How to get a crisp and tight mix?

[Unaspected]

I have been noticing how many of the pro DJs have this tight and crips sound in their mix, but I can't figure out how to do it. I've thought that it might be saturation but that didn't give the same type of tight sound. I've gotten close but I'm not sure really, so please tell me if you know how

Absolutely. Saturation is the last thing you want to do in order to make an audio signal sound crisp or tight. If you listen to the difference in the transients of the drum sounds to their body, they essentially are giving the impression of what they are and punching through the mix. I think that the key is to exaggerate the transients prior to limiting so that when they are squashed, you still have that punch.

You can download some industrial Kontakt drum sets for free with such processing here: http://www.unaspectedstudios.com

Never hurts to have more drum sounds.

[dewgong]

That crispness comes from having pristine source material.

I respectfully disagree. Good source material is important, sure. But I'd wager that there's no one that doesn't wind up with a pile of FX and processors on most, if not all of the tracks in any given project. That "pristine" source material gets eroded in dozens of ways before the final buss. And many of those processors are there solely to add "dirt."

Tightening the mix not only requires managing those tracks, but managing how those tracks interact with each other, sonically speaking. As others have said here, it's a balance of art and science to get it right.

-B

You misunderstand me. When I create a synth patch I review every stage (oscillator filter envelope etc) to make sure that there are no nasty artefacts. Before I did this I would end up with unplayable synths. I was masking the flaws with reverb and chorusing. The better approach that ive now been turned on to is to get it right from the start.

I never use transient shapers, I just find drums which have a good transient response. The sound of naturally crisp transients is vastly superior to any transient shaper. Max for Live has an AMAZING drum kick synth. Its formidable. It's capable of creating punchy and fat drums pre processing. I'll fiddle with the settings until the only thing I need to do is add colour and dynamics. The approach that's being suggested here is to find a substandard sample and process the hell out of it.

Across an entire track you might have upwards of 20 fx units. Every single one of those units is affecting the sound in ridiculously complicated ways. You cant keep track of all of that. All of that detracts from the clarity of your mix. Take it all away and make sure that the basis of the composition is sure.

The worst example of this ive seen is people using mp3 samples. By the time youve pitched it up and down and added fx youve lost an unacceptable amount of audio quality

Even worse is subjecting that sample to time stretching... MP3's are made up of smoke and mirrors. If you start to slow that down all the psychoacoustic algorithms break down exposing the massive data holes.

[hebb]

The worst example of this ive seen is people using mp3 samples. By the time youve pitched it up and down and added fx youve lost an unacceptable amount of audio quality

That's done on purpose sometimes. Using high quality audio doesn't always guarantee it's going to sound nice in the mix (as I'm sure you know).

A lot of sounds sound bad by themselves, when you audition them, but often you find that they sit quite well in the mix.

Personally I'm not sure anymore if the quality of the samples you use has anything to do with how your mix turns out.

[dewgong]

The worst example of this ive seen is people using mp3 samples. By the time youve pitched it up and down and added fx youve lost an unacceptable amount of audio quality

That's done on purpose sometimes. Using high quality audio doesn't always guarantee it's going to sound nice in the mix (as I'm sure you know).

A lot of sounds sound bad by themselves, when you audition them, but often you find that they sit quite well in the mix.

Personally I'm not sure anymore if the quality of the samples you use has anything to do with how your mix turns out.

The only way to know for sure would be to do a blind comparison with a lossy and lossless file. If you're going to perform granular resynthesis on a sound you really need as much audio data as possible. The more frequency information per grain the more rich and potent the result. You always want as much spectral data as possible to play with. You cant add that to a sample without abusing it but you can erode any unnecessary details.

[camsr]

I agree that MP3 is an unsuitable production format. The one advantage on MP3 in production is the smoothing effect of the codec, it actually eliminates a lot of garbage and makes tonal sounds better.

[deastman]

I don't think there's any magic answer here. It just comes down to careful selection of sounds, compression, EQ, carving out a space for each instrument in the mix.

[Passing Bye]

I don't think there's any magic answer here.

Exactly, OP reached a point where he just needs to push that few percents he finds missing using his ears and knowledge, maybe avoiding some usual habit, but there's no magic trick, it really comes from individual as a result.