Pre Mastering/levels on final mix

I am fairly new to LogicPro. My levels in PT were pretty good on final mixes..I have been messin' around for several weeks with Logics master plugs(adaptive limiter/compressors) on 1-2 but levels seem still pretty low. Any suggestions to boost it up without destroying the mix? also would i put a limiter before or after a compressor on 1-2 ?Thank you

How are your individual tracks? Is the mix level itself (not the mastering level) satisfactory?
All depending on the song, I usually use the Multipressor/EQ/Adaptive Limiter (usually in this order, but not always at the same time). Sometimes if it fitting, I will stick in the Stereo Spreader in the chain. Mind you, I will often A/B the results to see if the plug-ins made it sound better or just louder (if it's just louder, I'll take it out).
Check your settings on the Adaptive Limiter. You may be able to squeeze a bit more gain out of your final result without making a sonically mushy brick. Like I stated earlier, I also add in the Multipressor at times as it can bring out a little sparkle (or oomph, depending on the sound) in the mix when used judiciously. Mind you, if you use it, pay attention to the bands you are working on. Otherwise, you will wind up destroying the mix.
jord

Similar Messages

Final mix levels

Just been browsing through previous threads about final output mixes and just want to explain what I am doing and what would be the best way to get the final mix done.
Have 7 tracks that have been written for a half hour film , the music is mostly acoustic guitar with synth and the odd cello , oboe and harp( all garritan). I have them finished and have incorporated sound files of sea and bird cries etc but want to bounce them for final output at a realistic level, balancing them all up to a similar level at the same time. Would logic compression be the way to go? I have compared my unfinished music levels with professional cd's and my outputs seem way too low . The pro cd recordings seems to bring their peaks to just under clipping. is that the way to go? using such things as limiters and the like I have no experience so would appreciate any info on their uses?
Marto

Did you see this?
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=388347&tstart=15
Also, within this thread there are links to some helpful articles on the tc site.
This might help too:
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/aug04/articles/computermastering.htm

I'd like to do new final mixes using an external mixer with fx.

Hello,
I would like to do new final mixes on my tunes from GB. I can't seem to achieve the clarity and equalization in my final mixes like that of a song on the radio. I've been told that my music sounds like it was recorded on my hard drive, which I totally don't understand.
I've been using GB for more than 3 years and I'm learning my way around LE8. I don't understand much at all about bus paths and sends.
Is there an external mixer that doesn't cost thousands that I could get to re-do my final mixes and achieve that radio sound quality?
I use only midi/software instruments aside from voice. Mic-pre-amps, phantom power for my condenser mics and possibly midi i/o would be great features to include in this mixer I so longingly seek.
I hope all of this makes sense. Any advice is greatly appreciated.
Thanks guys!

I didn't know that GB had mastering capabilities. When I got the comment that my music sounds like it was "recorded on my hard drive" I thought that was the reason my final mixes have that "cloudy" sound.
Any tips on mastering using GB and LE8?
It's good to know that I don't need to purchase any additional hardware in order to get radio quality sound in my final mixes. I am more than eager to learn how to get a professional finished product.
much appreciated.

Final Mix Volume

Does anyone know how to crank the volume on the final mix down of your Garage Band songs? Obivously, there's volume controls for individual instruments, recording levels, and the main volume control. All of those when turned to far up, cause the levels to "go into the red." The final mix volume is at a respectable level, until you compare it to other songs in your I-Tunes library (professional songs). Then the volume (even with the volume boost option in I-Tunes) is still much lower than store-bought CD's or downloads from I-tunes. When I burn my Garage Band songs onto my I-Pod and play them in my car, I have to max the volume on the car stereo to get a "decent" but not "ideal" volume. Help!!!!!!!

Bushleague777 wrote:
compare it to other songs in your I-Tunes library (professional songs). Then the volume {...} is still much lower than store-bought CD's
http://www.bulletsandbones.com/GB/GBFAQ.html#commercialcdvolume
(Let the page FULLY load. The link to your answer is at the top of your screen)

(Speaking of) Waves audio production plug-ins; Getting a punchier final mix

I was looking to get a punchier sound from my final mixes and I was referred to Waves by both the Sam Ash Guy and the Guitar Center Guy for my making-it-sound-punchier needs. Does anyone have any experience with some other (3rd-party) sonic maximizers or compression plug-ins?
The reason why I bring this up is because I was casually listening to my iTunes collection and whenever one of my own tracks played via the shuffle mode, the sound was less punchier, had less presence than even simple acoustic-guitar music! I believe I'm doing a decent mixing job and manage to get my peak levels pretty high with some tasteful limiting, but, man, my tracks don't quite have that punch. What gives?

