JezzaRoddy said:
When I am mixing my music, I have reached a point where I can somewhat pinpoint the bad frequencies, eliminate them, and get a decent balance in my tracks. I've found how to get a bigger sound to avoid clipping in my main channels, but when I look at the side channels, they usually go way in the red. I've tried to see if this is something that is just a part of the process or if I need to actually find a way to bring those down. it usually never sounds bad to me, but that could just be my amateur ears not being able to detect issues. Now, I'm sure I need to upgrade my software because I'm currently using REAPER stock plugins, specifically the mid/side encoder and decoder, but are there any other tips besides upgrading?
Clipping is not a problem in most modern audio production software, except at the final output when the mix is encoded in a file. All intermediate audio processing is done in floating point, which means that clipping cannot occur (audio samples can be in any range). Some file formats (e.g. 32-bit float .wav) don't clip audio either. For those that do, you need to ensure the audio does not exceed 0dB at the master output, usually by inserting a limiter effect (or just turning down the volume).
I find that most people do far too much equalization. Be very certain when EQing that there is an actual problem with the audio signal, as opposed to your listening hardware (monitors or headphones) or room. It's easy to make something sound good with one setup, but unless your listening setup is perfectly flat (few are), you will actually be degrading audio quality. If you boost, make it a wide bell filter or shelf filter. If you cut, make it as narrow as possible. Check the raw audio with a spectrum analyzer to make sure there is too much before cutting frequencies. In most cases with sampled instruments or synths, little EQ is required. Only with real microphones on real instruments will you need to do any significant EQ, since you are dealing with raw audio signals that haven't already been EQ'd by someone else.
The only kind of EQ I do commonly is to roll off low frequencies. Generally, I will put a high-pass filter on every track, with the cutoff frequency and slope depending on the instrument. Some examples: kick drum (40Hz), bass guitar (100Hz (yes, that high)), snare drum (120Hz), guitar (160Hz), vocals (200Hz), drum overheads (400Hz). If an instrument doesn't have musically important energy in lower frequencies, remove it with the high pass filter to clean up the mix.
The next thing to be concerned with is dynamics (compression). I generally first independently compress tracks with lots of unwanted loudness variation (e.g. vocals). Then, I submix groups of instruments (e.g. guitars, strings, drums, vocals) to their own buses, so that I can apply dynamics processing to all tracks in the bus together. Then, those buses get mixed together at the master output, where more processing may be applied (limiter). This hierarchical compression scheme helps to keep volume consistent and avoids fluctuations in level of the different instruments. For instance, bus compression of vocals automatically keeps vocal volume consistent, regardless if there is 1, 2, 3 or 4 people singing at once. Like with EQ, you want to careful to not over do it with compression. Good default starting settings are 10ms attack, 20ms release, 2:1 ratio. Generally the gain reduction shouldn't be more than about 6dB or else you are doing too much.
If you were to upgrade at all, I would just get some quality plugins. Highest priority would be a good lookahead limiter, followed by a good compressor, and probably a good reverb. For mastering and bus compression, a good multiband compressor is useful to automatically balance frequencies. There's no sense in spending money on EQ plugins, since there is fundamentally little difference between them (it's just math). Linear phase EQ generally sounds bad (due to non-causality) and isn't worth it. Reaper seems good.
My background: I have 20+ years experience with audio production, mixing/mastering, and live sound, and a PhD in acoustics simulation. I spent 7 years creating my own custom DAW software from with 60+ pro-quality effects, which I now use for all my recording projects.
