Compressing My Mix

A

Alexi

Drench Audio
VIP Junglist
Joined
May 21, 2007
Location
Bristol/Southampton
Hi,

First Of all by compression I mean sound compression not making files take up less space.

I have recently recorded some mixes onto MP3 and as I am still a beginner, the volume during the mix is all over the place, songs are too loud and some are too quiet. I want to compress them to make a more overall level. I have tried using the presets in Cool Edit Pro, which work to some extent but cut all the bass out of the drops, so is hardly ideal. Has anyone got any tips for making the levels roughly the same whilst still keeping full range of EQs etc.

Thanks in advance
 
Load the mix up into a wave editor. Select the bits that you want to change and adjust the volumes up and down on those bits (add db or subtract them). Any good editor will give you this ability.

'Compressing' is not what you want to do because you'll be fucking with different frequencies throughout the mix.

However if you recorded with fucked up frequencies, i.e. have too little bass or too much - redo the mix. Don't try and fix this afterwards - unless you have the same problem throughout the mix.
 
Dustek said:
'Compressing' is not what you want to do because you'll be fucking with different frequencies throughout the mix.
Click to expand...

bizactly.

i'm entirely too noob to be a pedant,

but after looking into this thread i think your looking more along the lines of 'Volume normalization' than compression...

someone jump on my head if i'm wrong?
 
MickleDan said:
bizactly.

i'm entirely too noob to be a pedant,

but after looking into this thread i think your looking more along the lines of 'Volume normalization' than compression...

someone jump on my head if i'm wrong?
Click to expand...

Yeah that's right - you just need to tweak the volume of your mix, not compress it - that's something completely different...

What you really ought to do is practise tweaking the volumes of the tunes as your mixing so that the dynamics work properly as you mix live - if you want to be a DJ then this is really important...

Just compare the volume of the record you're mixing in to the volume of the one your mixing into in the headphones then just EQ it before and as you are doing the mix...

Remeber half the mix is done with the faders, the other half is done with the EQ's and trims
 
yeah i can beatmatch and use teh faders properly and monitor the volumes and keep that all even however i still have yet to be able to use the EQ's for "smoothing out the mix" purposes...i can use the eq for mix techniques like dropping out bass of one track while the bass of another comes in during a transition and whatnot...i dont think i have an ear for the eqs or its not developed....
 
Alexi said:
Hi,

First Of all by compression I mean sound compression not making files take up less space.

I have recently recorded some mixes onto MP3 and as I am still a beginner, the volume during the mix is all over the place, songs are too loud and some are too quiet. I want to compress them to make a more overall level. I have tried using the presets in Cool Edit Pro, which work to some extent but cut all the bass out of the drops, so is hardly ideal. Has anyone got any tips for making the levels roughly the same whilst still keeping full range of EQs etc.

Thanks in advance
Click to expand...

Too much compression can lose all the dynamics in a track.

Try sidechaining or cutting a tiny a section out of the bass when you snare hits trigger. Adding a limiter will allow you to boost the overall mix without any signals clipping. You shoud EQ all of your sounds individually and then master it when you have everything sitting nicely in the mix.

Sidechaing is what most of the top producers do now....Subfocus, Culture Shock, Brookes Bros sidechain all their beats...it's the way forward.
 
Back
Top Bottom