Video

This works great when you've developed your gut and ears. Not everybody has.

Thanks! Glad it's helpful.

Thanks for the comment and so glad these are helpful for you!

Thanks for the kind comment! Glad these are valuable for you. That is my goal. 👍

Great question. There are a few answers that add up: Most of my credits are mastering - and mastering credits are the last to go on the record, and the first to be forgotten. Also, I have done the bulk of my work (99%+) for independent artists that aren't well-known. Most of the "credit" for my work is under the company names that I've worked for: Dinosaur Dog Mastering and Nightowl Music Group (and Nightowl Studios). I have never truly taken the time to ensure that my credits are uploaded anywhere. Usually engineers take the time to upload their own credits to AllCredits and other similar sites... I'm happy to send a few references your way if you're curious to hear some of my work.

I always use a separate mix bus for the mix. I don't use the stereo out as the mix bus. So the references are in the DAW, but only go to the stereo out, NOT my mix bus.

@@dinosaurdogstudio ahh, ok. Cheers.

Yeah, you're right.

It's a great song, doesn't mean the mix is good.

@@dinosaurdogstudio well then, that would suggest that a good mix doesn’t even matter 🤷🏻‍♂️

@@officialWWM You can't argue with results, and it doesn't to a certain extent. However, I would argue that you DO need to reach a certain level of "quality". That doesn't mean it needs to be a perfect mix, but it needs to be good enough to not get in the way of the song. There are too many examples of bad mixes that were done on good songs to argue this fact to vehemently. However, if your mix is just bad... it won't be given the chance to become a hit. The goal is to get to that baseline of "quality" and then it doesn't make as big of an impact after that. It's just getting out of the way enough to allow the song to be judged for the SONG - not the mix. Very few people (other than us mixing nerds) are listening to the MIX, they are trying to listen to the SONG. The mix just gets in the way sometimes.

The second stage of the reverb plugin is an EQ, which I do use pretty heavily. I generally don't use compression, as it can be dangerous at times in this application, but go for it if you want to experiment!

@@dinosaurdogstudio thanks for the reply. Appreciate it 😊

Thanks for watching! Glad you found it helpful.

Personally speaking - all the time. I never use Side-Chain except for stylistic reasons. And you can use dynamic EQs if you want, I never do.

@@dinosaurdogstudio Thank you for the straight forward answer! I may be making more work for myself than I need to.

Thanks for watching and commenting, glad you found it thought-provoking! 🤘

Whatever floats your boat! (Or canoe... If you get my drift. 🛶)

Thanks! Although I'm not a Yankee... But your point is still valid. 😉

Thank you! I appreciate the comment and so glad that this was helpful for you.

Glad to save you the trouble! Cheers. 🍻🤘

🤘

Thanks for the comment, glad you found it helpful!

Between 40hz and 5khz, your mix should roughly match pink noise. This keeps your mix from having any holes in the midrange. There's a section on it before I dive into the mix too.

​@@dinosaurdogstudio So the pink noise window isn't really necessary, right? You just want a basically flat graph between those freqs in the mix analysis?

@@ontheruntonowhere Yes, I just pulled it up for reference for those that wanted to see the actual pink noise signal in real-time.

@@dinosaurdogstudio Ahh. I got it. Sorry, I'm dense! :)

Thanks for the comment! Glad you found it valuable. 👍

Haha, thanks for sharing. You may have just ruined this song for me. 😅

Yes, this is not a mixed song, so of course you're right...

He needed to boost with a wide q at 3k not dip

@@Durkhead I like to let my guitars live in this area, and in order to avoid masking I tend to give the vocals some more room here. You do what works for you, I'm just sharing what has worked for me.

