Tips to a Great Sounding Mix
Department of Sound Engineering - Weekly Article
Tips to a Great Sounding Mix
You want the drums to be the loudest, but they sound small, you want the guitars to be nice and crispy but they sound dull. You want crisp and powerful vocals, but they sound very hollow and with lot of reverb. Remember a very important thing, the more instruments you add to the Mix, the smaller each tracks sounds in the final mix.
When you have too many tracks in the mix, you try to bring out the Guitar by cranking it up but then the drums sound dull, so you try and boost the drums, then you feel you can barely hear the Vocals, so you try to crank that up too, what’s the end result, you get a very loud sounding ear deafening Mix where no single track stands out.
So the thumb rule – Only add tracks which are Most Critical to the Mix – keep the instruments to bare minimum unless required. You can even compress them and boost the gain a bit if required.
Don’t Crowd The Bus Think of your recording or mix as a bus. Imagine a bus with fewer passengers (for e.g. tracks) the bus will zoom through the streets with a smoother greater speed, whereas jam the bus with a 100 passengers, the bus will consume more energy and go at a very inefficient slow speed, since its over loaded, the Mix works on a same principle, keep the Mix free and clear of too many tracks and you will find more clarity in the Sounds of each track and Overall the Mix will sound much more Powerful. Each track will stand out in the final Mix.
Regards
Department of Sound Engineering
Devs Music.