I'm a fulltime audio engineer/freelancer, and I'm offering advice to any questions you might have...

I'm a fulltime audio engineer/freelancer, and I'm offering advice to any questions you might have. I work mostly with major and indie labels, but sometimes work on fully independent projects. I don't want to listen to mixes or share the artists I've worked with. Cheers!

How do you go about learning all this garbage? Serious question, btw. I've always been interested but never knew where to start.

start off easy, what are some of your favourite plugins?

Worth it getting a reel-to-reel thing for a few tenners?

Probably by recording or producing your own music. It's a learn-by-doing type of field. What kind of music are you interested in making?

I'm terrible at mixing. Halfway through making a track, I usually hate how weak it sounds and end up putting multi band compression and a little EQ on the master. Then I think it sounds better and add more sounds, leaving these effects on the master.

I like the results, but I've heard my tracks sound too compressed. However, if I remove the effects, the track is totally different. It's because I've mixed everything to those effects.

So anyway, I was wondering: for these older tracks, is it too late to fix? If I sent them raw and shitty to an engineer, could he do a better job or is it too fucked by now?

For mixing:
Slate Digital Everything (especially tape and trigger), Renaissance compressors/eqs, Abbey Roads Verbs, Convolution reverbs, Autotune, C4 multiband compressor
For mastering: L316 for transparent limiting and L3 for track slamming mixing. Linear Phase EQs. (I'm not a mastering engineer, but I have to make tracks loud for clients sometimes)

I like to track things with healthy compression on the way in so I don't have to push plugins hard!

U wot m8?

Like this, always see em in 2nd hand shops for dirt cheap.

Sorry, I forgot saturation plugs and delays. I like the Pro Tools Lo-Fi plugin used very lightly, like .1 for saturation (like 40 does on everything). And ohmicide for a specific Effect

Supertap and Hdelay. I think most Delay plugins are pretty much the same (besides echoboy) and I usually process the delays with additional eqs and compressors and stuff

I don't know you tell me

do you like dub techno

Unless you processed the audio, and didn't keep the original files you could always send the unprocessed tracks and nothing would be ruined.

As for overcompression, what you're describing is what everyone experiences. The heavy compression is probably compensating for less than perfect mixing on the individual instruments.

Keep using compression on the mix buss (it's an extremely common, very effective tactic) but never have the compressor doing more than 6dB of gain reduction, and have it averaging closer to 2-4dB of gain reduction. This will keep your mix glued together but won't sound smashed.

I know a lot of stuff on the composition side of things, but not much about actual production. I usually only use presets on plugins, and I don't even know which ones to use, I just go by what everyone else is doing, withought knowing what the plugins actually do. What advice would you offer me? Write short tracks focusing on certain ares in which I am lacking, studying how good artists produce, or something else?

Genres: all /bleep/, but focusing on trap, future bass, and also producing lo-fi hip-hop

Amazing advice, screen capped for future use. Thank you!

Totally, r2r is fun, especially if you're interested in it. Tape sounds great, even the shittiest tape machines.

I fuck with the bleeps but not the bloops

I've been really digging the dubby stuff over the hyped stuff lately though. I'll listen to shigeto and bonobo way more than Seven Lions. I really like Moody Goods self titled though, it's got a cool balance of the mellow and the grime

Just remember that if it sounds good, it is good. You'll learn about all that EQ/compression/whatever stuff if you keep doing it for a while. Just keep writing, and remember what seems to work and what doesn't.

For those genres the most important thing is the groove. Do whatever you can to make the groove sound as good as possible. Don't leave it alone until you're really feeling it, and you can zone out and the beat just goes.

What kind of artists are you into?

noisecontrollers
lido
okie
andrew luce
kendrick lamar

How do I make my overall song louder? After I record and mix everything, I have to turn my computer up almost all the way just to hear it at a nice volume. When I raise the volumes and master volume, it just modulates the song and it starts clipping. I record using a reel to reel tape machine by the way, then put into Ableton and mix it there

Any tips for recording bass without a bass amp, but still getting that nice bass sound

normalizing and compressing&limiting

DI and process to taste

Since you were asking about songwriting/production, pay attention to structure of the beats. Like if the bassline is continuously playing, or if there's space in between the notes, and how that contributes to the groove. Same with kick and snare. Are the hats shuffled, swung, or straight. Those guys usually have a few weird percussive samples, so try and experiment with things like vibraslaps, cowbells, chimes, and anything else of that nature.

A lot of times all drums are saturated a little bit, which helps them sound more and also more cohesive/glued together. Try using a distortion plugin in a way so that it's not highly distorting, just lightly coloring the sound. Copy that on to every drum, and increase/decrease the amount of distortion so it sounds good. Usually less is more.

Every detailed response I try and write you gets flagged as spam from the Cred Forums Bot, Sorry.

Use a limiter on your master track to raise the volume to digital Zero. Try and not compress more than 1-2dB. To make your mix commercially loud, send it to be professionally mastered.

I'm assuming you're recording it direct?

If you have access to amp simulators, use them. Don't be afraid to make a copy and layer them, then blend the tones to taste. Once you get a good tone, fuck around with a compressor to see if you can get it to sit even better in the mix. You want to compress it so sits in the mix at a constant volume, sort of like a bed that every other sound rests upon.

Could you please explain what is RMS level and how can it help with a mix? Thank you senài

thank you, user

RMS measures the average volume, think of it as how loud a song sounds. RMS meters react slower, which is similar to how our ears actually perceive sound. Our ears naturally compress loud sounds, averaging them out. That's why a long sustaining loud noise like an airhorn often sounds louder than a single snare drum hit, even if the snare has a louder peak volume.

It's important that mixes sound loud nowadays, at least to some extent because it makes the song more commercially sellable. People also listen to music in noisier environments than they used to, and having a high RMS helps make the song more enjoyable. Plus loud shit comes across as exciting. The downside? Having a high RMS removes all the headroom for percussive elements like drums, and can make them not punch and thump, which in turn makes the mix shitty. People have destroyed albums by compressing it too heavily, making a wall of sound that's fatiguing to listen to.

The art to a great commercial mix is to get the perfect balance between high RMS while still retaining the feeling of dynamics. This is done mostly by using compression. Parallel compression is especially helpful in this because you can raise the overall volume and also retain the percussive attack.

For an example of a good RMS mix vs a shitty one, listen to Phantogram: When I'm Small, and Phantogram: Fall In Love.
When I'm Small sounds loud and punchy, almost explosive. Gets louder and doesn't afraid of anything.
Fall In Love sounds great for about 30 seconds. Then it sort of collapses into a loud mess with no actual force behind the mix. It's a great song, well written, but I think it's so fatiguing to listen to that it's not actually enjoyable for more than a handful of times.