[Dana Nielsen]

I used this on a mix just yesterday! Very cool, useful, and creative!

[Dana Nielsen]

AG FLUXXXXX Strikes Again! Super sick track and song and performance, man – great work and thanks for sharing your badassery with us all!

My main feelings were:

• I felt like there were two separate mixes going on: one for the mid and one for the sides. In other words, the elements in the wide left and right were loud, bright and present; the elements in the center/mid (lead vocals, kick, snare) were a bit quiet and lacked booty, punch and sizzle.
• That led me to wonder what it would sound like if the center/mid elements were hyped up and turned up, and the side elements were left as-is tonally, but turned down a bit so that the resulting mix would regain a bit more power in the center
• Then, the newly balanced mix could get a wallop of more muscular agro mastering

My curiosity led me to throwing your mix into pro tools to see if I could achieve what I had in mind. Here’s an excerpt of where I landed. Hope u don’t mind me messing with it! Lemme know what u think. 🤘

Rain-Dance-v5-DN-Mstr-excerpt.mp3 0 MP3 - Click to view

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[Dana Nielsen]

The mixer is the artist that should make the ART as best he or she can. If master bus compression, tonal shaping, or intentional distortion of the electrical signal is part of the artist’s intent, it should be implemented before the mastering process. – @-PT

Couldn’t have said it better myself, Paul! Love this quote and also love the ART/SCIENCE line! Amazing stuff, man!

[Dana Nielsen]

Jesse!

Great question, man.

• First off, don’t spend $1k on headphones. Put that money toward better speakers and/or room correction (panels and/or software).
• I currently use Audio Technica ATH-M50x headphones. Pretty standard studio fare. Nothing glamorous or extra special about them but they get the job done.
• I prefer closed-back headphones, even though that’s not a popular opinion in the “stereo hifi” world.
• My go-to recco for nicer “mixing headphones” (if there is such a thing …) has been discontinued, sadly. But here’s a link to some options available on Ebay. BLUE Mo-Fi Headphones. They’re huge but comfortable and sound excellent. They have a passive mode and also an active amplifier mode (battery powered, rechargeable via usb connection). If using the powered mode they can get RIDICULOUSLY loud and produce a monstrous sound. That said, I forget to charge them and for the past several years I use them in passive mode and they sound killer just like that. But also … I use my AT headphones 99% of the time cause they’re smaller and are fine, and they look better on camera 😂
• I use Sonarworks Sound ID Reference on my speakers as a plugin within my DAW. I have their measurement microphone as well. Awesome folks, awesome product. I would buy this before splurging on fancier headphones. I check every mix on headphones toward the end of the mixing process, but headphones are no substitute for mixing on speakers — even inexpensive, software corrected speakers.
• Sonarworks also have “virtual mixing environments” in the software to emulate various studios, home hi-fi, car audio, computer speakers, etc. Waves as well as Slate also have products that do this. That said tho: I HAVE NEVER EVER FOUND A USE FOR THESE VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENT THINGYS. Whenever I try that stuff it just sounds fake and creeps me out lol. But a lot of people swear by those virtual room tools. To each their own!
• There’s also this hardware option by IK Multimedia, which looks cool too, though I haven’t tried it.

Arright, I gotta run, but hope that helps! I’m gonna try to do a Sonarworks video at some point soon, especially since I need to run a new room measurement to utilize an exciting new feature they rolled out which integrates directly with my audio interface (Avid MTRX Studio).

💜

[Dana Nielsen]

WOAH! haha – this is the coolest “rap beef” I’ve heard of! Lighting crew vs. Audio crew, 😂 I love it. And, as always @-PT, so many super fun, quirky, unexpected sounds and sonic surprises! Here are a few very technical, very critical questions I have for you:

1. How was this “dis” track received by Lighting crew? Were they amazed?!
2. Did they retaliate?

[Dana Nielsen]

Thanks, Pete! That was such a fun interview/chat with Ari. Gonna post it here on Mix Protege soon, too!

[Dana Nielsen]

Wooo! Fantastic, homey! Happy headphone-ing! 🎧

[Dana Nielsen]

Hahaha – love the “Thinker” with laptop 💻😂. Yeah, in general that’s a producer and/or artist choice. Though in my experience it’s often a discussion that includes producer, mix engineer, artist, and artist management. If there’s budget to try out a few different mastering engineers on the same song, that’s always an eye opening (ear opening?) and fun experience. As a mixer, I’m often relied upon for mastering engineer suggestions since I’m usually the person interfacing the most with that person.

[Dana Nielsen]

Yo! Glad you found the @Dewey thread response!

To @-PT‘s point, I would leave everything “artistic” on the master fader, baked into the mix. When you send files to mastering, send two files:

1. Mix w/ all your master bus plugins INCLUDING your final peak limiter (pro-l2 or similar). Call it something obvious like “Song Title_mix number_FOR REFERENCE”, and tell the mastering engineer that this loud reference is what has been approved by the artist and what you’ve been living with.
2. Mix w/ all your master bus plugins EXCEPT FOR your final peak limiter. Call it “Song Title_mix number_ FOR MASTERING”, and tell the mastering engineer that this is the exact same mix but without your final limiter so there’s more headroom.

