Is it me or does REAPER (DAW) sound muddy/congested/crammed/flat?

[TedEH]

It must be something I'm doing when I put them in a bus together that is causing them to clip.

If there's any very quick and easy tidbit to take from this thread, it should be the point that sound is additive.

If you record something to a track, duplicate that track, then bus those two together, the result will add together both copies and peak 2x as high as the originals on their own. (That math isn't as clean when the signals aren't exactly the same, but the same principle mostly applies: Bus'd tracks will generally peak higher than the individual tracks that contribute to it.)

So what does this mean practically? Turn your bus tracks down.

If you think of your track structure as a tree, I usually have the lowest level "leaf" or "source" tracks sit at 0, and the master stays at 0, but pretty much everything in between is reduced significantly.

 

[IT'z Roberto]

If there's any very quick and easy tidbit to take from this thread, it should be the point that sound is additive.

If you record something to a track, duplicate that track, then bus those two together, the result will add together both copies and peak 2x as high as the originals on their own. (That math isn't as clean when the signals aren't exactly the same, but the same principle mostly applies: Bus'd tracks will generally peak higher than the individual tracks that contribute to it.)

So what does this mean practically? Turn your bus tracks down.

If you think of your track structure as a tree, I usually have the lowest level "leaf" or "source" tracks sit at 0, and the master stays at 0, but pretty much everything in between is reduced significantly.

I found that what was making the rythym guitars look like they were peaking was from the snare sidechain (because the snare was peaking in certain spots) the guitars where/are at -3db when separated from the side chain.

So I assume the drums are causing the majority of clipping/peaking

I'm still unhappy with my rythym guitar tones. Can't seem to dial them in correctly. But as for today, I'm out of time to mix anymore. I've removed all the plugins (besides a limiter and lufs/loudness meter) from the master channel for now.

I'll start from scratch next time I get a chance. Again thanks guys

 

[TedEH]

I'll start from scratch next time I get a chance.

If you have the time to iterate, I think that's a good approach.

 

[Drew]

If there's any very quick and easy tidbit to take from this thread, it should be the point that sound is additive.

Headroom matters, full stop.

I found that what was making the rythym guitars look like they were peaking was from the snare sidechain (because the snare was peaking in certain spots) the guitars where/are at -3db when separated from the side chain.

Totally forgot about this in my earlier post.

Honestly, for now I wouldn't bother sidechaining anything. Can it help take a mix that's already great, and give it that extra 1% to make it something special, if you're ducking the bass on kick hits? Sure, a bit... But, it's not going to take a mediocre mix and make it a good one, done well it can be used as a less-good substitute for fixing other issues in the mix that have better solutions (I'd look at EQ before side chain compression, personally, when looking at how your bass and drum sounds lock in), and done poorly you're just giving yourself even more rope to hang yourself. Just because Nolly did it in a mix walkthrough doesn't mean you have to do it to make a good mix, and worrying about subtle dynamic control in a mix when - I say this with zero offense intended - you still have bus clipping occurring and haven't squared away basic gain staging in the mix is getting lost in the details and missing the big picture.

Get the big picture looking pretty good. Once it is, then decide if you even NEED to micromanage the interplay between kick and bass hits like this.

 

[GunpointMetal]

Get the big picture looking pretty good. Once it is, then decide if you even NEED to micromanage the interplay between kick and bass hits like this.

This is definitely something that the proliferation of modern home recording needs to work on. YouTubers should start each video with a disclaimer along the lines of "All of the processing decisions in this video are being made based on the fact that I have solid source tracks and my mix sounds functional before we start processing anything." Because if you're starting out fighting with tracks that are too loud/too quiet, poorly mic'd, poorly played, poorly edited, etc, etc, etc, all of the processing and side-chaining and TrackSpacer and limited isn't going to fix those initial problems. People forget when they're watching Joel Wanasek hit his drum buss with 8dB of limiting that all of the individual elements in there already sounded great before he started messing with them.

