Drums Buried In The Mix

[guitar486]

-3db is extremely high assuming you're talking about dBFS. That's virtually no headroom. The best practice in Pro Tools is to shoot for between -18 and -12 dBFS. This gives you more than enough dynamic range (bit depth) and leaves plenty of head room for unexpected peaks during the recording process. We also don't know where your faders are at when you are trying to mix, but if you have your recorded levels hitting -3 you're going to have to bring the drum faders WAAAYY down to leave room for everything else. Not only do you want your recording levels between -18 and -12, but you want your Master Fader showing something to that degree as well with peaks hitting about -6dBFS.

As far as unburying your drums, the previous comments are pretty much spot on - build your mix from the drums up. You haven't said anything about EQ either, and I suspect there's some frequency masking going on here. Without hearing your mix I'll just give some general things I consider with drums. :

Are the kick drum and bass guitar playing nice? Check that you don't have any masking going on between them.

Anything metal (cymbals) usually benefits from a (shelf) boost around 10k and a dip of the mid range somewhere between 800 and 2k (this will also probably help separate your cymbals from the guitars you recorded). Stick/beater hits (attack) usually lives around 4k. Muddiness is usually around 250. This is all, of course, dependent on the actual kit and the recording process.

If we could hear your project we could probably help more :)

[CME]

Originally Posted by bashville

I posted this in response to another thread a few weeks ago--I'll try to edit it a little, but I thought it might be useful.

"Try this experiment. Turn everything down but the drums by about 5 db; each track that's not the drums. Crank up the overall. Now see what drums you might want softer. Just change the perspective. You're coming at it like "how do I get them to stand out?". Turn them f***ing UP (and rebalance everything around it)."

Seriously, there's no crime in turning the other tracks down. Recording things at a good level is no guarantee they'll play back in a musical balance. Sometimes you turn things up by leaving them where they are in the mixer, turning up your monitoring volume, and turning everything else down. If you're listening, and the drums sound soft, but all the drum faders are already pushed up all the way, you've really got no other choice.

Make a temporary group of everything else but the drums, and just drop that whole group by about 5 db. Then reach over and turn the big knob counter-clockwise.

This. On digital audio you have a hard ceiling. At a certain point it just doesn't get any louder. So if your drums aren't cutting through everything, everything else is too loud.

Also just because something sounds great by itself doesn't mean it will sound great in a mix. It may but sometimes you have to tweak to a point were it sounds weird soloed but great within the context.

[guitar486]

Originally Posted by CME

just because something sounds great by itself doesn't mean it will sound great in a mix. It may but sometimes you have to tweak to a point were it sounds weird soloed but great within the context.

Yes.

[Ben Jenssen]

Might I also add: mix with your ears, not your eyes.

Ideally we should be able to close our eyes and adjust the mix without watching the knobs. Building up the mix, all the time thinking how could each track sound better, a bit brighter? a bit darker? a bit farther (reverb)? panned? The relationship between tracks and so on. And not be afraid of leaving a well recorded instrument alone and plugin-less.
"I've added EQ and compression to all the tracks an it still sounds crap."
Yes. Say no more.

Firsty33, I checked out the video. This kind of heavy metal saturated music is very hard to mix. Not too bad job you had done. But in my opinion the snare was too loud and kind of detached from the mix. The guitars should be way louder, punchier and and driving the sound.

I use a couple of simple techniques to check and fine-tune the mix and the balance between instruments: press play, go to the toilet, on the way back when you start hearing it in the distance you often realize that something is too loud, too soft.

And check your mix on a boombox, car stereo, laptop speakers, in a noisy bar etc. A good mix works on anything.

[bashville]

OK I watched that video--first off, sorry about your friend.

Since it's a tribute to the drummer, I'm sure the idea of a typical balance is maybe out the window.But if you wanted to bring that into some kind of reality, my main thought is that the kick feels light, and I think once the kick is raised, that will let you bring all the other instruments up (bass, guitars, voice) because they'll be supported by the thump. Or the reverse would be bringing down all the drum mics EXCEPT for the kick just a tad and see what happens. Everything actually sounds pretty well recorded.

The short version is that it sounds like the drums are actually too loud on that, except for the kick. I agree with the previous poster that the guitars seem light--what I'm guessing is that this might be more of a monitoring problem. Do you have a problem with standing waves in your listening space? That can really skew your perception of what's going on in the the bottom. So the idea of changing your listening perspective is good.

Also I'd like to emphasize listening and comparing to well-chosen reference tracks. And one thing I've found really useful recently, which kind of switches me out of musician mode a little bit, is to avoid listening to long stretches of the piece at a time. Your ear starts justifying what it's hearing, focusing more on musical events (ironic, I know). It's another temporary perspective shift to try. Listen to shorter sections that you're focusing on, like drop the needle. Fix the issues you hear, then be aware of where the texture changes and might require automation or splitting a track into multiple sections to deal with special issues. If you listen too long to something that's "wrong", your ear begins to adjust to make it seem "right". Then you compare it with a CD you like and suddenly you realize how far away you've drifted.

[chrisdee]

Originally Posted by Emcha_audio

well that depends if he's talking rms or peak. If it's peak I'd agree with you, that doesn't leave lots of head room. If it's rms that gives him 15 db before he peaks. So one might think he has still lots of head room.

Sorry for not specifying but Im talking about the peak level.
If all his guitar/bass tracks are all at -3db peak level I think the master fader will get clipping.

[firsty33]

You guys are absolutely amazing with this priceless advice. I want to first and foremost thank you all. I apologize for not replying to your answers earlier, since I didn't receive any more email notifications about this thread I assumed the discussion ended, boy was I wrong! I've been putting long hours in the studio, and our project is almost finished. I will give you the link when they're ready, shouldn't be long. Thanks again, you guys inspire me with your wisdom, truly.

-Justin

[NewdestinyX]

Originally Posted by Ben Jenssen

.

I use a couple of simple techniques to check and fine-tune the mix and the balance between instruments: press play, go to the toilet, on the way back when you start hearing it in the distance you often realize that something is too loud, too soft.

Lol!! I thought I was the only one to do this. I've been doing it for years and no one ever taught me it.. It just happened one day while I was running a mix down and I was coming back from the bathroom. I thought to myself "wow that guitar is way too loud. Glad to hear others use the 'proximity to mix' test for balance issues.