@@dinosaurdogstudio guitars and vocals compete for the same space but vocals are the most important aspect, but also guitars should be panned to the side so you dont have to worry about them "masking" anything, and all the tracks your referencing the vocals were all at 3k its the freq that almost everyones voice is so if you eq them any other way its gona sound weird thats why your vocals were sounding tunnely or hollow

Thanks for the feedback. I agree that "pro" and "professional" should relate to a venture where people are making money - not the quality of a song. But this is something that people tend to resonate with as far as what they want their mixes to sound like. It's short-hand for "it sounds like a professional mixing engineer mixed this song." But that's too long for normal language. If that is a deal-breaker for you, then I'm sorry.

Thanks for commenting!

I generally don't bounce anything in place during the mix. Any pre-mix processing though (during recording, editing), I will always bake into the tracks though.

Thanks for getting the book! Be sure to read it, as I've had fantastic feedback on how much it's helped people. BUT, more on your actual question... Yeah - that is a common objection to using references as "they are already mastered!" and while this will obviously have impacts on aspects of the mix, it will not matter as you use it to guide you in your own mixing process. The reference isn't there for you to copy 100%. It's there so you can take inspiration from it, and avoid making blatant mistakes. I have very specific things that I listen for in my reference songs - so it's not just a blanket "this is what I'm doing", but rather "I'm listening for this specifically to see if I did something wrong!" In an example: I don't just listen to the whole reference and think "what can I do to make my mix sound more like this...?" INSTEAD I ask: "Is the relative volume between their kick and bass similar to mine in my mix?" Hopefully this makes sense. Use references - they will 100% help you get a more pro mix. Doesn't matter if they are mastered and yes - please do adjust the volume so it's relatively the same between your mix and the mastered reference. :)

It all depends on your goal of compression. Check out this vid: czcams.com/video/Mn2Xf6JrYhk/video.htmlsi=mElAT323Rrm3xpEN

​@@dinosaurdogstudiothe "slowest" attack of an 1176 is under 1 millisec

@@EdwinDekker71 Yep, that's why the digital gear is so nice. We can break the rules of the OG gear and use it to our advantage.

Low ratio will give you a more natural sounding compression, given that it will more evenly compress everything in the audio source. High ratio will simply be far more aggressive in whatever style of compression you're trying to setup. The low threshold, high ratio will NOT only catch the peaks if you're using groovy or punchy type compression. They will be TRIGGERED off the peaks, but actually dig into the valleys - if you follow. :) This can be a complex topic, so thanks for throwing this out there. Happy to make more videos to explore this topic more if you'd find that helpful.

The hotkey to open the mixing panel is "X"

They are great! Thanks for commenting.

This is somewhat covered by gain-staging, which is another video coming up soon. Set your snare's gain (when fader is at 0), to around -12 to -10db peak. Then, when volume balancing, bring it up to unity (0db) on the fader. This assumes that your snare is the main element however, which isnt always the case. Hopefully this helps!

Thanks! Appreciate that.

That's why it's intuitive. 🤷🏻‍♂️

Glad you found this helpful! Thanks for commenting. 🤘

Thanks for watching and commenting!

Thanks for watching and commenting! Glad you found it helpful. 🤘

Thanks for watching! Appreciate the comment and compliment. :)

Thanks for watching and commenting! Appreciate the compliment.

Hey, I appreciate the comment and suggestions. I'll let you know why I didn't include this additional information, as it is naturally correct. If I told a beginner all of this info all at once, they would walk away from the video with an even less clear understanding of compression than when they started. I've taught over 500 producers mixing, and the #1 thing I do to ensure they are successful is simplify everything to its core components. Here, the first layer to understanding compression is attack and release. That's all that this video was meant to cover. I didn't really try to make comments on makeup gain because of this fact. I have another video on gain coming up that will help with this as well.

TLDR: most people have an extremely hard time with nuance and wouldn't understand it in this context.

Awesome, glad this was helpful! I would also add gain-staging BEFORE this compression as well if you have tracks that are extra-dynamic that you're needing to control. I have a video coming out on this particular piece of the puzzle in a few weeks. Keep your eye out if you're not clear on how to do this.