Seeking advice ......

[India001]

I have a project in Hand.

The mix (Stereo track) Has drums and music very high and the vocals are low.

I tried a few things but am not satisfied with the results.

Please suggest me , what should I do to bring the vocals loud and clear.

Thanks in advance.

[Sixpence]

Hi India001...
Could you list what you tried so we're not repeating ourselves?

[India001]

Duplicated the stereo tracks.

Cut off the High and lower frequencies with 4 Band EQ.

Increase the Mid at around 4.8 and 1.2

And mixed it with the original .Original track faders half way down.

Compressed the duplicatd tracks 1:1:3

This was what I did....

It helped but not exactly what I wanted .Want more loud and clear vocals.

[nqmike]

How about trying compressing them 2,3 maybe 4 times, then limiting? If you essentially remove all dynamics, you'll have no problem getting it to poke through your mix.

Don't be afraid to compress and limit tracks multiple times!

[Cinemafixer]

All you have to work with is a stereo mix? you don't have a discrete vocal track to work with? is that correct? If thats the case, Ive posted a technique that Ive used on drums before, but I got blasted out of the water because it was over involved and violated some users' sense of engineering taste, but it might help you. run your stereo mix out of your digi into a Dolby pro-logic decoder. If the vocals are panned mono in the stereo field, they should be more prevalent in the center-channel output of the decoder - this works particularly well on live recordings where there are extremely complex phase relationships between left and right due to real acoustics. dump the center channel output back into the digi. Then you can squash the crap out of it to remove some of the steering artifacts. There's no telling whether it will work or not. I've had great luck with it sometimes, and its been a waste of time other times. I use a Technics sh5000c - it has optical ins and outs. Used to use it on my home theatre, but bought a receiver to replace all my amplifiers and decoder. Now my decoder sits in the studio - I've found quite a few times when its helped me out - usually during mixing sessions where there were huge mistakes during tracking. Ive used it to remove unwanted snare or kick from overheads, to eliminate certain image problems with overheads - and for 2-track restoration - exactly what it sounds like you are doing. I would be happy to give it a try if you don't have a decoder....but my high speed internet is down (damned excite), so I think snail-mail is in order here....
matt

[India001]

Thanks Matt for your reply.
I do not have a Dolby pro-logic decoder.

I have to complete the project of ten songs by this weekend.

I am in India and can not send via snail mail as it will take two weeks to reach you.

Anyway thanks a lot.

I tried to compress , as Mike suggested, the track three times in succesion and got good results. but I am looking for some more advice with exact settings in plug ins.

This is a already mixed track Left and Right (Stereo).

I hope I will get a few more replies in a day or two from all those mastering gurus. [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

[nqmike]

Upon reading again- after cinema's comments. I didn't realize you have a full mix you're trying to bring the vocals out on. Good luck!


Best bet is to get the original mix and fix it.

I'm figuring that's not an option.

My compression ideas were on what to do to a lead vocal to get it to cut through a mix- not a whole master. Although- compressing the hell out of master is standard practice in rock and roll anyway.

To get the vocal to pull through a bit more.

Find the frequency range where the vocal cuts through the most. Raise those frequencies a bit. A Waves eq would be good for work this sensitive.

Then- Try some multiband compression- on the range you've raised. squash it a bit, and pull the gain up. IF it's not enough- try squashing more until you've killed it or you unbalance other things- like snare drum or guitar... a likely scenario.

This will sound nowhere near as good as getting the mix right! Be sure to make that clear to your client. People start to think engineers are miracle workers just because we have a few mysterious buttons in front of us! [img]images/icons/tongue.gif[/img]

[India001]

Thanks mike.

When I compressed earlier I tried to increase the frequencies where the vocals are.Snare was a problem here.

I have already explained the scenerio to my client and showed him the results.He understands , and is quite satisfied what ever improvement has been done to the mix.

Thanks all of you for your inputs. [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]