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Looking for another set of ears, what do u hear – Hip Hop Mix & Master by Me! =)
Hello All,
I’m new here & looking to improve my tracking, mixing & master skills. I’ve been learning & engineering for about 5 years now & have hit that wall where it seems I’m missing that extra 5-15% improvement to my mixes/masters.
<font face=”inherit”>I do tracking, mixing & master engineering for my brother, a Hip Hop Producer/Artist who goes by GoodxJ. We are located in Twin Cities, MN.</font>
I’m in a treated GIK Acoustics bedroom (12x12x8), Using Pro Tools, Apollo Twin X/Satellite, Adam T7V’s & Neumann TLM 103 Microphone. (Recently purchased Dana approved Realistic Bookshelf speakers to be added to the mix…)
GoodxJ – God’s Green Earth is track 1 from his 16 track album called ‘Freedom Lake’ that I’m working on putting the final mixing/master touches on.
We’re going for that loud yet energetic Mac Miller/J. Cole sound & I’m getting lost in the weeds when switching to other playback devices & volumes. It appears we lose some energy/punch (volume wise it sounds 1-2db quieter at the same monitor level, than most industry songs) I would love to get some extra sets of ears on this before it’s released out into the world.
Any and all opinions, guidance & help to take my engineering skills to the next level would be greatly appreciated. l also would love to hear what ya’ll have going on as it’s so fascinating to hear the kind of musical creations everyone is working on.
It’s great to be here. I want to say thank you to Dana Nielsen for being so kind to invite me to join this community of like minded hUmans & I look forward to engaging, growing & making friends with you all!
Peace, Love + Positive Vibes…MIX ON!
Mike Heebz =)
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12 Replies
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Hey Mike!
Welcome to MP! I think the track sounds really great! Balanced and clear, crisp high end and nice warm bass tones too. I could hear the vocal perfectly. I don’t specialize in this style of music so I’ll defer to the experts about loudness, etc. I was monitoring on my TC Clarity M and the track seemed loud enough to me? -8.9 LUFS.
The only other thing I noticed was that the phase correlation dipped into the negative a few times. I don’t know if that’s a big deal, but when I listened to the track in mono it definitely lost some elements. Then again — the kick, snare, and vocal were still very present so it’s probably not an issue, but just wanted to mention it…
Congrats on this music man! It sounds amazing!
Best,
Jesse
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Hello & Thank you Jesse.
It’s great to be a part of this community!!!
I appreciate you taking the time to listen & give your honest opinion. It’s great to have you & others who don’t normally work with or listen to a given genre give a totally fresh & new perspective of what you’re hearing.
I’ll definitely look again at my correlation meter to see what you may be noticing on the stereo/mono side of things. On the mix bus I usually use the brainworkz bx digital v3 with a stereo spread anywhere between 112-120% so it shouldn’t be doing anything too crazy. I get what you’re saying when listening in mono, you always seem to definitely lose some stereo image but like you stated the Vocals, Kick & Snare are all still there and present.
Most of my hip hop tracks go anywhere between 7.5-9 LUFS depending on the song, style & production & this has been my biggest battle since I started to engineer. I’m looking to match the industry loudness yet keep it punchy, transient & have energy. I feel like there is something more I could do but, I’m kind of lost trying different things out to get me to that professional sounding final master when played next to similar songs on the streaming platforms. (Also I’m comparing my mixes/masters up against the likes of Major Label Releases by Manny, Serban, Jaycen, MixedByAli, Leslie, Mike Bozzi, Joe Laporta, Chris Gehringer, Dana, Tony…& all their 20+ years of experience.)
Again thanks for your input & taking the time to listen to the track, it is greatly appreciated.
I trust you’re having a fantastic day.
Mike Heebz =)
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Hey Michael! Huge welcome, man! 🎉. Stoked you’re here.
And great work on this mix – thanks for sharing with us!
I think you’re totally on the right track and things are sounding really good already 🤘
My initial thoughts are:
- The snare and perc elements feel loud, bright, and super-stereo-wide. They sound awesome like that(!), but I have a hunch they’re the culprit. Like … I want the vocal to occupy that loud/bright/wide space, which the snare and perc are currently dominating.
- With that in mind, try darkening or turning down the perc elements, experimenting with a less-super-stereoized snare for better mono translation.
- Then try turning up the vocal so that it’s as loud as – or a touch louder than – the kick and snare.
If your Realistics have arrived from Ebay (🥳) you might notice that vocals and snare are sometimes represented a bit louder on those speakers due to their limited bandwidth. That’s normal – just something to keep in mind and learn to roll with.
As for loudness, you’re lookin pretty good already! That said if you really want it louder I’m sure that’s possible with a bit more limiting or clipping. You could try adding a console emulation (driven aggressively) before your limiter to reign-in or shave-off some of the transient peaks, which will allow you to drive your brick-wall mastering limiter even harder with less artifacts, since it won’t have to work as hard now that some of the most egregious transients have been tamed.
