Clearer Sound?

[Anth0n]

I'm having trouble improving sound clarity in my music production. I started adding compressors which has helped, but are there any other steps I can take?

[btriangle]

Well there are a number of reasons to get a clearer sound. Its all based on which situation you are in.

How many tracks are you using in the song currently?

[Anth0n]

Just a couple of bass synths put together, plus a melody synth, plus some percussion. Nothing too fancy.

[bladerunner627]

It's kinda hard to understand what exactly you mean by clarity? Is there a lot of white noise you're getting that you don't want or something?

If it's a low sub-type bassline I'd recommend apply a low-pass filter. Even if it's a low freq, and especially if it's several oscillators put together you're bound to get some mid or high freq signals as a result of those waves interfering.

For your drums and percussion, they may have too long of decay. Say a snare that lasts for 2-3 seconds, this isn't necessarily a bad thing but it adds, you can easily solve this by applying an volume envelope to fade the end out much more quickly/smoothly. If you're using FL Studio it's as easy as going into the Channel Settings -> SMP and fiddling with the out knob.

I can't give you too much tips beyond that because what you've described is a bit vague.

[bladerunner627]

Also, here's some general tips. Don't worry about the mix-down while you're producing the track, it can eat your creativity.

Secondly get into a habit to ensure every sampler has it's own mixer track (I have no idea why FL doesn't automatically do this for you). Everything you add a sampler in FL just make sure the Channel Settings window is active and hit Ctrl+L.

If you're using FL AVOID using the channel volume knob, instead use it's mixer channel volume slider.

Also, if you're using FL, remove the default Fruity Limiter from the Master mixer channel. Write your tune and make sure it doesn't clip on it's on, once you're basically done then apply EQ and Compression.

If you use Maximus or w/e while putting your track together you'll likely run into the nasty issue of sounds drowning out other sounds, the high volume of one sound will cause the Maximus to kill others.

Structure the song first, once it's also done then worry about mix-down.

[Offgore]

you could try moving up to better programs, like Logic, Ableton Live, Reason.. etc. it helped me :P

[Zooloo75]

Take off the compressors.
Use an equalizer, such as the Parametric EQ2.

It's a graphical equalizer, so you can see which frequencies are being used, then just lower the frequencies that aren't being used, and try to lower some bass frequencies of your sounds if the insturment isn't going to be your bass instrument.

Not many people know what compressors are for...I use them for stronger kicks, or stronger bass, thats it. Whatever you do, do not compress your sounds. It will sound horrid.

[Zooloo75]

Also use stereo imaging, that really makes it sounds alot better, and it is as simple as adjusting a knob.
Turn stereo imaging to max on your main mixer channel.
It should make it sound more seperated and surround.

[Zooloo75]

Also, do your mixing on good speakers and subwoofer, don't use headphones unless they are very good ones.

Turn your subwoofer all the way up when mastering bass sounds. This way you can hear how loud your bass really is and if it will "duck" the other sounds of your song.
If your bass ducks the other sounds, turn the bass down. I keep my bass down to -6dB on the EQ to let my other sounds have an extra 6dB to be in.

Hi Hats - On the equalizer, cut off all freqs below 5000 and keep the rest of the freqs up from 5000-10k

Also, take a moment in the room and be silent. Try to hear for any sounds, such as a fan, or anything.
Make sure there are no noises in the room, this can make your mixing be inaccurate when equalizing.
Example - Your equalizing a supersaw, you have the fan on infront of your face in full blast. You're listening to the supersaw and are trying to get the right frequencies set up, but now you have the fan on and you hear the frequencies getting mixed in too...You are now trying to equalize the supersaw according to having a fan blowing into your ears, now you take off freq's 200-600 because you didn't hear them because the fan was blowing in your ears and basically filled in those frequencies.
So try to make the room as silent as possible to where you can only hear your music.
Now your mastering and know some simple tips to making it easier and better.

[Slipstreamer]

You can not use n00b presets that add tons of noise and un-necessary distortion to your songs and make your own damn sounds.

Or you can do some research on mastering

kthxbail0l

[nal1200]

At 7/20/09 12:03 AM, Zooloo75 wrote: Also use stereo imaging, that really makes it sounds alot better, and it is as simple as adjusting a knob.
Turn stereo imaging to max on your main mixer channel.
It should make it sound more seperated and surround.

I would strongly encourage you to not do this, Zooloo75.

