Mixing advice wanted

[mle]

I would love to hear people's "recipes" for mixing within Tracktion.

Basically, I'm trying to get a feel for which filters are the most useful, and what are some good chains of filters to experiment with. For example, does FinalMix pretty much make the standard compressor unnecessary?

So a mixing "recipe" might look something like:
1. For the lead vocal, I use FinalMix with the Male Vox Comp preset, followed by a reverb using room size 4, with wet 25%.
2. For the backing vocals, I use FinalMix with the Vocal preset, followed by a reverb using room size 5, with wet 30%. Then I use the parametric EQ to reduce the 2k frequency area by a few decibels to make a "notch" that won't conflict with the lead vocal.
3. For drums, I use...

Get the idea? Any practical advice like this would be enormously helpful.

Thanks,

Mark

[M'Snah]

My mixes are different everytime, so I still feel I'm learning a lot. However I find that by panning instruments (e.g. lead and backing vocals) differently, I don't need to do EQ surgery most of the time...

Because of the way Tracktion set up for me, sound design, effects and mixing are not really split up. I'm not sure if that addresses your subject though. Does mixing for you include filters, modulators etc? or did you 'only' mean the final touch of balancing the final mix of finalized tracks?

[mle]

I find volume/pan adjustments to be pretty intuitive.

For me, the challenging part of mixing is the process of applying compression, EQ, and reverb on both a per-sound and final mix level to achieve a polished sound, making each instrument clearly audible in the mix.

But do you compression->EQ->reverb, or maybe reverb->compression->EQ, or maybe some other ordering?

FinalMix seems to integrate the steps of compression and EQ, so is it possible to use FinalMix in lieu of independent compression and EQ stages?

If each track has some amount of compression, EQ, and reverb, is there any reason to apply additional compression, EQ, and/or reverb to the overall mix?

These are the sorts of questions I really have no idea how to answer.

Mark

[Graeme]

However I find that by panning instruments (e.g. lead and backing vocals) differently, I don't need to do EQ surgery most of the time...

Ah... but what happens when you play the mix in mono?

[M'Snah]

This thread should be moved to the Production forum. The questions are not specific for Tracktion, and you'll miss out on a lot of expertise from non-Tracktioneers.

Re: Graeme: I'm the only one who ever listens to my music, and never in mono .

[mle]

Although I'm sure there's a lot of general mixing advice that non-Tracktioneers could offer, I'm specifically interested in finding out what works well _in Tracktion_. There are dozens of bundled compressors included in Tracktion, which ones are people using? What settings are people typically using on the Tracktion reverb filter? How are people using the Tracktion Final Mix filter, and is it so powerful that there is less need for some of the other filters?

So for now, I'm happy to keep this a Tracktion-specific thread.

--Mark

[DWS]

I mixed this track in T1 without any filters other than a slight delay on the banjo.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/de ... ital-music

The vocals are straight up - no compression, no EQ, no reverb. I point this out not because I think this is the ultimate mix, but because I believe a lot of musicians think the secret to mixing is just adding EQ and compressionm when sometimes (probably more often than not) you just don't need it. - s