[Solved] Mixing - A few questions

Hi, I have just started out using DAW software, and I have layed down a few tracks in cubase 4 le on a song I’ve been working on, it contains 8 guitartracks, 6 vocaltracks, drums and etc.

The guitar parts are both clean guitars and pumping guitars with a distortion effect, the guitar parts peaks pretty much.
The vocalparts also peaks
Anyhow for mixing i where wondering what are the pretty much “must use” plugins for both guitars and vocals ?
The song is a pretty heavy ballad with both clean vocals and growl vocals, and clean guitars and distorted…

As far as I have understood for vocals a compressor, DeEsser and gate are essential, I have tried these but are experiencing that the compressor kills much of what makes the vocals stand out.

For the guitar I guess a reverb plugin like REVerence are usefull as well as a compressor, I find them both difficult to use…

The song also clips the sound, meaning whenever allot of instruments comes in the soundlevel drops for a few of the tracks, I guess that is where compressors are handy.

To make it short:
For a harder song with lots of hard/growl vocals and heavy distorted effects what plugins should be essential for a good result ?

I know that this is pretty much impossible to answer as it varies from ear to ear and you haven’t even heard the song, but I hope someone can give me a few pointers …
Thank you.
PS: The song is available here if you would like to listen to it before giving me pointers: NRK P3 Urørt

PSS: I have watched a few YouTube guides and read a few tips, but I haven’t really found a guide for finetuning it all

Mixing is an art and takes a long time to master. I would suggest to record a more balanced arrengement of the song (unplugged style) first and try to get it sound right. Go to this website: http://www.mixingaudio.com/ and buy the book.

This is symptomatic of over using the compressor. Back off the threshold a bit. Ditto for the Vocals - if it’s “the compressor kills much of what makes the vocals stand out” then once again you’re overcooking it. Generally I don’t compress vocals at more than 2:1 ratio and then I use the threshold so it’s just catching the peaks.

Personally, I would not use a gate on the vocals unless there’s a lot of background spill, which I would try to eliminate at recording if I could. A reverb is almost a must on vocals to provide a sense of depth. There’s a big mid range hole in the vocals of your track. Another trick when you have multiple vocal tracks going at the same time is to pan them around a bit.

Having good monitors is a must too. On my headphones there’s too much kick drum and this is sucking the energy out of the mix. The guitars sound OK to me.

Thanks for all your help guys, I really got something usefull out of it…