Why does my mixes sounds so "mudy"? (Examples insi

[DevonB]

I'd NEVER use a compressor on orchestral, period. That's just me....

Devon

[Jaidy]

Hey Eriki

After giving your track a few listens and some twiddling in Wave Lab here's my 2 cents:

1. Recording levels are way to low. You are giving away gobs of bandwidth (expresion). Your peaks need to be near 0 not -6db as yours is and average rms should be near 14 and not 22 as yours is.

2. It sounds like a signal that has been processed several times by reverb effects. Ambience on top of ambience. Did some of the samples have considerable reverb allready? The result in a sonogram of your track is a steady fog of high frequency reverberation which adds little but again is using up your bandwidth, leaving very little left for the bass to use. When the bass does come in, it sounds distorted because at that point your signal is saturated with reverb.

3. Contentwise - excellent composition and arrangement. Very interesting track.

If your samples have reverb on them, try getting away with just that reverb, or use a high shelf filter to reduce frequencies above 7K before adding reverb.

Orchestral tracks are quite difficult to pull off. Even though the sources may be real or natural, you still need to apply every recording and mastering trick in the book to create the illusion of a good sounding track.

Are your samples stereo or mono? I cant tell for certain but it sounds like it is all mono that has been panned in the center of a stereo track. This is another area you can explore to find more definition, that of panning both your dry signals and your effected signals. In this piece reserving the center for the bass parts and making sure to pan the other instrument in a balanced way left and right might improve definition. There is also the trick of panning dry sounds and wet wet signals to opposite sides.

Keep up the great work!

[Erki]

The samples are stereo (panned) and dry, but the celesta and the bas seems to have quite a long ambient dark tail to them though. But someone mentioned above that the bas sound quite bad (no low end, alot of mid range)on the GPO so i guess that can mess things up a bit when using alot of reverb?

Garritan has some reverb presets for the Ambient reverb VSTi, going to try those and see if it sounds less mudy.

The bas, well the bas i can NEVER get right But i guess, except EQ and sample quality, i could use a different reverb, lower volume, and pan the bas so it does´nt eat up so much space.

GPO volyme/expression is controlled via the modwheel so i could pump up the expression/dynamics quite a bit with that. I kept the dynamics low on all the strings for some reason. I used a limiter on the track to get the volume on this.

[DevonB]

I used a limiter on the track to get the volume on this.

I wouldn't. Seriously. I tend to stay away from ANY dynamics processing these days for orchestral specifically. What gives the orchestra such impact is the dynamics. Squashing them won't help.

Devon

[AndrewSimon]

Some instruments are very mellow others are way to bright. They just don't fit together.
Probably too much reverb on some.(piano,horns)
The panning is way over done.
This is very clear at 1:16 when you have the very bright strings way on the right and the mufled horns way on the left. It is so mufled on the left that I thought my headphones just cut out.
I would pull everything a little closer to the center.

I would start with the panning.
That alone would make a huge difference.
Everything should be between 10 o'clock to 2 o'clock
at the most.
Not 9 o'clock and 3 o'clock

[AndrewSimon]

I listen to the other tracks on your web site.
Those sound better especially Fly but still suffer from the extreme panning.
All instruments are either on the right or the left.
Nothing in the middle does not sound natural.
And that is what gives that "muddy" feeling.
Nothing is upfront in the center, everything is in the background panned.
Also important, bass is not a directional sound.
Humans can't tell the direction it's coming from.
You should not pan bass.
Bass should always be in the center or very close to it.

[mystahr]

Contentwise I have absolutely nothing to say but to say it sounds quite allright. On the mixing/balancing (mastering in my mind is something completely different) part there isn't much I could tell as I am still learning myself; but the before given advice and analysis were great to read and learn bits from myself.

For myself this is the working order in how to try and properly mix: leveling, panning, EQíng (always down, never up). It all often comes down to the finesse settings when suddenly the mix starts to work. But then its an ongoing learning process isn't it.

[Sascha Franck]

Nicely executed track IMO.
I agree that you should perhaps take more care of your levels.
While some leveling must be done once it'd be embedded along with some other tracks in case you really want it to sound low (in comparison to the others), for an individual track I would at first have a look that the master output is indeed taking advance of the full dynamic bandwith. -6dB is allready a lot you're losing.


I actually don't think the whole thing is sounding too muddy, but IMO the panning (and stereo field in general therefor) isn't sorted out too well.
For example, the piano takes advance of almost all the stereo field while the horns and strings are way more limited to one side.
Just imagine what it'd be with a real orchestra. Yes, there's a BROAD wideness, but all the instruments share it among each other. The horns may not only range from 12/L to 16/L (or whatever setting) but they will range from, say 5/L to 25/L, with, say, some strings seriously overlapping in the 12-22/L range.
Don't take these numbers any serious, I'm sure you'll get what I mean.
As said, I also don't think that a piano, listened to from the audience place would sound that wide (damn, must been ages ago I've been to some classical concert for the last time).
I think you could indeed fix quite something by using a general reverb on the complete orchestra, a true stereo one that is. Of course not to add anything much of a real reverb tail, just to make those panning ranges overlap a bit more natural and therefor glue everything together a bit more.

If you think everything is sounding too muddy (I don't), try a tiny bit of something like an exciter, but be very careful with it - one may often find oneself in excitement too much (haha, great word joke) and keep it at a too extreme setting.

[P.T.]

Now this is very nice.

I agree with what people have said about the panning. There is too much hard left/right panning. Spread things around.

The muddiness. I think you just need to do a little EQ cutting on some of the parts in the 200-500 hz area.
Move an EQ band with about a 0.5q around on the bass, string section and horns and see how it affects the sound. It may only take a few db of cut. Do it while listening to the entire mix, not soloing. I think it is mainly the Bass.

Try a reverb setting with a shorter time and a cut in the lows of the reverb. Putting reverb on low frequencies causes problems.

Try cutting down on the stereo spread of the piano. Try the DFX monomaker if you have no way to reduce the stereo field. You can keep it stereo but pullit a bit more into the center.

Again. This is a nice piece.

[AndrewSimon]

I artificially recreated that missing center I was talking about to bring some life into this track.
Unfortunately things got mangled on the way since I started with your final mix but I believe it proves the point.
http://www.hififorless.com/personal/and ... eMIXED.mp3

[HanafiH]

Blue2.mp3

I particularly liked this, so I had a whack at it.

The only thing to add to the already good advice is the suggestion that when using sampled classical instruments, strings in particular, listen for high end formants that have been truncated into noise. The cello at the end of this is hissing rather, and it can't be fixed easily in the final.

[Erki]

Thanks for all the advices, after listening to AndrewSimons example and then my version it´s quite clear that my panning is way off, especially the strings wich i always tend to pan hard to either side for some reason.

All these advices and examples everyone is posting helps alot. I´m gonna go train my EQ tweaking skills now.