All this does is create a cheap stereo effect that can actually ruin your mix. It takes the master output and makes it into two separate mono channels, panning one to the left and one to the right, with a slight phase delay. This can seriously mess up any and all panning effects and can actually create clipping because all of the sounds are now stored in one space instead of being panned individually throughout the "soundspace."

It's much better to simply pan individual mixer tracks to make the song sound more "full."

You can, of course, use the stereo separation knob to do this for individual instruments, but keep in mind that you'll always want SOME instruments to remain center-staged, like vocals. And with the stereo imaging tool, it actually can mess this up.

[nathanallenpinard]

Not many people know what compressors are for...I use them for stronger kicks, or stronger bass, thats it. Whatever you do, do not compress your sounds. It will sound horrid.

No, this is incorrect advice. Compression is meant to even out the dynamics of various tracks. Not all of them require compression, but drums, bass, and anything that peaks more than you'd like does. If your mixes are sounding horrid due to compression, then you are using the wrong settings.

Also, if you do EQ and compression, it's usually best to do EQ after compression, depending on the sound your going for.

Also, turning stereo imaging to max on a mix is NOT recommended.

And, turning your sub all the way up when mastering? Are you joking?

[Envy]

At 7/19/09 10:21 PM, Anth0n wrote: Just a couple of bass synths put together, plus a melody synth, plus some percussion. Nothing too fancy.

A couple bass synths put together? Do they blend well? Sometimes putting waveforms together that dont... go... Can effect the whole sound altogether.

Also, although someone here may kill me, try sidechaining... I don't mean like heavy benny bennassi or even my version of sidechaining. I just mean a slight sidechain on the lead so that it interferes with the kick as litle as possible. If you make certain styles, the kick tends to be one of the most prominant features in the song, but this also means its a lot more powerful so it can interfere with the rest of the song... Try to take that out of the equation.

Overall, it may have something to do with the samples you're using rather than mixing in general. Alot of times pro's get the clear sound they have from mastering the final project. Look in to buying Izotope Ozone or something.

[p4c]

A couple bass synths put together? Do they blend well? Sometimes putting waveforms together that dont... go... Can effect the whole sound altogether.

true. but also, since idk if i know exactly what ur doing, dont do chords with bass either. you get a phenomenon called "beats." if you have a for example 15 Hz signal a 20 Hz signal, your actual bass frequency will then become 5 Hz--the common denominator between the two--which will make a very muddy bass.

Also, although someone here may kill me, try sidechaining... I don't mean like heavy benny bennassi or even my version of sidechaining. I just mean a slight sidechain on the lead so that it interferes with the kick as litle as possible. If you make certain styles, the kick tends to be one of the most prominant features in the song, but this also means its a lot more powerful so it can interfere with the rest of the song... Try to take that out of the equation.

yeah. light sidechaining to bring out important parts of the mix can be a good thing--like vocals, leads, etc. NOT background stuff like usually drums, bass, and sound effects. what that will do is, to put it in simple terms, if the lead and the drums, say, are both doing something really loud, you would ensure the lead comes out of the mix and the drums sit back, by making the drums soften when the lead is doing something. it can be a good tool. set the ratio to not be too big, attack to be relatively fast, release relatively slow, and set threshhold so that sounds dont reduce by more than like 3-5 dB or so. you can find tutorials about that easily on the portal.

can u post up an mp3 or a FL file to show us what you mean? we can help better if u do that.

[nathanallenpinard]

I don't believe side chaining vocals is ideal, unless it's for a broadcast project, but even then side chaining isn't used on those anymore either, except for radio.

[architecture]

Reason being better than FL Studio? I thought Reason 3.0 sounded like absolute garbage, unless you used a crap load of fxs and or Scream 4 distortion fxs.

Reason worked well for Industrial, but for everything else, blarg.

[vanguard182]

At 7/19/09 10:57 PM, bladerunner627 wrote:

If you're using FL AVOID using the channel volume knob, instead use it's mixer channel volume slider.

just curious, what sort of difference does it make to use the channel volume knob vs. the mixer channel volume slider?

[Envy]

At 7/20/09 07:39 PM, nathanallenpinard wrote: I don't believe side chaining vocals is ideal, unless it's for a broadcast project, but even then side chaining isn't used on those anymore either, except for radio.