Not exactly sure what you mean by punchier, but here's a great way to get "punchier" drums in GB....and you don't have to spend any more money then you already have.
First, you'll need a few of things, all FREE!!:
Download the W1 Limiter. It's based on the Waves ultra-something-or-other-limiter. It's fantastic.
http://yohng.com/w1limit.html
Download CamelCrusher. It's a nice distortion/compression plug in that gives it a nice analog "warmth" when used correctly.
http://www.camelaudio.com/camelcrusher.php
And finally, download Channel. It acts as an analog channel strip would, introducing just a tiny hint of analog style distortion. May sound like a bad thing, but give it a try, it can work wonders!
http://www.airwindows.com/f/Channel.dmg
Now that you have those 3 plugs, here's what I suggest:
First, get the drum track the way you want it to be rhythmically.
Then solo that track and put the CamelCrusher in one plug in slot and select either one of these presets, Tube Warmth, or Subtle Master. Of course feel free to tweak to taste and experiment with other presets.
Then I'd put on the Channel plug in and set the slider to taste.
Then on the Master track, I'd put the W1 Limiter and crush the drums a shade.
Then share your "drums only song" with iTunes and drag it back into GB. This will give you a huge sounding "squashed" drum kit sound.
Now that you imported the audio file of the "squashed drums", you can remove all the plug ins from the drum channel and the master channel. What you'll want to do at this point is blend the normal drums with the "squashed drums" until it sounds huge. This is called the New York Compression trick.
The nice thing about this trick is that you don't have to use these plug ins I pointed you to. You can use the Apple AU plug ins, you can go buy other 3rd party plug ins, or you can go hunt for me free plug ins. Each one will have a different and unique sound. So you'll definitely want to experiment with those as well. I even like to put two compressors on the track and one compressor on the master sometimes. Really kills the dynamics, but when blended with the unaffected drums, it makes it VERY punchy.
Hope that helps.
X

How do I turn off the metronome in my final mix?

I used Garage Band to record a live interview that I want to broadcast on my radio show. Unbeknowst to me, a click track was running during the recording. Now the track has an obnoxious click track running behind the vocal. I have turned off the metronome but it still keeps ticking away. Obviously I do not want this click track running behind the interview on the radio. How do I get the metronome to turn off in my final mix?

If the metronome got recorded on your track from a mic with it coming out of your speakers (the only way it could have been recorded) there's no way to take it out. When you say you turned it off, did you just uncheck it in the control menu? Or did you go to the preferences and change its behavior there? I have mine set for recording only, not on playback. But if you turned it off in the control menu, then it should not be present, unless you inadvertently recorded it from your speakers as I described, and it is not going anywhere. This is one reason it is best to monitor your recording with headphones and not speakers, since anything that comes out of them will be recorded with a live mic close by.

Final mix again

Hallo out there,
Well , I posted a thread a couple of weeks ago picking brains about final mixes and had a lot of helpful suggestions . Now I have another! I have seven songs with background sea and bird sounds which I bounced down and burnt to disc.
Played it on a couple of stereos and it sounds ok but when I played it through the TV it sounds ruddy awful. All the trebles are up and the bass is boomy and ..well the whole mix sounds crap! I havent used any limiters or compressors on the final output yet so could this be the way to solve this or am I having to go back to a full re mix? In which case how does one get a good example playing it through me mac that will give me a good representation of the TV? Or is it just a question of trying dif bounces with compressor and limiter and the like?
Help!
Marto

Hi there Justin,
Thanks for reply. Yes, I am slowly getting to know the little dears but the prob I've got is the music sounds as I want it through my tannoy monitors and through the stereo speakers but the TV is so radically diferent I really don't know where to start. On the mix played through the mac and a stereo the music has a warm feel to it which disapears when heard through the tv. Sounds like I've recorded the guitar and tympany in a biscuit tin! Seems to be loosing depth on mid range ! Have tried a new mix with adjustments on the graphic equaliser but it seems a bit hit and miss! ...I know ... hit it with big heavy object and revert to pub! Back to the tweaking.
Marto

Final Mix

When making a final mix ("Share to disc") I have a condition where the first 30 seconds of the song is edited out...I don't want that part in my final mix. However, what it does is create dead air time until the undeleted music comes in. I can't shift my regions because the volume edits won't shift. How do I delete that upfront dead air time?

