Your track has punch, solid glue and a great low end – the bus compressor and EQ work great, BUT UNFORTUNATELY NOT for the lead vocals, they are too affected and squashed by the bus compressor. Just as a quick example for adding a second mix bus: Without going into detail here, this is something pioneered by mix engineer Michael Brauer on SSL consoles that have several stereo mix busses, like the SSL 6000E/G, 8000G and 9000J/K. One of the reasons for that is – there are engineers who work with SEVERAL master busses. I make a clear distinction between MIX BUS and MASTER BUS. If you make it a habit to shoot for the -3 to -5 dB range going OUT of the mix bus, you will have more space for unexpected events though. They will love you for 0.3 dB of a ceiling and no brick wall limiter used! In light of 20 years of loudness wars, these guys are happy if you leave them ANY headroom. More is nice, but what we’re talking about here is the headroom you leave for the mastering engineer to do his thing. When all processing is done, and you end up with 3dB of headroom at the end of your mix bus, you’ve done a solid job. I’m talking about the Input and Output-controls of a plug-in.īack off 1 dB on each of those to get some headroom back if you’re getting near the trouble-zone. This „not so dramatic“ EQ curve adds about 8 dB of level to the mix bus though!Įach processor inserted on the mix-bus gives you – of course – handles to get some headroom back. This looks dramatic (+ 8dB at 30 Hz), but since this is a linear phase EQ, and the curve is very broad, it’s not: 100 Hz is only boosted 2 dB relative to 400Hz. That is not really a big deal – I would probably insert a Linear Phase EQ, and create a very broad boost of the lower frequencies Like, the kind of bass you would get by cranking up the bass on a HiFi Amp. Take a situation where your mix sounds great and is very balanced overall, but as you are comparing the mix to references, it lacks bass. You need headroom coming into the mix bus (which you have assured in „STAGE 2“), but also coming out of the mix bus. (which is not the topic of this article). The Mix Bus is where your Bus Compressor (if you’re using one) is inserted, and it will have other processors, from EQs to subtle Tape Compression, etc. That ensures lots of headroom in the master-bus when mixing/summing the individual signals. Producers usually send me their individual tracks pretty hot, with peaks close to 0dB, and I have made it a habit to put a gainer plugin across every individual track that reduces levels by 15dB (set to -15dB). I recommend putting a simple gainer plug-in in the second slot of your plug-in chain (always leave the first slot free). With the channel fader set to unity gain (= 0dB), each single element needs to have a solid headroom of about 12 – 18 dB. I do not compensate for that with gain reduction in my master or summing bus! Most individual tracks people send me for mixing are too loud – once I start summing them, I’m at least 6dB into the digital red. When you’re tracking vocals or instruments, keep average levels around -15dB to -18dB, peaks shouldn’t go higher than -8dB to -5dB.
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