Hi Reco29
Great!!
Thanks for taking the time to respond. That is definitely something I can do, I’ll mix down an earlier save and upload over the weekend.
I look forward to hearing the feedback from anyone who wants to, and thanks again.
Cliff
Hi,
I’ve been fighting with this piece over the weekend using the new mixing methods and tips outlined by all of you here, as well as the information from YouTube and my book. I tried using dynamic EQ, compression, and reverb. I also tweaked the saturation on the Trumpet and Sax to make them stand our more.
To me, they definitely sound better, but I am still posting a short clip here for you to assess if that’s okay as you kindly offered to listen. The intro is included just for context, and then the Trumpet plays it’s first solo followed by the Alto Sax in the verse.
I am a rank newbie and using only home recording PC based equipment, not high end resources. So please don’t be too harsh, although please let me have it straight if you think the piece as you hear it stinks in any way.
Better to know now before sharing something publicly that doesn’t work! plus it will help me to make some more needed adjustments whilst learning this process.
Thank you,
Cliff 
I took a listen to your snippet. First of all, cool piece! Sounds like the mix is almost there too.
Here are some subjective and unfiltered thoughts of mine:
Why is it mono!?
There’s some general honkiness around 450-500Hz which get accentuated largely by the vibraphone. I think that some of the backing instruments could benefit from a bit of a EQ cut in this area to give room for a bit more body of the solo instruments.
I find that several of the percussive instruments sound a bit too snappy for the piece. Likely due to compression with a short attack time.
I would like to hear a bit more low end from the fretless bass. Currently it sounds like the kick drum is responsible for all the low end on its own.
A little bit more top end wouldn’t hurt either in my opinion (around 8k). However, be careful with the percussive/transient instruments in this area, they might not need much if any high frequency boost.
Are you using the same reverb for all tracks? I think some parts, the vocal swells for example, could benefit from a bit longer, more lush reverb.
All in all, great job!
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I’m getting a bit confused what we are listening for/to now…the original issue seemed to be that your mix sounded good in stereo but when sending to mono portable speakers it didn’t.
I thought we were partly at least, analysing if the original mix being mono-ed may be causing issues but you’ve now remixed it completely as mono so we can’t do that.
How does this now sound to you on the portable speakers, does it sound pretty similar as it does in stereo?
Hi Grim,
No, that’s not it.
The mix sounded good in headphones where both horns sounded loud and clear above everything else. But once I switched to playing it through portable speakers of the JBL type and a mono style PA speaker, both horns totally disappeared in the mix and I couldn’t understand why there was such a big disparity.
The mono thing only came about when I was advised to try mixing in mono, which is one of the trouble-shooting steps I subsequently took, which may have helped somewhat. Although this is a technique I still need to understand better to use it most effectively.
And, I never actually mixed the piece down in mono, I was just using that technique to listen to the piece whilst working on it, then mixing everything down in stereo in the hopes of an improvement to the balance and sound.
Thanks and sorry for not being clearer,
Cliff.
Now when I play the mix as it is right now through those speakers, I can hear both horns a lot more clearly, although admittedly I am nowhere near declaring this piece to be of a ‘good’ standard.
For what it is I believe a lot more work needs to be done, but that horns volume issue I think is on the way to being somewhat solved. I had a dynamics automation running on both of those instrument channels which is a function available in each instrument Vst, but I think that using it only did more harm than good, so I completely disabled it and left the dynamics at one level in the Vst, then using only volume automation instead.
But with all that said, I guess I wanted your opinion as to what you may think this stereo mix down may still lack in terms of clarity, transparency, or balance?
Thanks again,
Cliff
Mlib
I can’t thank you enough.
As I listened to the piece in different speakers I was getting a sense of all the imbalances you have pointed out, but I couldn’t make sense of it. My ears just got confused.
How did you know I used compression on the drums!
I am not sure I even needed to, because they are all Vst drums. But if making the attack time longer loosens them up a bit then I will try that first. Honestly though, I need to be able to understand how compression affects sound in order to use it more effectively.
As for everything else, I will go through the mix and try to make all those adjustments one by one. And yes, I did notice how big the kick sounds, but I guess I just wanted someone else to tell me to dial it back, so thanks.
Much appreciation for all of you,
Cliff
I recommend doing a lot of A/B’ing and make sure they’re level matched. Level matching is key when doing any form of A/B.
You can probably get Plugin Alliance BX_Solo for free still if you want something to mono your signal, or MSED from Voxengo is a great freebee for mid-side balancing.
Aside from possible phase cancellation issues, stereo sounds a lot louder so I find it helpful check loudness in mono, especially after panning things around.
There is also the “pink noise” trick where you can use the tone generator to level everything to a pink noise profile for more even perceived loudness levels as a starting point for the mix.
The mixdown you posted is 100% mono, it only has one channel.
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You are not the only one wondering why it’s in mono…