Did you see this?
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=388347&tstart=15
Also, within this thread there are links to some helpful articles on the tc site.
This might help too:
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/aug04/articles/computermastering.htm

Final mix: pitch was lowered (!?)

Okay here's the details. Any help is appreciated:
I took SD2 files from a 8 track pro tools recording session. 24bit/48kHz.
I opened them in logic pro 7.2, did the mix, exporting the mix as stereo 24bit/48khz SD2 file. I then opened the mix file in SparkME, cut it to tracks, and exported the tracks as 16bit/48kHz aif files.
Listening to my final mixed tracks, they are down in pitch, perhaps a semi-tone, or 1.5 semitones from the original SD2 files. I'm using Quicktime 7 to listen to the tracks playback. I'm not sure why this happened.
Thanks for your help!
PS: I can confirm playing back in Logic the pitch is down, so it was down before I bounced. Is there a problem importing SD2 files from pro tools or other apps? Or a setting I may have wrong in Logic? Thanks.
Dual 2Ghz Powermac G5 Mac OS X (10.4.6) Logic 7.2 Gentoo PPC

Sounds like a sample rate conversion happened somewhere... Seems to me that your system (QT, and perhaps SparkME, which I'm not familiar with) is clocking at 44.1K and trying to play back a 48K file (which would result in the pitch sounding lower).
I've never run into a situation with Logic where the sample rate of files changes unless I've deliberately dome a sample rate conversion, or, exported files at a deliberately different sample rate.
Don't play back your processed/mixed files in QT or anything else. Start from square 1 --- open the original Logic session and listen to your before-you-mixed-the-track files. See if the pitch is correct. Then follow the chain of events until you find the place where the sample rate conversion took place.
OR...
Change the sample rate of your system to 48 and then playback your mix file in QT.
One way or the other you should be able to find the culprit, but again, unless you deliberately (or accidentally) changed the sample rate of your exported mix, Logic won't change it for you.
HTH.

My Final Mix & Volume Levels

Hi all, this one has been bugging me for a while now
Whenever I finish a song and spend a good while getting the mix right. I bounce it out and take a listen, however compared to professionally produced songs - the volume level is always a lot lower when I compare my songs to others.
Am I missing something to really get the most out of the volume of my songs?

If you want it louder - turn the volume up or read some books about Mastering (Bob Katz) and get the right gear for it or hire a professional Mastering house to do the job.

Pre-Mastering Settings

Hello Forum: I have just completed recording and mixing the ten songs for my debut album. I've worked with far more complex software (Digital Performer) for years, but I took on this project as an experiment to see how far I could take Garage Band. I now want to send the lot out to a professional mastering house. I know I could do this myself, but I'd rather have someone do it who specializes in this critical part of the release process.
My question is, in GB3.0.2, which "Mastering" settings will color the sound the LEAST -- i.e., no master-level EQ, compression, reverb, etc. The mastering houses all want to do this stuff themselves (and rightfully so.)
On the surface, it seems obvious: Just defeat all the EQ, compression and reverb in the "Basic" setting. Just thought I'd check, however, before sending my newborn out of the house...
Thanks in advance for responding to this thread - Roberto Mighty
iMac Mac OS X (10.3.9) Garage Band 3.0.2

Just defeat all the EQ, compression and reverb in
the "Basic" setting.
If someone else is Mastering it, yes, you don't want
to add any effects (especially compression, ugh) to
the Master track.
Thank you for your reply. I'm all set. - Roberto

Pre-mastering advice needed

Thanks. I typically bounce to 24 bit WAV and ship files to an engineer for mastering. Admittely, I'm not a mixing (or mastering obvioulsy) guru. I add EQ here or there - compression on various instrument tracks - maybe some other effects - reverb, panning, volume etc.. I do "OK"...
Problem is my work at that point, when played on a car stereo or home system, seems to always come out either muffled or too heavy on the low end (or both so when the engineers get hold of it, I'm not sure if they're getting the best output I can give them off the start line.
What "pre-conditioning" can I do in my mixes, if anything, to better prepare my tracks for off loading to a sound engineer? Normalization? Bounce individual tracks to audio files (rather than a single file)? Adjust EQ's within individual instrument tracks? ?
Thanks again...

