. Congrats o.p. General consensus likes your stuff. Thats usually what these "stick out your chest" comments translate too.

I dont like electronic music but its pretty impressive all that you managed to get in there. but like when working with audio its best to simplify things and make the song work and sound clean with as little as possible. throwing a million FX is just going to make it sound smashed together and cluttered. good job on all the ideas but maybe simplify the songs and focus on the feel of it not the technical stuff. no one cares about the technical stuff but us who actually know it. the people who will be listening will want to be moved right away and not listen thinking I wonder what that is and how he did that.

Thanks guys I really appreciate the input . Like JoeCat suggested and reiterated like the rest have said , Im going to try and make cleaner mixes, less FX, Ive always done Subtractive eqing sculpting and even automation but I always fall short and I know mastering isn't the "issue". Im going to do what JoeCat said and try to fight my habitual techniques and try to work from the ground up. Thanks again for all the input guys it helps!

something to keep in mind is gain stage get one of those free VU meters and use em at like -20vu and set the levels with that. that way the sounds feel and sound a consistent volume and you can just compress the ones that are to dynamic to give you good average to actual volume. that will be a great way to make everything not need to be compressed heavily.

If you're putting a limiter on your Master, your levels are too high to begin with. You should aim for a Master level (no fx) of @ -3db. Some people will even suggest lower. Then you put your Mastering fx to boop it up. Compression on a master is a no-no also. You're just squashing all the sound. Hope that helps, because I'm certainly still learning.

mixing through a master limiter can help you achieve the "glued" sound of much contemporary club music

Not really, it's called being realistic. This guy wants to make it in the industry and I certainly wouldn't be happy or comfortable paying him for his services as a producer if he cant get it together after 13 years. I'd expect a pretty high level of skill and professionalism after those amount of years.

Have you even listened to m sound cloud? Perhaps you could give me some constructive criticism ?

I'd try something like the following: bypass everything on the 2 buss and turn your speakers up about twice as loud, and remix the core tracks at that level of loudness.

It sounds to me that you're mixing with no headroom on the tracks (very close to 0dBFS). You need to mix the space in at lower channel levels and then put the loudness on last.

I only listened to Airplanes 2013 so far. Didn't like the mix. The drums overall are to loud in relation to the female singer, there are too much heights in the track and the sounds seem a bit boring/uninspired. You should send your stuff to an m.e.

How many so called producers are there in EDM currently? Do you really think that all of those "kids" are masterminds in mixing, really.
Do we have like 10 000 Bob Katz's in the EDM scene? don't think so.

Most of those track's have very little amount of prosessing and as mixes are quite simple. So my advice to you: Less is more.
It's easy to hang on these forums and think that you need effect chain of at least ten pluqins for every sound, you really don't!

Most EDM tracks have only a few carefully selected elements, if they don't fit together in composition then they never will fit in the mix, even with all the tools available.

And don't forget about mastering, especially in EDM mastering is a big part of the sound. Think how certain labels can have their own trademark sound despite the fact that music is produced by different people from different parts of the world -> Mastering. Invest some money and send one of your tracks to a professional mastering, then you can really evaluate how good is your mix.





Levels aren so important these days unless one is mixing on analog desk. Most daw's have either 32 or 64 bit float point audio engine what means that you have infinite headroom (until signal hits your converter). Same thing with compression, dynamic range of a track isn't the same thing as rhytm, drive or any other "feel".

Yes I have listened to three of your tracks. However I'm not in a position to give my opinion on how you could improve them for a number of reasons.

First and foremost, It's not the kind of music I like/listen to or have any experience with. So me making any comments on your mixing skills...well I really have no business doing that. I'd rather not fill your head with mis informed and erroneous comments and criticism about something I know nothing about.

2nd, I've heard nothing like it before to compare it with. I'm strictly about old electronic music from 1970 to 1995. So again, I can't say what needs improvement or changing without any direct experience/exposure in the past to this kind of music to draw from and give criticism about.

3rd, I'm currently a sound designer not a producer or mixing/mastering engineer.

and finally, I don't know what you were trying to achieve in these mixes when you did them, so it would seem pretty silly for me and others to suggest things to you, without knowing the actual idea of what kind of mix you wanted or were trying to achieve. If you did disclose that information you might get more specific detailed analysis and feedback on what you could improve upon.

I can see using a bus compressor on the master bus but with super light usage. it give you that glued sound without killing it like a limiter. so I have to say no to limiter but if you gain stage properly you should be able to set a master bus compressor after or during your gain staging to be taking out maybe 1-3 db at times not much but enough to gel things together.

and I like to mix to about -6 db maybe lower at times. -3 db can still give you overs if your music is very dynamic. I love using my K-meter when I mix you might also want to look into some type of k meter or Vu meter to gain stage and stuff

Real advantage here is that you can have bedder picture of dimensions. When mix is limited to averages of today's "standars" all the thing's that were ment to sit in the back of the mix suddenly come forth, that tiny amount of room at your drums becomes huge room etc.. and of course the rhythm (Still not the same as dynamic range). Mixing trough limiter or compressor with similar settings can help to anticipate those changes.

If you need to have it up loud turn up your speakers but why use a limiter when a song gets mastered its not just going to be limited hard. maybe it is if your just going to be shooting your mix to youtube or sound cloud. but you can turn it up loud to hear a lot of those things. I do use a limiter when I'm mastering something I tend to go for the most invisible limiter I can find and use as little limiting as I can get today's standards are crap loudness has nothing to do with sales or how people like stuff. I mean its getting to a point where we all know loud music sucks. its just loud and crappy because all they did was slam a limiter. plus more and more music is starting to come out and out sell the louder stuff because it does not hurt the ears. it sounds better. there is definition.

but I agree you can have one on there and stop to listen how it sounds with the style of limiting you like. if you like loudness wars limiting stop turn it on take a listen and hear how bad you are ruining the song with bad limiting. but I would not use it as my go to figure out how its going to sound. a lot of that is in the mix make is dynamic clean and punchy in the mix. if its to dynamic to get loud gently compress during mastering maybe have a few compressors doing only a little compression before hitting the limiter so the effects are not as bad.
there is no right or wrong really.
just go make music make sure to mix with headroom and remember people just turn the loud songs down because they suck due to over compressed over limited sound.