Mixing "to compression" and the insanity thereof...

[God]

I figured I'd divulge a little bit.

Woke up early, went to the studio. On the way there I downed some coffee and food.

Got in and started away at mixing.

I was doing a mix where the AE had ghetto-"mastered" the track with a soft-comp on the entire song with some ghetto-filtering on it to hear what the track would sound like "after it was mastered."

This is not an entirely true statement, since you can't necessarily get the right sonic assumption for a mastered track, but it's based on an understanding of how much the unnamed mastering engineer will squash the hell out of the track in order to compete in the ongoing loudness wars-- which everyone seems to be losing side.

(Dynamics? That's soooo eighties...)

So I had to sit there with said AE and listen to the mix and the post-comp "mastered" mix. I had made the decision to use as little compression for the track as possible on most of the mixes, since the song we were working on has great dynamic variance and is a ballad WITHOUT a drum track (think Plain White T's "Hey There Delilah").

I am under the mixing assumption of "to squash" or "not to squash"... that is the question.

Essentially. I'm leaving it up to the mastering engineer to squash the dynamics out of the song, thereby killing the mix-- because some dumbf--- label exec/manager/agent who has absolutely NO musical knowledge other than "working in the industry" will say...

"God... that's not LOUD enough."

The prescription, other than throwing a left-hook at said exec is:

1. Squash all tracks. "Pre-compress" in mix in calculation not only to the mastering engineer (who you can talk to) but to compression of the radio stations... which is a substantial amount.

Thereby you "mix for compression on radio" rather than compression for CD.

Insane, I know. But it gives YOU the mixer, almost complete f----ing control... this is generally the "best" way of doing it.

2. Mix "to compression" in mastering. Knowing the general habits of the dopeass mastering engineer who you've downed tequila shots with, you know what he'll do... try to replicate the compression he throws on the track in A GENERAL SENSE and then "mix to" that compression.

This means... I know, I know.

DON'T TRUST YOUR EARS.

Since the dynamics of the song will have a larger variance in an un- or less-compressed mix (pre-mastering)... the songs you THINK will be louder in the final mastered mix will actually SOUND lower.

You're taking a risk here, since the "outcome" will be in mastering. This takes some knowledge and experience in getting the settings or having the mastering engineer come in and give you some insight on HOW YOU CAN MIX TO "HIM".

So, I'm not in essence mixing to "my mix" I'm mixing to the mix I have good knowledge of mixing to.

Weird eh?

Cheers... back to the craziness. In retrospect, I should've just pre-squashed everything.

 

[5th Sequence]

God I know exactly what you mean as far as having multiple ways you can approach your mix with respect to how it will sound after being mastered. That's unfortunate the label exec doesn't have a clue (can't entirely blame him, most don't).

I think in the end you might be right to just pre squash everything. Then at least your doing that yourself and have more of a say in how it gets compressed rather than it coming back from mastering drasticly different and with none of the dynamics you worked to preserve. Good luck man, I hope they don't ruin your mix too badly lol.

 

[Ominous]

One of the tutorials I bought off of MacProVideo is of Olav Basoski showing how he mixes down Electronic music. He mixes to a compressor. I was doing that but I am getting away from it. I put the compressor on at the end and then cut it on and off to see the difference after I adjust all my volumes and individual track comressions.

I found mixing to a mixer very hard because of my lack of experience. When you are mixing to a compressor, if you adjust one track, it really effects ALL the other tracks.


http://www.macprovideo.com/tutorial/prodElectro



Good post.

 

[Sincock]

Yeah, good post.

It amazes me how many people who make their living off music know so little about it.

 

[dahkter]

it's kind of sad when you need to presquash the individual tracks before mixdown in order to have some control over the end product. All I can think of is a guitar part where the fret noise is the same volume as the chords, and the vocals where the whispering is the same volume as the talking. multiply by 16 or 64 and it seems like a buzz kill to me.
I'm a huge fan of dynamics, it would definitely piss me off to invest time on a two track mix where all of the elements are sitting nicely, only to get it back from the mastering engineer and hear that all of my mids are five times louder due to the squashing.
One note regarding mastering plugs, I highly recommend you try out the PSP Xenon plugin, it's a great lookahead brickwall limiter, it has a very nice sound and interface. After using that I have not gone back to the L2 at all. Granted your ME probably has a ton of outboard which blows it away, however for home/lobudget in the box mastering, it's a really great product.

 

[God]

it's kind of sad when you need to presquash the individual tracks before mixdown in order to have some control over the end product. All I can think of is a guitar part where the fret noise is the same volume as the chords, and the vocals where the whispering is the same volume as the talking. multiply by 16 or 64 and it seems like a buzz kill to me.

That's just bad production if you let fret buzz come in or you don't chop out whispers in your DAW, etc. You're also talking to a guy who made someone rerecord the same guitar line in the verse about 40+ times and then chopped that to get the best takes. In the real world, probably 80% of the takes were good enough and the extra effort may have been unnecessary. You're also talking to a guy who slows down a track by 1/2 bpm for a guitarist to play the line slowly (and easily) and then speeds it up so it sounds "right".

On the same note I also cringe at Linkin Park's "What I've Done" on their album Minutes to Midnight because you can patently HEAR an error/notanerror in mixing where the levels of the post-bridge chorus is raised in gain by a slight amount of dB to give you a feeling of the song reaching "greater heights..." but it sounds like the automation came in a little to late...

Aah... the glory of DAWs.

But it is true about the "sound wars." Here's an update on the song:

UPDATE:

Got a good mix. Mixed "to compression"-- we thought it would sit right. The problem is I know how these RC execs think, and I know it's about the bottom line.

I understand there were focus group studies that showed consumers were more inclined to listen to a song that was "louder" on a selected list of songs because they thought it sounded better. This is because people believe what is louder is "better." Focus groups also showed that this gave people an overall "favorable" impression of the song if it was played more loudly.

This gives logic to the loudness wars. I hate it, because it killed dynamics.

Sat and remixed the song pre-squashing everything for a "pre-squash" mix. Took about seven/eight hours. Slammed the crap out of everything making it sound "radio-like" which also gives the actual mastering engineer little room to "improve" the track other than some light multi-band comp, EQ-tweaking and minor stuff. The wave form looks like a brick hitting a wall. So slammed.

Anyway I'm giving in two mixes for clearance. I bet you they'll go with the one with more dynamics. Gut feeling.

F----ing internal politics. I should've sent it to the mixing engineer used on the other tracks instead of doing it myself.

 

[Formant024]

Funny, ive been working like that haha but its ok really as long as the things being squashed are high end by discrete apparatus. You know, the more they require these end result, the less neccesary a ME is, its to the point where rec/mix studio's end up doing "mastering" (yeah i know, dangerous) but what are you really talking about when mastering a mixed set of tritons or software etc...really...barefoot next to your genelecs and the exec is happy with your stuff... i mean, why would need brian eno and bob katz for all this crappy produced music to get the "best result" ??? Pro's aint engineering nothing, they're fixing tracks giving it some value and clearing out all the crap you run into since everyone these days is a produced then mastering must make it sound big like phil spectre lol...

I keep saying it, turn up your volume...thats all there is to it

 

[Shonsteez]

I just hope the loudness war will soon cease at least in my lifetime. It would be nice to return back to actually having music thats not audibly fatiguing to listen to after a while.

 

[samuelock]

my head just exploded.