Why music sounds better in the car: AN OVERVIEW TO THE MIXING AND MASTERING PROCESS

"There are many technical aspects to mixing and mastering a track. Everyone has their own techniques and opinions on the subtle details to the whole process such as using compression, eq, hard limiting, and dc offset not to mention all the different settings out there that producers use for those types of effects. If you get too caught up in the details and all those sliders, though, then you'll totally miss the point of the mixing and mastering sessions as a whole - to bring out the true intent of the song...and, of course, to make the thing sound good! Here's a few concepts, guidelines, and mix / master strategies to keep you seeing the forest through the digital audio trees.

Mixing is the first step in the chain of production. To me, mixing means adjusting the levels of each individual sound in a song so that the relative levels between the instruments are appropriate for the style of music you're producing, the instrumentation levels as a whole compliments one another, and no one instrument unintentionally gets in the way of another. When you're done with your mix, the tune sonically projects whatever intention you had when creating it. In general, achieving this goal involves adjusting the volume levels of each individual instrument and adding eq and certain effects to bring out certain frequencies and reduce others. In my experience there are a few things you need to make an effective mix, and there is a fun way to go about using these different tools to get the result you're looking for.

First of all, I do most of the mixing while I compose the track. To do this effectively, I use a pair of studio monitors and studio headphones. These two pieces of equipment are invaluable to the mixing (and mastering as we'll see in a bit) process because unlike factory speakers that come with your computer or that you buy in a retail store, studio quality speakers and headphones are designed to have a flat frequency response. This means that the speakers themselves do not color the sound of the track like computer speakers or other retail-store-type speakers that have a tendency to boost the high end and low end of the track with just their factory settings. This means that with studio monitors and headphones, you get to hear EXACTLY what the track really sounds like, or 'truth' if you will. The second advantage to mixing on studio quality monitors and headphones is that their range is generally MUCH greater than factory equipment. This means that they typically can output sounds in the entire frequency range of human hearing, which is 20 Hz (hertz) to 20 kHz (kilohertz). Again, just another way you get to seeinto the truth of the song.

Acoustically treating your room is a technique that many many pros swear by, and I encourage you to scour the net for information on that. I'd like to focus more on the concepts of the mixing and mastering process this time, though!

Even if the studio quality gear tells you the truth, though, most likely your audience is NEVER going to hear your track on them. To circumvent this, you have to listen to the mix on as many different stereos and computers as you can find. To me, this is really the most fun part of the whole process. Take it to your friends' houses and blast them away. Take it in your car and listen to it on your way to work. Plug it into your computer at work and on the $50 2-speaker stereo that your co-workers listen to the local radio station on. You'll hear subtle things in your mix that sound way different than what you heard on your monitors. THIS IS OKAY!!! You have to get used to your monitors and this is how you go about doing it. Eventually, you will know your monitors well enough that you'll be able to predict what the mix will sound like on other systems before you even play it! Pretty cool, eh?

Now, once you've given your mix a good road tour, it's time to take it to your dj and producer buddies. This is THE most important step in the process. You see, by this time you've listened to your mix so many times, you're expecting what's coming next. This kinda makes you tune out certain aspects of the track. Having a fresh set of pro ears on it is invaluable as they will hear the subtle things that you've been ignoring as well as give tons of other great mixing tips and probably compositional tips as well! Listen to your m8s m8s, and never produce in a vacuum. You'll never grow that way and the dust gets everywhere after a while. :P

Once you've got this mix that speaks every intention of the song to the listener, now it's time to enhance that thing. Enter the mastering session. If mixing a track is like washing your car to bring out it's true color, then mastering a track is like giving your ride a sweet wax job. While your mix concerns the instruments as individuals, your master is where you treat the instruments as a group. You can follow several of the same mixing steps like checking it on the monitors and studio headphones and play it on other stereos and for your music buddies; however, the mastering process has several different qualities to it that are not present in the mixing session. This is especially true since you're treating the overall mix and not singling out different instruments.

Musicians (especially young ones) spend most of their time wondering how to do something. Things like 'How do you set the knee on your compressor,' and 'How do you hard limit a mix,' inexorably come out in discussions between new producers. While all of those settings are definitely important, nothing is more important than knowing WHY you're making those settings. I hope this article has imparted an understanding of the mixing and mastering process as a whole as well as provide a simple and fun testing method to get those trax sounding great. Maybe next time you find yourself flipping the brick wall switch on your limiter you'll be doing it with intent and not because some audio magazine said to!"

e-effect
01-24-08

TECHnote

Just a follow up thing to the article. Since our readers made up of all different levels of knowledge I thought I'd give a little background on the Hertz measurement.

Hertz is a measure of the cycles of a sound per second. You can measure any cyclic object in the world in Hertz, such as a wheel, a metronome, or a pendulum, but in the case of a soundwave it's a measure of how many instances of the same cycle of the wave occur in one second. You can measure the wave at any point (peak, trough, or otherwise) but you must always measure the wave at the same point for the Hz value to be valid. The number of times that point of the wave passes the measuring point in a second is the Hertz value. That value is also called the frequency of the wave. Waves with low frequncies like those at the low end of the keyboard have low Hertz values and vice versa. Also, frequency is directly proportional to energy such that low frequencies have lower energy than higher frequencies.