It depends on whats in the backround. If you're doing dance type music with a heavy bass and kick taking up alot of space, vocals will either stick out way too much or drown in the backround if you don't put a slight sidechain on it to really make the quarter notes stick out. Most likely you'll be bobbing your head to quarter notes anyways so its easier to dance to the vocals. Its true you don't want too much, but a little can make your mixing that much easier in the end.

[Mich]

At 7/19/09 11:43 PM, Sealander wrote: you could try moving up to better programs, like Logic, Ableton Live, Reason.. etc. it helped me :P

Sorry I'm bumping this for this.

But that's quite a shitty excuse here. With proper skill, you can do great things in FL.
Like this.

I think that sounds rather clear.

[paublo666]

im a guitarist so i might not be applicable

in lots of recording software you can reduce the noise in a sound just highlight the isolated sound and select by how much you want to reduce it sometime it works and sometimes it lowers the quality

it depends what audio interface you have aswell and what your setup is. try eliminating some useless plugs

[bladerunner627]

At 7/21/09 07:40 AM, MICHhimself wrote:

At 7/19/09 11:43 PM, Sealander wrote: you could try moving up to better programs, like Logic, Ableton Live, Reason.. etc. it helped me :P

Sorry I'm bumping this for this.

But that's quite a shitty excuse here. With proper skill, you can do great things in FL.
Like this.

I think that sounds rather clear.

Agreed, and FYI it is WELL KNOWN that Reason produces POORER sound quality than FL so yeah...you already lost that argument. Everyone I know that uses Reason rewires it into some other DAW like REAPER for rendering. I'm not dissing Reason, I'm just stating a fact.

Further more, I've seen some of the worst advice on this thread and would recommend anyone who reads this take any of what's been said with a GIGANTIC grain of salt, christ. I'm not trying to be condescending here but honestly some of the stuff I saw here was surprising.

"Take off the compressors.
Use an equalizer, such as the Parametric EQ2."

"Whatever you do, do not compress your sounds. It will sound horrid."
Sorry to burst your bubble but compression is VERY important, if you look at how any mastering engineers do their work you'll soon notice that a compressor is usually ALWAYS part of the mastering chain. Also, I prefer EQUO over Parametric EQ2, simply because you get WAY more bands. I'm looking for better alternatives though as I know there are some VSTs out there that offer unlimited band EQ.

"Turn stereo imaging to max on your main mixer channel.
It should make it sound more seperated and surround."
Yes stereo mixing is important but it's not as simple as you make it seem. Here's a little source from wiki "Stereo imaging is the audio jargon term used for that aspect of sound recording and reproduction concerning spatial locations of the performers, both laterally and in depth. An image is 'good' if the performers can be effortlessly located; 'bad' if there is no hope of doing so."

Making one stereo channel lag behind another isn't going to give the listener a better idea of the spacial locations of particular instruments. In fact it's probably going to sound like terrible.

"Turn your subwoofer all the way up when mastering bass sounds. This way you can hear how loud your bass really is and if it will "duck" the other sounds of your song."

Ideally you'd keep the sub at an EVEN volume with the rest.

"You can not use n00b presets"

Not everyone's an audio engineer, who cares. Even some really famous producers use presets. Your statement is especially annoying considering it's almost like saying "Don't buy a Gibson build your own damn guitar!"

With that said nal1200 and nathanallenpinard made some excellent suggestions.

At 7/20/09 09:12 PM, vanguard182 wrote:

At 7/19/09 10:57 PM, bladerunner627 wrote:

If you're using FL AVOID using the channel volume knob, instead use it's mixer channel volume slider.

just curious, what sort of difference does it make to use the channel volume knob vs. the mixer channel volume slider?

Simply put, the channel volume knob is PRE-effect and the mixer channel volume is POST-effect. In other words, if you've got a ton of FX on some mixer channel for say...some synth and it doesn't sound loud enough and you go jack up the channel volume knob you're likely to get a much different albeit louder sound. While if you would simply up the mixer channel slider your sound will stay the same but it will be louder. (This is all assuming you don't have some other stuff on the master mixer channel, which you shouldn't until you do your mixdown). This is one of FL's little quirks that I never really understood, I believe it's because FL is geared toward beginners even though it's still professional. If you look at other DAW's like Cubase there's no such thing as a sampler channel volume knob/slider (iirc), everything automatically gets tied to a mixer channel.

Wow long post but I hope that steered you guys in a better direction.