Pasting a few links below that I found within the Mix Protégé search bar (top) and AI tool (bottom-right of page), which might offer additional help and context related to loudness, lufs, etc.
Great work, Michael, and glad to have ya in the MP fam!
Best,
Dana
https://mixprotege.com/forums/discussion/zoom-replay-member-meetup-and-qa-dec-13-2024/
https://mixprotege.com/forums/discussion/silent-killer-low-end-mix-help/
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Thanks for the warm welcome everyone, happy to be here!
Dana,
I made some adjustments to tame the percussion & used the Ozone Imager 2 to bring the second snare 35% mono. Now I hear more of that space it was originally taking away from the vocal.
The vocals I’ve turned up by about a db & it seems to have brought more excitement & energy to the track while having more room to occupy the space. Please Let me know if I’m in the ballpark with your suggestions in helping to improve the track.
The Realistics have arrived! I have to get a 1/4 L/R to Female 3.5mm headphone jack cord to plug them into my Apollo Twin X, so I can switch between them & my Adam Monitors! I’m interested & trusting that they have a decent sound yet, as they’re vintage. I’ll keep in mind that those speakers will give the vocal/snare sound priority so I shouldn’t be alarmed if they poke out more than on the Main Monitors.
The loudness part has been a big one for me over the last couple of years. I can get the LUFS levels in the ballpark of most released Hip Hop songs, but on Streaming, the volume of my songs has to be turned up 1-2 clicks to match a commercially released song. As for the Console emulation I tend to use Avid HEAT (PRE) on everything but Vocals with the Drive two clicks to the left & the Tone two clicks to the right (Learned that setting from a Jaycen Joshua MWTM Video).
On my Mix Bus I tend to go with the UAD ATR-102 for a console emulation to start off the chain along with Gold Clip/God Particle.
I’m curious if both HEAT & the ATR could be shaving off too many transients killing some of the punch/energy? Does anyone like & utilize HEAT, or have a preferred setting?
I checked out the Links as well, thanks for pointing me in the right direction. As you already know when mixing I can get lost looking at the trees without seeing the whole forest. It’s great to get someone’s first impression/initial thoughts on something I’ve probably worked too long on & lost the overall picture of.
You are greatly appreciated.
Sincerely,
Mike Heebz =)
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Awesome, Mike! Once you get your adapter cables for the speakers I like to push them together so they sound like one “mono” speaker, and then situate them on the other side of the room or off to the side, way out of the sweet spot, to give the impression of listening from afar. Kinda like when I’m listening to my Sonos Move speaker in the kitchen while cooking.
I’ve never seen that MWTM Jaycen video, nor did I know he’s a HEAT fan, but we’re on the same page, tonally, with that setting, haha. I play around with the setting on every session to see what I like. But yeah, 9 times out of 10 I end up with the main knob around 9:00 and the tone knob around 3:00, give or take. Also interesting re vocal setting — 9 out of 10 times, similarly, I don’t end up using HEAT on the vocals. I will say, however, I’m almost never setting my HEAT-enabled channels to “Pre”. Once in a while I will if I feel like Post is too crunchy, but that’s pretty rare. I’m a big HEAT fan tho, for decades, on almost every mix.
Loudness and normalization and mastering and all that is a tricky nut to crack. If you make your master loud AF for non-normalized listeners (or CD, Bandcamp, etc.), will it be penalized and quieter when normalized on DSPs? And if you’re mastering for normalized playback, will you sound quiet against other tracks for folks (like me) who listen with normalization turned off?
There are no simple answers yet there are dozens of compromises – each compromise feeling like a loss. Amiright?
Here are a collection of things I know and have observed:
- No one masters to normalization spec (-14 LUFS etc.). Not that I can tell. I listen to everything with normalization off, and am always watching my TC Electronic Clarity M meter (optical in), and everyone’s masters are loud AF. The loudness war rages on. At least in stereo mixing for albums. (not so for film, TV, immersive, ATMOS, etc. .. those industries and specs will reject files that don’t follow the RULES haha)
- ADPTR Streamliner is a wonderful, powerful, feature-packed tool you can use while mixing or mastering – in realtime – to audition your loud masters “through” various codecs and normalization specs. Highly recommended if you’re committed to (obsessed with? 😵💫) cracking the loudness vs. normalization cheat code.
- Izotope RX also has some incredible analysis tools that can help identify areas where your audio file might be penalized and/or areas where you could make some gains. Unlike Streamliner, RX’s loudness tools are more “rendered analysis” rather than real-time. My friend Dale Becker has a very informative walkthrough of some of these features here. This is a fantastic video for anyone interested in learning more about loudness and DSP normalization!
