Dear Anyone.
Hope this all makes sense, it's just I'm totally confused. I've got Asperger's, which doesn't help! In me, it means I lurve having a list I can just follow, I agree in mixing that doesn't always happen, but anyway.
So I'm mixing a piece of music. As far as loudness levels go, I've got Volume, Compression, Gain (I know Gain and Volume aren't the same thing, Gain's going in, Volume's coming out but bear with me for a paragraph!) and Limiting. As far as I know, and I'm very much a beginner, if a sound's too quiet you could use any of those to make it louder.
How do you know when to use which and why? I mean I could - in theory - not turn it up, just slam a load of compression on it to make it louder. Or turn it up and use less compression. I slap a limiter on the out buss and it sounds louder - but my waveforms are always TINY - wiggles in cotton.
I use a limiter on the outbuss called Frontier. It's got 2 main knobs, one called Threshold, one called Output Volume. If I set Threshold so the output waveform looks as sausagelike as my comparison track, my track's far too ridiculously loud. But if I turn down the individual instrument volumes within the track to allow for that, I'm back to wiggle-in-cotton waveform again! And I can use EITHER knob on Frontier to make things louder, when do I use which and why?
I'm not sure if the sequence of events I'm asking to be told about is Gain Staging or not because - sorry - I've never really understood what Gain Staging IS! Please, could someone help this Asperger's idiot by saying when to use which volume control - I know no list would apply in ALL circumstances. but just so I've got SOME idea of when to use which in order to get a nice, sausage waveform coming out of my DAW WITHOUT everything sounding ridiculously over-loud. I've seen many sausage waveforms with quiet, even distant sounds in them and had zero idea how they achieved it. I've been writing music for years and I've never been able to get a not-overloud sausage waveform on anything - mine are all wiggles in cotton!
So what sequence do I use them all in? Do I start off with MIDI volume (CC7) and THEN add compression (not forgetting the MIDI volume can go up to 127 so would I NEED compression?) And there's things like saturation which make things louder - but if I'd gotten the MIDI volume levels right, would I need it....
See what I mean, I'm just totally confused. Could anyone help me make sense of it all so I can get nice rich sausages, not skinny cotton wiggles? I mean the cotton wiggles sound as LOUD as the sausages but not as FULL.
Yours hopefully,
Chris.
Can anyone help me learn when to use which kind of volume where and why?
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- KVRist
- 161 posts since 15 Sep, 2008 from Hastings
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thecontrolcentre thecontrolcentre https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=76240 - KVRAF
- 37262 posts since 27 Jul, 2005 from Scottish Borders
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- KVRist
- 375 posts since 17 Nov, 2022
Use reference tracks, especially in combination with tools like ISOL8. This gives you a better idea about volume and dynamics across the whole frequency spectrum. You can also use parallel processing to make your life easier: Create several mix versions (with some of them being too quiet/dynamic/dull, some being too loud/overcompressed/sharp and so on) and mix them together to get a good balance between the extremes. I sometimes create up to ten mixes to merge them into the final version (while listening to the track on different speakers and headphones).
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- KVRist
- Topic Starter
- 161 posts since 15 Sep, 2008 from Hastings
Dear WackyZoundz.
So you've got your ten mixes - how do you merge them? I mean as everything's on the same wavelength as everything else, wouldn't you get massive phase cancellation for starters? I've tried putting 2 mixes together in Audacity and sometimes it works and sometimes you get sounds totally cancelling eachother out - I don't sing but I use vocal samples sometimes and I've had a pair of mixes where all the vocals totally cancelled eachother out and you ended up with an instrumental with the occasional very faint bit of vocal in the background! Zero idea why that happened but I kept a copy cos the instrumental sounded good!
Do you just layer all ten mixes up and slap a limiter on the end so they don't clip?
Yours puzzledly,
Chris.
So you've got your ten mixes - how do you merge them? I mean as everything's on the same wavelength as everything else, wouldn't you get massive phase cancellation for starters? I've tried putting 2 mixes together in Audacity and sometimes it works and sometimes you get sounds totally cancelling eachother out - I don't sing but I use vocal samples sometimes and I've had a pair of mixes where all the vocals totally cancelled eachother out and you ended up with an instrumental with the occasional very faint bit of vocal in the background! Zero idea why that happened but I kept a copy cos the instrumental sounded good!
Do you just layer all ten mixes up and slap a limiter on the end so they don't clip?
Yours puzzledly,
Chris.