I've been seeing a slew of related questions lately:
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How do I achieve that authentic deep house sound?
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Any pro tips on how to mix for clarity? My mixes are consistently muddy.
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I've aggressively EQ'd, compressed and limited, and my track still sounds weak next to my favorite reference track! Help???
With the recent craze into deep house, techno, and just more "old school" genres in general, I'm seeing a huge resurgence of producers chasing that classic vibe. You know, the vibe that makes you think of a mahogany record player and a BANGING hi-fi stereo system, instead of a set of chrome CDJs and some ear-destroying line rigs at EDC.
Well, it's not as difficult to achieve as you think. It will certainly take work to make it sound professional, but starting off in the right direction will speed up your progress by orders of magnitude.
So, where to begin?
First off, less is more. I know you've heard that a thousand times, but for real. I mean it this time. 99 times out of 100, if your mix lacks clarity, punch, power, loudness, or really any other adjective that makes you think happy thoughts, it's because there's too much there. Too much frequency information!
I could go on for days about dynamic range and multiband compression to get that deep, bouncy feel, but those tactics aren't being widely misused. Reverb, on the other hand, is becoming an absolute monstrosity. Big room house has left people thinking they can just drown a track in reverb, and since it sounds like it's in an arena, it will sound louder and more massive... right?
Of course not, and you already know that. The aspect of mixing that I feel is most often overlooked lies with two specific techniques: stereo image, and reverb. The resounding public opinion seems to be that big stereo image = good. This is OK, but big stereo image also equals weak. The more purely side information your track has, the less cohesive your compression (and therefore transient control, loudness, limiting, and everything else related to dynamics) will be. But you still want big stereo image!
Cool! Pan. Seriously, I can't stress it enough. You want to sound like the classics, go listen to Cream, or The Beatles. They would hard-pan drums to the right and hard-pan vocals or guitar to the left (i.e. Sunshine of Your Love). That's some crazy shit!
But it worked. And it still works. And not only that, but it's what your brain (and most of your listeners' brains) perceive as that classic vibe.
I'm not telling you to hard-pan your drum bus. In fact, I would actively recommend against that, unless you're actually trying to emulate the 60's sound.
But, the next time you want to grab that stereo imager, reach for the pan knob instead. Keep your signals as close to mono as possible, just pan them to widen your stereo image. Your mix will be cleaner, your limiters will hit harder, and your track will sound better.
Which finally leads us to reverb.
I certainly used to be guilty of drowning my tracks in reverb as well. It's so tempting! It sounds so lush!
Okay, but it only sounds lush where you can hear it. Unless you're a very talented mixing engineer with a lot of free time, it's also playing where you can't hear it. That means anywhere a track is taking up frequency information. Got a synth lead? That reverb is playing in the same frequency range, you just can't hear it.
But your compressor can.
Your compressor (or limiter) is deaf, dumb, and blind. It does exactly what you tell it to, with the signal that it is given, and it could care less what the f*** it's compressing. So, it is expending countless precious decibels, only to compress all that reverb that's sitting behind your tracks, completely inaudible.
The solution? Same as before. Move that reverb out of the way. It can't interfere with a frequency range that it isn't occupying.
First off, never put your reverb plugin on the actual track you want to affect. ONLY put it on a return track, and use it from there. That dry/wet knob should only ever be at 100% wet.
Secondly, try a mono (or at least less stereo) reverb! I didn't realize how effective this was until I started using an outboard reverb pedal that is mono only. Pan that track to the right, send it to a mono reverb return track, and pan the return track to the left! Boom! Instant clarity and stereo image, but without sacrificing an ounce of frequency space.
And lastly, never forget to cut out unnecessary frequencies. You should have a high-pass filter on every reverb track somewhere from 90-120 Hz, every single time. If you want your lead (or vocals, or whatever) to sound brighter, don't boost the highs! Don't boost the reverb highs either! Go the other way and shelve the reverb highs down. The high end of the dry signal will cut through more clearly. If you still aren't satisfied, then go about boosting. But, always remember to cut before you boost.
I hope this long, rambling post was helpful! As always, happy mixing!
TL;DR get that reverb outta my face
Submitted March 30, 2017 at 03:07AM by masteriskofficial https://www.reddit.com/r/edmproduction/comments/62c869/lets_talk_reverb_and_stereo_image/?utm_source=ifttt