Hey there~
I am looking for techniques / solutions to bringing a great sounding mix to a final master.
the problem that I am facing is that I am adding more and more base and processions to my music. I can get the mix with all the tracks and vocals to sound awesome through any of the monitors I am sampling with with all of my levels and peaks accounted for, but when I go for that Audio Mixdown and throw it into Wavelab to get my final file, the entire song turns to mud. Everything starts blending together, Vocals become either washed out or over powering, the instruments lose their spark and magic and everything just seems to get lost in itself. It’s all been really quite interesting and frustrating at the same time~ I am making sure that my levels and peaks are in check.
Doing a final master EQ does not seem to fix the problem, and prior to now I had mostly worked with Ballads and vocal tracks where this was not much of a problem or it was quite manageable.
I always feel like I am on the verge to figuring out the master, and I go in for that final render and seem I lose it all again.
If you have any tips or suggestions, or know of any resources that you think might help I would be very much appreciative!
I would love to offer an example, but I can’t get the the audio out of Cubase the way I hear it when it plays in cubase, so you would have nothing to compare the “muddy” file with to what I want it to sound like.
I do love the way it sounds in cubase before I export that Audio Mixdown~
My setup:
Cubase 5
Wavelab 7
M-Audio Profire 610 soundcard
Windows 7, 64 bit.
Sterling Audio St 69 tube microphone
Spectrasonic’s Omnisphere VSTi
Spectrasonic’s Trilian VSTi
Roland, AKG, and DT monitors as well as a couple of “cheap-po” headphones to compare.
I have tried both exporting the vocal and sound tracks individually and combining them, exporting every track individually, the entire track as a whole, exporting and mastering the tracks broken up into sections, you name it.
Really, I’ve just been having a ton of fun (besides all the tears) experimenting, playing around with ideas, just doing what I could think of to get this to work.
I have learned a ton from the process, but I think it is about time that I turned to a community.
I am very excited and open to anything you might suggest.
You guys are awesome, Thanks!
(If a similar topic to this has been posted here and I just missed it, if you could re-direct me to it that would be great! Same goes to any other resource that you might know off the top of your head.)
(Sorry for the long post)
Again, thank you so much!