18 year old who wants to start home-recording... I need a lot of help.

[Harry]

Some quick general guidelines for metal mixing:

Low pass guitars at 10KHz (experiment to taste, I like 9000 KHz personally)
High pass guitars at 100Hz
Low pass bass at 3Khz
High pass bass at 40Hz
If possible, no other post processing on guitars and bass, get the tone happening from the source.
Although compression bass guitar helps a lot in metal, since it doesn't have to be that dynamic.

Scoop out between 100Hz to 600Hz for kick drums. It varies, so experiment
Boost around 200-250Hz for snares.

It is easier to work with guitar tracks with a healthy amount of mids, scooped tones are a no go IMHO.
However Too much mids ruins a mix, so find a balance.

Avoid using master bus limiting for now until you get better at mixing.

 

[DrewsifStalin]

I completely disagree with harry. I boost my Guitar tracks' sub frequencies, generally i boost around 100 with a low shelf.

I have metal foundry with a ton of compressors set up and what not so i generally have the volume set around -8.7

I then set my guitar and bass around -4.5 or more/less depending on what i think fits

 

[chimp_spanner]

Some quick general guidelines for metal mixing:

Low pass guitars at 10KHz (experiment to taste, I like 9000 KHz personally)
High pass guitars at 100Hz
Low pass bass at 3Khz
High pass bass at 40Hz
If possible, no other post processing on guitars and bass, get the tone happening from the source.
Although compression bass guitar helps a lot in metal, since it doesn't have to be that dynamic.

Scoop out between 100Hz to 600Hz for kick drums. It varies, so experiment
Boost around 200-250Hz for snares.

It is easier to work with guitar tracks with a healthy amount of mids, scooped tones are a no go IMHO.
However Too much mids ruins a mix, so find a balance.

Avoid using master bus limiting for now until you get better at mixing.

I think that's pretty solid advice. While I tell people not to get so obsessed with the numbers game, there are some very general frequencies that work well cut, or boost. But as always YRMV! So just use it as a framework and build on that.

High passing at 100hz is like, a must for me. Palm mutes just resonate and boom otherwise, although it's not always obvious on my particular setup. But anyone with a sub...woaaah, watch out haha.

Now how's this for retarded - for some reason I assumed the X3 comes with all the un-nessecary top end filtered out. So I haven't been low passing..might go some way to explaining why after long sessions through the cans, I hate my guitar tone and want to rip my ear drums out

Every day's a school day!

 

[Stephen]

I completely disagree with harry. I boost my Guitar tracks' sub frequencies, generally i boost around 100 with a low shelf.

I always use a hipass at 100Hz on guitars, anything below that is usually boomy as chimp_spanner said, plus thats taking up space from other aspects of the mix.

 

[chimp_spanner]

I always use a hipass at 100Hz on guitars, anything below that is usually boomy as chimp_spanner said, plus thats taking up space from other aspects of the mix.

Go team-having-the-same-guitars ^^ Course that's where the similarities end. As you actually have a rig haha.

 

[DrewsifStalin]

I'm saying I boost around 100 at the end of the boosting, so no more than 100 is boosted, you dont get boom, you get balls.

 

[Harry]

The bass guitar should be taking care of 100 Hz, boosting 100 Hz isn't necessary.
I'm not saying don't do it if you want to, but the beef and the body of the guitar tone in metal comes from the mids.