it's really time to find a new ME.

ok we disagree.

im completely cool with that. the beautiful thing is: there obviously isnt just ONE good way to do things right. and there can be times when more than ONE opinion/experience is valid.

just try it once on one song and compare. than report. you can always do it the ususal way in 2 separate stages

mixing for the master its seems works better for most of the projects i do. thats it.

now i gotta work !

[gregerlindberg]

Originally Posted by SFA-OK

Dear people,

Im having trouble with nuendo 2. I record and mix a track exactly how I like it, sounds great through headphones and decent speakers. When I export the audiomix to a wav file and play it through windown media player, its far too queit though. I made sure that the audiomixdown was between -1 and -6 Db and used various compressors on the instruments, however, its still far too quiet.

I tried using a compressor on the finished wave file via nuendo in an attempt to make it louder, however no such luck!

I understand there are various frequencies which cant be heard by the human ear, I wonder if these frequencies are the cause and if so, how would I get rid of them.

Is all this down to good mixing, compression, panning at individual track levels??

Thanks guys!

SFA-OK

If its the same prob i had, its the volume in the PC (if u run at a pc), that might be low. So check out the computors volym levels.
Like i said, had the same prob, it sounded good in the DAW but on a mixdown, way to low. That volyme has nothing to do with the soundcard you might use, but somehow it seems to override it when it comes to volyme. Im a newbie but, could be someting to check up..
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