mixing and mastering at home

thomasross20

Haven't had time to read all replies but totally agree that ideally the music is great and the production/mixing/mastering is great, too. I've heard some sh!te on YouTube that can get great comments because of the production and some great music that's been slated because of less than perfect production - madness. 

I try my best. I have a few people helping. Headphones at home then through car speakers, phone, PC speakers, hi-fi, anything and everything I can find. I'd love to be good at this like many of the people on here but it's like, how many skills can you have before one or others become diluted? Hats off to you mixing masters!

Drew_TNBD

If you're going to take this stuff seriously then I think it behooves you to address your setup. Headphones are not a good way to approach mixing, certainly not in the long term. I only use them when placing microphones. I'd rather mix on monitors at a whisper level than use headphones, and I'd rather use a hifi system and hifi speakers than the best quality headphones.

It's all about knowing your gear.

I did decent mixes for 8 years with a cheap pair of passive Tannoy Reveals and an Acoustics Solutions SP101 - total outlay was about £250 when I was a teenager. I used them up until I was 29. That's cheaper than some of the guitars you people are buying!

And address your room too. I didn't for years, mainly because of renting. This meant I had to do a lot of a/b listening on various setups. I don't need to do that as much now that I've got my room treated to some extent.

You *can* get a reasonable master at home simply by doing some basic stuff - address the uber lows and uber highs, and use an intelligent limiter on the master output. It'll get you WELL within the "demo quality" aims of this thread. Obviously anything more than that is going to need some actual work behind it, but for the purposes of this discussion that is probably above and beyond.

The best tip I can give you - mix quietly. If you turn down to a whisper level and the kick drum is massively louder than everything else... then it's obvious your kick drum is too loud. Likewise with the snare, or that one plucky bass note, etc...

Danny1969

Yeah mixing quiet is a good thing, especially for checking vocals. There's an old trick that says if you keep turning the mix down until it's barely audible then generally the last thing you should hear is the lead vocal. That's being very general though, if I was mixing a Kyuss track the last thing I might hear would be a distorted bass. The perceived wisdom of what makes a good mix changes over the years too, listen to Walkers Bros track from the sixties and it's all reverb return and vocal mixed head and shoulders above everything else, we don't tend to mix like that today.

Along with mixing quiet though you need to check it loud too as the way things are now, with a lot of higher mids boosted and everything compressed things can sound ok at moderate volume but get really ugly and jarring when cranked up. I think the best advice is check it quiet, check it loud, change the listening levels and also the reference it's coming from. I change between the NS10's and the big speakers all the time. Put the mix on your phone, bluetooth it to BT speakers and listen. It's gonna sound different in terms of EQ on different systems, even pro mix's do but a pro mix retains it's sonic identity in general no matter what you play it on ..... the contrasts between instruments and the separation of the instruments should survive different platforms from ipod buds to PA systems 

thomasross20

Thanks guys and good point about the great needed being relatively cheap compared to guitars.
Will check other threads to see monitor recommendations

thomasross20

Already have Sony ss-rg110 speakers on Sony HiFi but don't know if good for this sort of thing (I highly doubt it). 

Would you buy used or always new?

thomasross20

http://thehub.musiciansfriend.com/audio-recording-buying-guides/studio-monitors-buying-guide

thomasross20

Would you ever use monitors to just listen back to music on at home? 

I'd probably use them the once for this album then that's it

guitarfishbay

If you like the sound of them then just listen to them all the time. Familiarity is a major factor that shouldn't be overlooked. Personally I don't see a point in using speakers you don't like listening to, you'll get fatigued quicker and you won't enjoy it as much.

Danny1969

guitarfishbay said:

If you like the sound of them then just listen to them all the time. Familiarity is a major factor that shouldn't be overlooked. Personally I don't see a point in using speakers you don't like listening to, you'll get fatigued quicker and you won't enjoy it as much.

I can understand your point there but there's another line of thought that suggests if you can get something sounding nice on a shouty harsh-ish speaker like an NS10 then it should generally sound good on anything. 

Personally I like hearing music on NS10's because then I'm listening to the same speakers that the engineer mixed the song on. Stuff like Reckless, American Idiot, Lets Dance