I always tell the mastering engineer to feel free to use either file for mastering (knowing that they’ll 95% of the time prefer to use the “for mastering” version).

Lastly, to answer your original question of whether the “pros” disable all their master buss plugins before sending their mix to mastering ….

[Dana Nielsen]

Ah, that makes more sense that a vintage EQ emulation isn’t completely eliminating frequencies below your Hi Pass frequency. Vintage EQ’s are full of mysterious idiosyncrasies – which is what makes them so fun! – and you often don’t know exactly what’s going on without looking at a spectrograph on the output.

I’m always looking at my VU meters and frequency spectrograph for useful information, much of which is easier to see than hear, such as a 23Hz rumble on a guitar amp that you can’t hear but is very much taking up valuable headroom in the mix … stuff like that.

These days there are GOBS of plug-in meters and spectrographs for your DAW master fader to keep an eye on things. For me though, rather than take up valuable screen real estate for a plugin, I use a wonderful hardware metering tool by TC Electronic called the Clarity M. It’s still a plugin you put on your master insert (making sure it’s the final insert in your chain*) but with dedicated hardware displaying a wealth of information at all times. I LOVE it and honestly I learn so much about my mixes and other people’s mixes I dig by constantly having that info available – spectrograph, LUFS, mono deviation, phase correlation, etc etc etc.

So … all that to say …. when I pop an EQ on any insert in my session (even a vintage emulation EQ with no spectrograph overlay) I can solo that track and look at my Clarity M and see exactly what’s going on under the hood, so to speak.

tcelectronic.com

TC Electronic | Product | CLARITY M

TC Electronic | Product | CLARITY M

[Dana Nielsen]

Deweeeeeey!!! Awe man, what a freakin TREAT seeing your name pop up here in Mix Protege! Love that you’re here man!

Pro-L2 is literally the only thing I have on my “loud ref” mix print track. In other words, when I send files to mastering I love being able to tell the engineer “here’s the loud mix the band has signed off on, and here’s the same mix with more headroom which you might prefer to work from. The only difference between the two options is a Pro-L2 limiter.” That way they’ll understand that there’s no “mystery sauce” difference between the two, and no need sending them down a rabbit hole trying to reproduce on their end.

That said, however, my “master fader” (which is in quotes cause it’s actually a stereo aux input which feeds into my 2 print tracks – see my Prep School course for a deep dive on that) sometimes has mystery sauce elements on it. Usually some harmonic saturation things like Waves NLS or Softube Console 1, maybe a touch of finishing EQ with Weiss MP, sometimes a little bx_masterdesk for to adjust stereo width and to mono-ize frequencies below 80Hz if needed … subtle stuff really. I prefer to get as rockin a mix as I can with absolutely NUTHIN’ on the master fader. Then I add a few favs mentioned above to see what helps and what doesn’t. And as I add master inserts (or any insert for that matter) I’m constantly adjusting the output settings to ensure I’m not adding loudness. That way, I can bypass anything in the insert chain and understand what it’s adding (or subtracting) without being fooled by loudness.

Ok, that was a bit of a ramble-y answer but hope it helped!

[Dana Nielsen]

Heck yeah homey – save them dolla-dolla billz! I’ll work on the Sonarworks vid soon as I can … 🤘

Also, I think they offer a free trial on their website if u wanna check it out. Tho you’d need a measurement microphone to get started. I ultimately bought their mic which pairs with the software via serial number, based on that exact particular individual microphone’s response graph. Nifty! But before I bought the Sonarworks measurement mic I did several successful room measurements using an inexpensive Behringer measurement mic I already owned. So for $35 and a free software trial you could be off to the races by Friday! 💥

a.co

Amazon.com: Behringer ECM8000 Ultra-Linear Omni-Directional Measurement Condenser Microphone, 20-20000Hz Frequency Response, 200 Ohms Impedance : Musical Instruments

Buy Behringer ECM8000 Ultra-Linear Omni-Directional Measurement Condenser Microphone, 20-20000Hz Frequency Response, 200 Ohms Impedance: Multipurpose - Amazon.com ✓ FREE DELIVERY possible on eligible purchases

[Dana Nielsen]

Thanks for the reminder about this, @JLEW! I just updated all my Plugin Alliance plugins so I could get access to this bad boy!

[Dana Nielsen]

Hey Pete! Interesting. While I’m not familiar with the Logic nor Slate EQs you mentioned, I can say that a HiPass filter better not let any frequencies below the cutoff through! Haha. Unless, of course, the slope is gradual. I’m wondering if it’s your EQ’s slope that could be the culprit (measured in decibels per octave). I made a quick demonstration image, attached. Feel free to download the image for a closer look (click on the image and then the “download” button should appear below the image description)

Note: Not all EQs can create such steep slopes as the FabFilter, or the Weiss MP (which is another fav swiss-army surgical EQ I use a lot … and is on sale right now for $69 🤯).

Let us know if this sheds any light on your EQ situation!

[Dana Nielsen]

Thanks, Pete!