Commercial mixes

[Mr. Torture]

How is it that every mix, no matter what band, or if you like the song or not always sounds so professional? I have been recording many years and have never come close to achieving what these studios can seem to do effortlessly. No matter simple progressions, a lot of instruments or just a few. They always seem to sound bigger and better. Let's face it, with digital recording, access to vast knowledge on the Internet and room treatment, we should be able to match this quality, however I just never have been able to. It's downright depressing..

 

[Byron Dickens]

Skills.

[Alan Tubbs]

Talent for sure.  

The biggest difference I’ve found otherwise is rooms.  A tuned room really helps distinguish different instruments… more definition.  Most home recordists don’t have a spare room or two that can be tuned anyway with low ceilings etc.  and many of us have other compromises, live recording and monitoring in one room or two with too much bleed to really tell what the heck you are doing.  

Experience, which goes to skills mentioned above.

then equipment.  Even tho a basic interface and dynamic can provide a good capture these days, better quipment (and experience using it ) makes a difference, even if it is only at the margins.  Personally I try to have at least one nice transformer between me and the converter.

[reginaldStjohn]

Talent, practice, good ears, knowledge, passion and the right tools. Same thing that makes people good at any endevour.

[Mr. Torture]

I get it with the experience and all that, but I have yet to hear a mix that good out of a home or even project studio that sounds that good. I have been recording since 1989, I went through 4 tracks, reel to reel, adat’s then to DAW’s and never had a mix that good.  I scour the internet, you tube, forums and I hear home studio quality. Even local studios to me in my small city have not produced anything like that, I have even sent them songs to mix and they come out amateur. You would think over 30 years I would get lucky once with a mix.

I appreciate everyone here and have picked up a lot of knowledge over the years. I just hear mixed like that and it makes me wanna hang it all up. Been at it so long and never happy with my mixes. Just ranting…

Edited February 24, 2022 by Mr. Torture

[Lord Tim]

That's a killer song!   Nice to see a Frontiers artist with a clip that wasn't terrible for a change. Amazing roster, zero video budget! HAHA!

I think there's a few things that come into play with getting a sound like that in a home studio. The first thing is what you *think* you're hearing probably isn't.

Those drums are super triggered for a start. Getting that kind of sound out of an acoustic kit just with just mic'ing and processing is near impossible without augmentation. That already will help even the sound of the drums out, but there's also quite a lot of compression on the kit (likely parallel compression too - enough to give it mojo and consistency but still with enough transients to give the drums a nice attack).

The next thing that lets down a lot of home recording is bass management. Kicks, bass, low synth... if it's a real bass guitar or a mic'd kick drum, that's going to need to be made consistent before it even hits the master or no matter how good the song is, or the EQ, or the playing... the master will pump trying to rein it all in at the end. Getting everything consistent at the source, then at the group level is key to making it all work at the end. These mixes use LOTS of compression on nearly everything. Like heaps more than you'd ever guess.

The arrangement plays a big part in this too, as well as the performance of course. This song has been time-aligned, tuned, etc. for sure. It's certainly possible get stuff sounding fairly natural by doing that much fixing work, but you also definitely miss it in big glossy productions like this if it's not there. I think people would be surprised at exactly how much stuff is tweaked, and how unnatural it sounds in isolation, but in the context of a mix, it just works.

The last thing is the mastering. With this kind of thing, you need to mix for the mastering. Know that to get that hyped low end and high end sheen, it's going to need to be pretty slammed and lots of stuff boosted. If you do a mix where the mix itself sounds like it's nearly there and THEN add all of that processing onto the end, your drums disappear, your guitars get sludgy and too loud, your vocals get wimpy and quiet, your overheads turn into a harsh wash... You kind of have to second guess what mastering will be done on the track and compensate for it in the mix.

Rooms aside (which is definitely a big factor with getting a great drum sound, or a vocal that's not going to be a nightmare to compress later), just using what we have in CbB can easily get a slick mix like that in a home studio with an affordable interface, even without extra plugins or fancy outboard gear. Decent speakers and a well treated room is the key to getting the mix right more than anything else. If you can't hear stuff accurately, you're not going to be able to make good decisions. I think that's one of the biggest things that separates a home studio from a pro one.

Stick with it. I had a very similar path to yours with 4-tracks, tape machines, crappy early digital recording, etc. and I've had some utter disasters when it's come to recording and mixing (sadly some that were globally released, so I get to revisit my crappy old mixing skills fairly often. Yay! Sigh.) The key for me, aside from getting a properly treated studio together, was just being open to trying nutty things and absorbing as much info from the pros as possible (if you haven't done so already, check out Produce Like a Pro - there's some GREAT info on there, even for experienced engineers). I stopped caring if stuff sounded real or not at the track level if it got me the result I wanted, which pretty much everyone is doing for really slick productions like that City of Lights song has.

Good luck!