- Everyone struggles with this conundrum. Even the pro-est mixers and fanciest mastering engineers. So just try to enjoy the obsessed, passionate, quest for knowledge on the subject. Become continually more aware of how normalization might affect the perceived loudness of your mixes and masters. Keep that growing treasure-trove of normalization-information handy in the back of your mind as just ONE of the million things to consider when deciding that you are FINISHED with your mix or master. But… all that to say …and I mean it…
- DON’T LET LUFS RUIN YOUR LIFE! F#$k ’em. Kick those LUFS to the curb! Normalize THIS: 🖕😂.
Seriously, just do what’s best for the music; make it as loud as feels right to you for the given genre, checking it against non-normalized reference mixes done by our heroes; and then call it a job well done. I’d take “the best” mix over “the loudest” mix every day of the week. And I think most listeners will too. 😊
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LOVE THIS!!!
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Man, I Didn’t find the right cord for the Realistics at Guitar Center tonight. Not sure they even make 1/4 L/R balanced to 3.5mm. How do you have yours connected? Would it work going directly from the Apollo Headphone jack? I’ve got them positioned together off to my left, but also realized that no DC 12v Adapter comes with them so I need to Amazon one. Using 8 C batteries probably isn’t the best way to go long term.
Regarding HEAT, that’s wild, so…you JEDI Mix Masters are using similar settings, coincidence I think Not! I think the Jaycen route in PRE is acting like an initial tape before any processing, but he also turns up all audio at the clip gain, so it’s basically hitting the limiter from the start of the mix to get his levels into Orion/God Particle. It seems like the Dave Hill special ‘PHOENIX’ was on all your early mixes then. I’ll have to mess around more with that, thanks for sharing your process with it!
Yes the Loudness one is definitely a head scratcher at times, especially when comparing tracks on the DSP’s! That’s where watching Jaycen getting his levels in the 7.5 LUFS range with it still sounding transient heavy & somehow keeping that perceived loudness is what I’ve been trying to emulate in my tracks…bangs head on desk, gonna get me a Nutcracker soon!
Correct, either way you look at it somewhere someone is listening on a different system, DSP, Normalized/Not normalized so it will be penalized at some stage of the process. I listen to Normalize off so I can hear the level at which they intended the songs to be played at like you.
I think more so then trying to get to a certain LUFS, I’m finding the battle of getting a better perceived loudness, so it doesn’t sound like it loses energy/vibe when played against other tracks on the streaming services. This left brain thinking has got to cool off & go on a vacation for a bit, really diving into this stuff instead of just creating the music! =)
So really to give and take…to find that balancing act, yessir!
The Loudness wars are for sure still in effect as you stated, at least for the Hip Hop/Pop/EDM side of things & may be “forever. Forever, forever ever? Forever ever? Forever never seems that long until you’re grown”…
I’ll look into ADPTR Streamliner, haven’t heard of it. I own Izotope RX but haven’t really utilized it besides for the clean up side of things, thanks for the suggestions & the video link!
I really appreciate you putting this all into perspective. I’m sure as I improve my mix skills & continue to learn each and every day that it will all come together. F’ them LUFS man, love it!!!
I’d listen to the BESTest mix any day too…
Take Care, MIX ON! =)
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Hey Mike!
This new mix sounds great on my laptop w/ headphones (I’m traveling at the moment) – nice work!
I spent a bit of time comparing it to other top 40, hip hop and r&b tracks, and it feels pretty loud, bumpin and competitive! 🙌🤓🤘
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Hello Dana,
I really appreciate you taking time on your travels & busy schedule to check out the updated track, good to hear it checks out against all the heavy hitters!
I just added the Dale Becker RX Special to the Master (Loudness Optimized in full effect) Release day is set! =)
Safe Travels.
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Mike! Hit us with a link to your release when it’s out! 🤘💜. Congrats!! And glad that Dale vid was helpful. He rules!
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Hello Dana & All,
The track ‘God’s Green Earth’ by GoodxJ (Tracked, Mixed & Mastered by Me) is now out on all streaming platforms. Spotify link > https://open.spotify.com/album/2FIMwEcL85krmaAMvEevAa?si=2UUAq68jRTilMnZVkBPT7Q
We are heading in the right direction. The raw WAV File definitely sounds great, but it’s still a battle to get it to compete with others in this Genre when the songs are uploaded & normalized/turned down to the streaming platform target LUFS. We seem to lose -2/3 db of perceived loudness when playing it next to a Mac Miller ‘Rush Hour’ etc. It’s most notable on laptop, earbuds & phone speakers… Doing the Dale Becker RX Loudness Optimization seems to have helped a few of the tracks on the album that had long intros/outros/breakdowns & solo’s, as it brought the loudness of the softer parts up so they don’t sound lower/weaker when coming in after a previous song.
I filmed & edited the music video as well, it was just released on Youtube!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=waYNm-PApEM
I would love & welcome any suggestions, comments, opinions on what you are hearing/seeing as all input is greatly appreciated along my engineering journey. Please share this with those who may enJOY the art.
God Bless. Keep Creating. Mix ON! =)
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PS – I’ll have a listen to your new mix tomorrow when back in the studio
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