beck wrote:
Great ssj71. Now were talking.
Anyone else too?
Relatively to your case, you should learn principles of equalization, compression, distortion/saturation and reverberation first.
And of course, setting balance between instruments.
I know what I'm talking about because there was a case when you've PM'ed to me with one of your recordings.
I've wrote about basic problems in the mix and performed quick mastering of your recording (that as you told 'was mastered').
That means that you don't know basic mixing techniques well. All sound engineers pass three mental stages:
1. I don't know everything. I should use plugins accurately and mix accurately. At this stage they get bad or not so bad sound of their mix and go studying basic mixing instruments and techniques. Mostly mix is done by using some already prepared by somebody else presets.
2. I know everything! All knobs turn right! At this stage people overrate their knowledge and have low experience, so get things even worser than at the first stage.
3. Finally, they see that all that they've done is wrong. They learn all techniques again, understand HOW IT WORKS and what effect gives EACH PARAMETER of instrument (not HOW TO SET UP to make it working in some way but HOW TO SET UP to make it working in NECESSARY WAY). Then they find and determine problems in the mix and find solutions by applying different techniques in different cases. They don't need presets more. They can tune the right processing in 2-3 minutes from zero settings.
So there are basic steps of mixing:
1. Prepare the project. Import/record all tracks, add busses and perform routing between them.
2. Set-up initial balance between all instruments. You should hear all instruments in the mix even if the loudness of your monitoring is set nealy to the zero. Ensure that threre are no clipping on all tracks/busses.
3. Perform cleaning equalization for each instrument. Cut-off annoying masking frequencies by High-Q filters. LSP Parametric Equalizer will help you to do this by applying resonance and bell filters.
4. Perform timbral correction of all tracks. Cut-off unneeded low and high frequencies by lowpass-hipass filters. Add range of frequencies by shelving filters. After timbral correction check the balance between instruments again. If there is still something annoying, try to mute individual tracks/busses until you find what track/bus adds problem to the whole sound.
5. Perform compression of individual tracks and groups. You should know here different compression techniques and their application to the source material. After compression, check balance between instruments.
6. Colorize the sound by adding more bass to bass and kick (Calf Bass Enhancer). Add high frequencies to distorted/overdriven guitars (Calf Exciter). Add tube sound to the vocals (Calf Saturator), etc... You should know here how to use distortions and saturations. Again, check the balance between instruments.
7. Perform spacial processing. Split instruments into plans, add additional reverberation busses and set-up reverberation plugin on each bus. Send different instruments to different reverberation busses. DO NOT USE reverbs on each track of the instrument, that's silly. Additionally cut-off low and high frequencies for far instruments, add some presence to near instruments. Check the balance of the mix.
8. Now you can add some automation to tracks/busses and put additional effects (Flanger, Chorus, Wah, etc..). Always check the balance!
9. You've got your mix. Check again that it doesn't have annoying masking frequencies. Fix the final problems you've noticed in the mix.
10. Export your mix to perform mastering. Do not master your mix in this project.
There also should be montage stage before starting mixing.