Mixdown Question

[George W.]

I have a three track acoustic song I'm trying to mix down on Cool Edit
Pro. As monitors I have a pair of small Radio Shack Minimus-7's, large
Ohm C-2's, and AKG headphones. (Yeah, I know.) The individual tracks
sound fair. I eq'd the acoustic guitars and for the most part left the
vocal flat. No effects. When I mix down things sound low and lifeless,
though normalized to about 98% of clipping. The vocal sounds a bit
boomy in some parts, though the individual track doesn't sound this
way.

I'm trying to give things a bit more punch. Is it "wrong" to eq more
after mixdown or should this be done beforehand? How about Hard
Limiting? Could someone explain this a bit? This really seems to
increase the perceived loudness.

Thanks.

G.

[Scott Dorsey]

George W. > wrote:
>I have a three track acoustic song I'm trying to mix down on Cool Edit
>Pro. As monitors I have a pair of small Radio Shack Minimus-7's, large
>Ohm C-2's, and AKG headphones. (Yeah, I know.) The individual tracks
>sound fair. I eq'd the acoustic guitars and for the most part left the
>vocal flat. No effects. When I mix down things sound low and lifeless,
>though normalized to about 98% of clipping. The vocal sounds a bit
>boomy in some parts, though the individual track doesn't sound this
>way.

So cut out what sounds bad. Keep your levels nice and low... you can
always crank the levels on the monitor up if you want it louder. Get
the EQ and start removing stuff.

>I'm trying to give things a bit more punch. Is it "wrong" to eq more
>after mixdown or should this be done beforehand?

In a perfect world, you would have a good arrangement in your head and
be able to record the parts without need for any EQ. If you don't have
this, you'll probably have to do some selective EQ in mixdown in order
to make them all fit together. The better your tracking, the less work
and less radical EQ is going to be needed. If you've tracked everything
in a closet, it may take some substantial EQ on everything to get anything
usable out of it.

How about Hard
>Limiting? Could someone explain this a bit? This really seems to
>increase the perceived loudness.

Yes, but who cares about perceived loudness? You want it louder, just turn
the volume up on playback. Your goal is to get it to sound good and to
get all of the parts to fit together. After you've got that down, THEN
start worrying about loudness.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Scott Dorsey]

George W. > wrote:
>I have a three track acoustic song I'm trying to mix down on Cool Edit
>Pro. As monitors I have a pair of small Radio Shack Minimus-7's, large
>Ohm C-2's, and AKG headphones. (Yeah, I know.) The individual tracks
>sound fair. I eq'd the acoustic guitars and for the most part left the
>vocal flat. No effects. When I mix down things sound low and lifeless,
>though normalized to about 98% of clipping. The vocal sounds a bit
>boomy in some parts, though the individual track doesn't sound this
>way.

So cut out what sounds bad. Keep your levels nice and low... you can
always crank the levels on the monitor up if you want it louder. Get
the EQ and start removing stuff.

>I'm trying to give things a bit more punch. Is it "wrong" to eq more
>after mixdown or should this be done beforehand?

In a perfect world, you would have a good arrangement in your head and
be able to record the parts without need for any EQ. If you don't have
this, you'll probably have to do some selective EQ in mixdown in order
to make them all fit together. The better your tracking, the less work
and less radical EQ is going to be needed. If you've tracked everything
in a closet, it may take some substantial EQ on everything to get anything
usable out of it.

How about Hard
>Limiting? Could someone explain this a bit? This really seems to
>increase the perceived loudness.

Yes, but who cares about perceived loudness? You want it louder, just turn
the volume up on playback. Your goal is to get it to sound good and to
get all of the parts to fit together. After you've got that down, THEN
start worrying about loudness.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."