New track, need a little advice for mixdown.

S

sten360

Member
Joined
Dec 29, 2010
Scyone - Towards the Stars [Liquid drum & bass] Mixdown advice wanted.

Hi guys!

I've been working on a new liquid dnb track the past few days and it's finally done, however, I seem to be having difficulties with the mixdown. It all sounded great and epic and I was ready to push it out there already, but upon listening to it again today with a clear head, I've noticed some muddiness. I went back to FL and tightened up the EQing a bit more, but I don't know, doesn't seem to help much, in fact I think it lost a bit of its power. The more I listen to it, the worse it sounds, it's making me crazy... I don't know if it's just my crappy earphones & speakers (I don't have producer equipment, unfortunately), the music player, or me overthinking things, so I'd love to hear more opinions! If someone with a fresh ear (and maybe studio monitors :P) could listen to it and give me some feedback, it'd be grand! Overall opinions of the track are very welcome aswell of course. Thanks in advance. ;)
Also, for some reason the soundcloud player seems to always give my bass some weird distortion. It's never there in FL or during normal mp3 playback. Does anyone else have such a problem? I don't know how to fix something that isn't there...

https://soundcloud.com/radiance-dnb%2Fscyone-towards-the-stars-3%2Fs-8iKUB

Cheers!
 
Last edited:
Heh, I've just noticed you need to have the track title in the topic title, didn't remember that sorry. Been a while since I've been here. Anyway it's fixed now, although it doesn't show up in the thread list anyway... :P
 
The problem may be the pads there is quite a lot of low frequencies and when the sub comes in at the drop it doubles up try using eq automation to take the bass out of the pad at the drop as for distortion I didn't hear any but it might , just be soundclouds algorithm nothing you can do about the mate
 
Thanks for the reply! Yeah well a lot of the instruments clash actually, poor choice on my part I guess. I've tried to remedy this with EQing as much as possible, but sometimes that would completely destroy the sound. I have separated the pad from the bass frequencies entirely, so I'm not sure why it's still muddy, but EQ automation actually sounds like a great idea, I'll try it thanks. I think I'll try to cut back on the reverb a bit as well.
 
Well, I believe I've done some progress. It's not perfect, but atleast a bit better. I've looked at every single sound in the track and EQ-ed them as much as I could to separate them from each other, and I also reduced the reverbs by a lot. The pad and bass are now a whole 100hz apart from each other, yet they still seem to somehow clash a little bit. Not sure what else I can do. :/

Updated the link in the original post. Feedback please? :(
 
Maybe its not the pads and bass it can be things like say for instance the kick, say it hits at 100Hz usually if you take out a few dB just above it can take out some muddiness you should use a specstrum anaylser to see where the sounds are hitting and try that if that doesn't work I don't know what else to try also cut every freqeuncy that is not needed below maybe 50Hz except the sub
 
Yeah done all of that, but thanks. Dunno what else I can do, I guess I'll just leave it like it is.
More feedback is welcome though. 100+ views and only 1 person takes the time to comment? :(
 
Pads are generally rich on resonant harmonics on a wide freq range. That's why they always sounds so full and are used to cover stage on arrangements where other sounds aren't present (E.G. intro, breakdown and end).
If you want to use them during the esecution of your main line drops, IT IS IMPERATIVE an accurate clear up on freqs, at least during the part with bass, sub and drums.

Pick up a good eq with at least 6 or 8 bands, place it on the pad track.
Use high pass to cut below 100hz, low pass to cut above 18khz and with the others bands peak them up one by one to the maximum with a large bell.
Move the freq target of the filter eq up or down on the spectrum between 18khz and 100hz.
In this way you will easilly spot the frequencies that are annoying on the mix.
Once spotted the damn freq, put all the gain down of the freq band. Then try to listen if that cut on freqs gives you benefits on the overall mix.

Also, I've noticed that your pads are quite high in volume compared to the rest.

Don't forget that you need headroom for finalise the track, pads and other noisy sounds, are more easilly gained up from the compressors on the final stage. You can even put them subtle in the premix... At the mastering stage you r gonna have them back! ;)

I think you can lower the pad's volume by at least 3db
 
Last edited:
Thank you for the thorough reply! I will take a look and see what I can do. :) I have already reduced the volume of the pad, and it is filtered down during the parts where the bass and drums also play, not sure how much more I can reduce it. :p but guess I'll see. Also, I'm not much for mastering, as everything I try ends up distorting certain sounds. I do have a limiter on it with very slight input gain to make it a tad louder. Guess I should look into some mastering techniques again, I know I had some ways years back but I don't remember what I used haha.
 
Back
Top Bottom