Production question for Fumblefingers.

[Sunbreak Music]

Originally posted by Bill@Welcome Home Studios:

By the way FYI side issue, MTV will not accept any recordings with levels above -6dB.

 

 

Bill

This is an important point for any of you that would like to get into film work--that is the standard, like Odb is the ceiling for music CDs.

[Sunbreak Music]

Originally posted by Justus A. Picker:

It's the mix that's important. It should be as good as it can be before it lands in your hands, but I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir.

What are some of the things to look for in a "good" mix in terms of frequency balance, peak rms, average rms, etc? What should be sent to the mastering engineer?

I send the absolute best possible mix to the ME. It is 99% there. That 1% is what is the magic, and that I can't attain because I'm way too close

 

Many people don't even understand the mastering concept--such as when they talk about "mastering" a track. It may be old school, but mastering is for collections of work--finely tuned to sound cohesive using EQ, compression, song order, that stuff.

 

The term has been diluted over the past years.

[miroslav]

Originally posted by Scott Fraser:

A compressor is used to decrease the peak to average ratio. If the average level of a mix is hovering around -15, with some peaks going all the way to 0dbfs, your CD is going to sound fairly quiet. You can then put a compressor on this mix, achieve 6 db of gain reduction on those peaks, then bring the overall gain up 6 db & you'll have a mix that is now 6 db hotter than before, & hopefully, with a sufficiently transparent compressor & well chosen threshold, ratio, knee and attack & release times, you will still perceive plenty of contrast between the average level & the peaks.

What I'll often do while still editing...is look at the meters as I play back single tracks...especially the "poppy" tracks, like snare, bass...even vocals...etc.

If I see any occasional peaks that really don't provide any benefit to the content...I'll go in and reduce them with editing...

...and not by applying a compressor on the whole track.

 

Then when mixing...I can apply very gentle compression just to lightly "glue" things...rather than try and "fix" things with compression.

 

Yeah...it is tedious and time consuming editing many individual peaks in many tracks...but I think it gives me much better level control...

...as I've seen just one single peak in one track (that adds nothing to the overall dynamics) cause the mix to hit digital "0"...forcing you to lower the overall level.