I am trying, but can´t get it right.

[classic]

When I am listening to my beloved songs from my stars, i realice, that they just sound great.
Of course they do.

When I use a bass sound, it just rumbles and sounds horrable,even if I have managed to get the same sound as they used it their song. Evene by using compression and all the stuff.

Same for gittare ore Piano.
All seemes to loud somehow.
Same with soundtrack like music I make.
Listening to the soundtrack while watching my beloved movies, nothing is to loud, not pumping, not rumbling.

I know, there is no plugin that solves this problem.
I wont to sound so balanced as they do.

I know that I'm going to unleash a lawful of information here.
May be there is a way to just give me some basic information or stable rules regarding a few instruments and how to handle them the best way.
Or a place where I can find this information .


Well.

Thanks a lot to you all:)

[The Noodlist]

Filtering and EQ?

[Scrubbing Monkeys]

Yeah....this is the mastering process mainly. As mentioned above filters and eq. In the mix process..... most songs 200hz builds up as track count increases giving your mix a boxy sound. Deccide which tracks use 200 and which dont. The low end rumble is 100hz and lower. Filter that out of anything that doesnt need it. As a rule seperate the bass and kick by frequency. Example give kick 80hz and bass 150hz cut a bit the opposite. But most important of all....you should be listening in a treated room. Other wise you are being lied to. I dobt have access to a treated room so i use headphones and Toneboosters Isone.

[The Noodlist]

I dobt have access to a treated room so i use headphones and Toneboosters Isone.

Isone is part of the free legacy downloads.
https://www.toneboosters.com/changelog.html

[Scrubbing Monkeys]

For extra sauce....try Toneboosters Morphit. A headphone correction software. Not part of the Legacy freebies but very reasonable.

https://www.toneboosters.com/tb_morphit_v1.html

[lfm]

#1. arranging, picking instruments so that all frequencies are represented
- it makes it sounding full to our ears
- sometimes just a little ding of a triangel can make the biggest difference

#2. let instruments come and go, makes it more interesting to listen too
- and it prevent stacking which almost always means abundance of some frequencies that start to overlap each other creating cancelling effects

As started as mainly guitarplayer I tended to let guitars play from start to finish
- bad idea

#3. use good reference tracks to swap to while mixing
- to calibrate ears every 60 minutes or so
- take breakes too, fresh ears

Mixing is a profession, we must be patient.....

[swilow11]

Yeah....this is the mastering process mainly. As mentioned above filters and eq. In the mix process..... most songs 200hz builds up as track count increases giving your mix a boxy sound. Deccide which tracks use 200 and which dont. The low end rumble is 100hz and lower. Filter that out of anything that doesnt need it. As a rule seperate the bass and kick by frequency. Example give kick 80hz and bass 150hz cut a bit the opposite. But most important of all....you should be listening in a treated room. Other wise you are being lied to. I dobt have access to a treated room so i use headphones and Toneboosters Isone.

Great post with some helpful information there. I would just say the room treatment thing- while it's correct to say you're being lied to, if you know the nature of that lie, you can work with it. Best way is to use reference tracks by the top artists in your genre that you know are mixed well- the room will also lie about these, but if your track and the reference sound on par, your track is good to go.

To OP, most of the issues you're describing are common to all producers. It just takes time to hone your craft. I've been making music for 25 years and am not especially talented when it comes to mixing- it's always been hard for me, even knowing the so-called rules. But if I listen to stuff I made 20 years ago vs stuff I make now, the difference is ridiculous. As I check stuff getting closer to the present, the mixes just keep improving. I don't recall really actively learning or implementing changes, I just now know what works and what doesn't and can get to "passable" quickly, and to "very good" with a bit more effort. In truth, I do far less processing than I used to- main focus is on relative levels, spectral balance, but mainly choosing the right sounds at the right moment.

Tbh though, I studied audio engineering 20 years ago and this alone helped immensely. If you're really keen on music production and have time, studying it is a great move.

[Benedict]

Without hearing it could be one of many (or all of many) causes from
Poor harmony in the music to
Poor articulation in playing (leaving strings open)
Poor mixing...

The absolute best solution is to sit with an experienced Mix Engineer (not some kid with a DAW).

This is a solid and repeatable approach to mixing but you have to let the ego take the back seat to the needs of the Story of the Song or you will do things that result in uneven or muddy results.
https://youtu.be/cyS9CxI7v08?si=nDaRCFSnXrUTmsLt

[BertKoor]

Your reference material is the product of multiple professional people, each contributing what they do best: composing, arranging, playing, recording, mixing, mastering, making coffee & tea, etc etc.

You can do all that by yourself as an amateur, but in comparison I can predict the winner.

Advice: listen critically to what you have made. Identify one flaw and fix that. Rinse and repeat.

[Benedict]

Your reference material is the product of multiple professional people, each contributing what they do best: composing, arranging, playing, recording, mixing, mastering, making coffee & tea, etc etc.

You can do all that by yourself as an amateur, but in comparison I can predict the winner.

Advice: listen critically to what you have made. Identify one flaw and fix that. Rinse and repeat.

Well said. All this shizzle fizzle in DAWville about D.I.Y. mostly amounts to D.O.A. With the internet being on computers it is so easy to work together. And yet...

I talk about that here:
https://youtu.be/ssmXxdTsq5w?si=5ZtE_NSGeq-_WzBu

[swilow11]

Your reference material is the product of multiple professional people, each contributing what they do best: composing, arranging, playing, recording, mixing, mastering, making coffee & tea, etc etc.

You can do all that by yourself as an amateur, but in comparison I can predict the winner.

Advice: listen critically to what you have made. Identify one flaw and fix that. Rinse and repeat.

But don't listen so critically that you hear bad things that aren't really there. Bias is so powerful that if you believe your tracks are lacking something- you don't have such and such a plugin, don't have some optimal quality like the perfect room, monitoring, etc- we can "colour" our work even before we've truly listened to it.

I basically make my tracks from start to finish with very basic mixing along the way. No complex transitions or flourishes- just the songs 'journey'from beginning to end. I then stop and move on to something else because by that point, the track is almost always boring me and sounding tedious and repetitive.

Maybe a week or two later, I return to it and find my internal playback of the song has ceased and I can just hear the raw song again. Sometimes it surprises me by how good it sounds, often the mistakes are glaringly obvious. Both are useful things to hear. I generally then start removing the dross and add some stylish flourish before another break and then mix down.

Basically, ime it's difficult to listen critically and impartially to something you've been exposed to for hour after hour. We get bored of the repetition and this boredom can innacuratrly feed forward into our perception of the track. Having a long enough break from the project such that upon replay, you're surprised and excited by it again makes it much easier to finish.

[soundmodel]

Experience.
Experience.
Experience.

Just do a lot of compositions and mixes until you begin to understand how to properly select and tune sounds in order to get "full" or "thin" or "punchy" or whatever. All mixes are tradeoffs. You can't get full without losing thin somewhere and so on. Usually you aim for one at the cost of another.