Compress mix audio?

[djdiggla]

When you make a mix and have the file recorded do you guys compress it to make the peaks and valleys of the audio more even? If you do, what do you use?

[Wax On]

Sometimes i do. If i do, i use Wavelab or Soundforge

[Jimmy]

i used to love using soundforge. great piece of software. i dont have much use for it anymore tho.

[kut_class]

I use sound forge, generally I try and get it sounding as nice as possible in my DAW and go easy on any processing after i've exported it. Here's my process for finalising tunes :

 

take your fininshed tune and run it through a spectrum analyzer to make sure you're filling up all the frequencies in the right places (just do a spectrum analysis on a fav song/similar sounding song to see what it should look like ) you might have to go back into your DAW to re-EQ parts or even re think the tune as you might have missed an instrument that should fill a frequency , or have too many instruments competing in that frequency range that you could cut frequencies out of to give their own space. If your dead set your mix is good and it sounds good to your ears, on the exported song use graphic/parametric eq to boost/cut frequencys as needed after that i use i the PSP vintage warmer ( compressor ) to give it an warmer sound it really is as good as everyone says it is. done !

 

 

" compress it to make the peaks and valleys of the audio more even"

 

If your seeing that, then your mix (before you flattened it into one audio file) is wrong and an instrument is playing too loud. I'd go back into my DAW and make sure the levels are right and also trust my ears - maybe it does peak and trough , but if it sounds good then it don;t matter - sometime you gotta ignore screen. If you don;t want to or can;t (like you lost the original save) do that, you can do something like you described after you have "flattened" your song using normalisation, but if your mix is wrong to start off with itcould make your tune sound weirder, possibly cutting out the frequencies which gave your tune depth ...

 

dunno if that helps at all ... never thought i'd be one to give advice on this type of stuff , and probably not in a position to anyways

[djdiggla]

thanks... will try it and maybe hit u back up with questions.

[Wax On]

good insight DV Adam with brown hair who's into beats and scratches and uses internet. I'm gash at engineering.

[Jon]

i used to love using soundforge. great piece of software. i dont have much use for it anymore tho.

 

I read the first sentence of that post and thought someone had hi-jacked your account!

[Jimmy]

i used to love using soundforge. great piece of software. i dont have much use for it anymore tho.

 

I read the first sentence of that post and thought someone had hi-jacked your account!

 

it was back in the day, about the time i started scratching actually.

[Steve]

If I use anything, then I use this: -

 

http://www.waves.com/Content.aspx?id=211

 

Maybe not the best way of doing it, but certainly an easy way of getting good results in a couple of clicks.

[Paul_Caruso]

Ok, wow - there's some bad advice here.

 

Music is about ears not eyes. There are no 'peaks and valleys' there is no 'look at the spectrum analyzer and fill the gaps' - there is only "if it sounds good - it is good."

 

If you send me a song or mixtape or whatever to listen to, I don't get the spectrum analyzer out and think "well, it's all pretty even - good song!". I listen to it and if it sounds good - it is good. You should get to know the sound of your speakers in your room and mix with your ears. To get to know your speakers listen mixes you've done in other places (the car, other stereos, ipod, laptop) and compare what you're hearing there to what you heard when mixing.

[djdiggla]

Some stuff sounds a tad too bassy or a little too loud or soft in a live mix I did... maybe I'm just nitpicking tho... Or maybe I just need to do it over.

[Paul_Caruso]

Some stuff sounds a tad too bassy or a little too loud or soft in a live mix I did... maybe I'm just nitpicking tho... Or maybe I just need to do it over.

 

If it's a mixtape I would just automate the quiet and loud bits rather than compress or limit, the tracks have already been mastered so you should just be compensating for the level of whole tracks.

[Face Melt]

what are we talking about compressing here? compressing a recorded dj mix or compressing a song you've made?

 

if it's the first then you should just be applying very mild compression to control the peaks between the songs if you were going mental oriental with your eq. if you have a bunch of records and you're mixing them then they have more than likely already been through the mixing and mastering stage.

[djdiggla]

DJ mix where some of the EQs are just a tad off--maybe nobody would even notice.