 

[Drew]

This is definitely something that the proliferation of modern home recording needs to work on. YouTubers should start each video with a disclaimer along the lines of "All of the processing decisions in this video are being made based on the fact that I have solid source tracks and my mix sounds functional before we start processing anything." Because if you're starting out fighting with tracks that are too loud/too quiet, poorly mic'd, poorly played, poorly edited, etc, etc, etc, all of the processing and side-chaining and TrackSpacer and limited isn't going to fix those initial problems. People forget when they're watching Joel Wanasek hit his drum buss with 8dB of limiting that all of the individual elements in there already sounded great before he started messing with them.

Oh god yes, that's an even deeper fundamental point.

Honestly, one of the best mix tutorials I've ever seen was the Slipperman one I linked here probably a decade ago. There's a couple reasons for this, and one of the biggest was how non-dogmatic he is (no "answers," his mixing process is more fact-finding and figuring out what he has to work with, and adjusting accordingly), but this passage below is one that hit me. I think it's one of those truths that's taken a long time to fully set in, but basically, the more I focused on the raw tracks I was creating, the better the end results are.

It's AMAZING how much of a mix's "tight low end" comes from just having the bass performance grooving really tightly with the drums, which as a kind of mediocre bassist is something that I find really, really, really unfortunate.

 

[Grindspine]

Yeah, as indicated above, having solid individual sources then purely mixing (not eq, not compressing, not adding effects, just adjusting volume to balance everything) can get great results. The whole idea of "fix it in post" is always going to give sloppier results. Take the time to mic each guitar track carefully, use headphones if you need to listen while actually changing position of a mic, even better if you listen to your monitors and direct someone else to adjust the mics. That above post is so true about the way some musicians just have their music blend easily without having to do much with it.

 

[TedEH]

no "answers," his mixing process is more fact-finding and figuring out what he has to work with, and adjusting accordingly

For as often as this advice is repeated, it sometimes feels like it doesn't sink in. Mixing techniques are tools and not rules. Don't do things because "that's what the pros do" - instead listen critically and do what the mix needs.

 

[Drew]

For as often as this advice is repeated, it sometimes feels like it doesn't sink in. Mixing techniques are tools and not rules. Don't do things because "that's what the pros do" - instead listen critically and do what the mix needs.

...which, ironically, is exactly what the pros do.

Also, since the images seem to have not worked, it was the part when he's pulling up the raw tracks of a project he did ages ago for his ongoing "recording heavy guitars" series, was chatting with a tech who knew the band but not the album, an with nothing more thsan setting faders and hitting play they were sitting there, shooting the shit, talking about the songs, and the tech said something about "yeah, it already kind of sounds like an album, huh" to which slipperman said, without thinking, "yeah, it kind of just mixes itself..." before stopping and thinking about what he just said.

Basically, we focus SO much on all the mechanical sides of a mix, where your high pass should be on an electric guitar, whether you should use a multiband compressor and if so how far, which particular saturation plugin gives you "that analog sound," etc etc etc... but the thing that's going to shape 90 to 95% of your finished mix's sound is what the damned raw tracks you've recorded sound like, and a lot of the process of making an album is just recording the best possible tracks you can, and then in some ways kind of staying out of the way and letting the best of what's there shine.

And, from that standpoint, the most critical part of mixing is just sitting there and listening and recognizing what the best parts are, so you can help them shine.

There's some point in either the text or the eventual mp3 podcast-like discssions he did where he started talking about Chris Lord-Alge's work on Live's "Throwing Copper," and how the first time he heard the snare on that album he laugned because it was so compressed it sounded like someone was hitting it with a wiffle ball bat, but now he listens and loves it. And he doens't get into it... but if you listen to the drumming on that album, it's pretty rudimentary (in stark comparison to the bass, where that album is chock full of unexpectedly great basslines). I think the reason CLA smashed the living fuck out of the snare was that the drummer's dynamic control just wasn't great, so you NEEDED that degree of compression to make it pretty uniform and hard hitting and "rock and roll." That's worth thinking about, though it's an awfully hard lesson to apply to your own performances.