Hi mmurray,
No, I'm not saying that the bell curve should peak at around 250. My 250hz analogy was an example of a tricky range that could cause the muddiness you describe. A bass, by its very nature, is bassy, right? But it is not alone in this song, there are lots of other tracks too. Careful management of this lower mid range (anywhere from 150 - 350ish) can cause you problems.
Your job, as a mixer, is to decide what lives and what dies down there to give your mix enough weight but no muddiness. Take a bell curve on your EQ, not too narrow but not uber wide, turn off the analyser, solo the bass track. Maximum cut, db wise and put it right up to 20k (yes 20k). Now close your eyes and sweep slowly down through the frequency range and listen at what is being pulled out. Now, it may be that there is nothing on this bass track you want pulled out. Similarly, boost the same band by a lot (but mind your ears) and sweep down from 20k again. Hear something nasty? Cut it, but maybe not quite so drastically. Now you can hear what that sounds like in solo, do it in context, with the rest of the tracks playing. Maybe you WANT your vocals lower middy on this song, this is your taste and your decision, but if you do you should watch what is happening on the other instruments in the same frequency.
In all lower mid frequency fights, muddiness wins. Your headphones are probably not helping but we all have to use what tools we have. Listen to all your tracks both individually and in context. Soloing when you suspect something is wrong or contibuting in a way you're not happy with, but remember, in the end everything is in context.
A guitars lower mid is quite high for a bass but there is cross-over. This is often good but sometimes bad. This is what mixing is, all those 100's of tiny decisions on each track to make a seamless whole.
PS Just seen your screenshot. From your analyser curve there's not that much above 200 here. You have a bump cuz you're boosting by 8db @ 82hz, but again, there's nothing inherently wrong with this. What do your ears tell you?

The final mix

I have several tunes ready to burn to disc,Ive noticed that once itunes gets it's hands on it ,the sound changes . The best Ive been able to get from this method is to send as AIFF to itunes , is this the way to do it or is there a better way, thanks, freezer4000

that is the best way, yes. make sure all of iTunes' "enhancements" are turned off.
also the actual final step after exporting the mix is "Mastering":
http://www.bulletsandbones.com/GB/GBFAQ.html#mastering

Brightness levels on final product

Hi, this is my first post here. I'm currently working to build a calibration dvd for NTSC televisions. I'm using calibration targets that I built myself in photoshop CS2 using NTSC color space. The calibration target needs to haves color patches under video black and above video white.
The problem is: The patches are correct, save in .psd extensions. When I encode jpeg's or AVI's in premiere pro the patches are still correct. But when I encode the DVD, no matter if I use the original PSD or the video encoded with premiere pro, the brightness levels of the patches are changed, probably to fit NTSC standard. I absolutely need the final results to be unchanged and I don't know how.
If I need to switch from encore to another software, i'm willing to do it (as long as there is a trial version for me to test to make sure I won't have the same problem)
Thanks!!

HI,
If you are using a Taxinj procedure, then create a inventory Tax code & maintain values for BED,ECS & SHEcess inventory conditions.
Incase of taxinn you can maintain the condition records for inventory conditions using FV11 transaction.
Thanks & Regards,

Can I have multiple pre tests and a final test?

Hi,
I want to create unit whereby I have small pre-tests (5) to check knowledge, they must get answer ciorrect to continue. Then i want to create a final test at the end of the project.
Is this posisble or do i need to have different projects?
Many thanks
FS

I think trying to get feedback to work with Survey Questions using Advanced Actions would be a lot more trouble than it's worth.
Also, using Pretest questions is not the answer because they're very limiting in other ways. They MUST all be at the beginning of the project BEFORE the main quiz, and they disable the playbar for the entire module. (This is by design.) The way Pretests currently work is not usually what authors are looking for.
If setting ordinary quiz question slides to zero points and deselecting the option to Include in Quiz is NOT enough for you, then I suggest you resort to creating your own 'question' slides via other methods such as building them from default interactive objects available in Captivate. You can use widgets or buttons or Smart Shapes or Text Entry boxes to replicate most of the other question types.

Pre Mastering/levels on final mix

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