Mastering promo mixes?

Sorry if this topic has already been covered could you please point me to the thread..

I've been djing about 4 years and over that time I've recorded a few mixes. These have come straight from the turntables or cdjs and I've recorded in Audacity, split up the file and burnt to cd.

They've sounded ok but it was always tricky to setup the levels to begin with and was bound to be some fluctuation as it went through the mix. Listening to other respected dj mixes from around town I just thought they must be really amazing at what they do but have recently realised that pretty much everyone masters their mix afterwards in some form or another to get that professional sound?

So. I assume I can do this myself. How would you recommend I go about this? What program would you recommend to do it in? I have Ableton Live, can I do it in there?

Sound Forge is pretty handy and should be able to be gotten for free....

Depending on how detailed you want to get, you can do it dozens of ways...

If I record a mix straight from decks (like at a gig) I try to record it relatively low so there isn't any hard clipping...

From there I'd usually put it in Wavelab because you can drop the cursor anywhere to preview and also chain processors together... Usually I use a light multiband compressor (like Waves LinMB) to clamp down a bit on the bass and then a light limiter to raise the volume. Limiters come in many forms (the Waves L1/L2/L3 series for example) but, for DJ mixes, I've often found the Steinberg ME Loundess Maximizer sounds better. Dunno why, but it sounds fuller/warmer.. I don't try to make my mixes as loud as he latest Azuli comp tho - not worth the effort if you don't have hours and hours to spare.

So far as making volume tweaks on tracks throughout the mix - I guess Ableton would be fine. Open it up, put a volume envelope on it and then bounce it down. I'd use Acid Pro if I was doing this for sake of speed/ease of use but Albeton totally fine - as is logic etc.

TRacks ftw...!

Understanding recording levels for the win!

Yeah what Rob and Proof said. Wavelab's the go, maybe chuck a brick wall on it and normalise.

A point I may not have made quite clear re: limiting...

Don't try to make it sound as loud as a store-bought dance comp... Even using a pretty good quality limiter like Waves L2/L3 etc you wont be able to achieve it without a significant crunching unless you have reliable monitoring and good know-how. Better to be safe than sorry - it's not really that hard for people to turn the volume up on their stereo is it?

Dude.

We need to get you a new limiter.






True.

And, if you load it into many media players these days, its going to match all the relative volume levels anyhow..

I almost foresaw this post... I agree - not that I'm an expert on it... then again, if it's good enough for Rob Rives then I think it's good enough for me. He uses it.

For someone who doesn't understand mastering, the Waves L2 is probably the best bet tho Proof.

The only problem is, that it does give the 'hottest' signal out of modern limiters, so has the room for abuse, especially digital sounding abuse...

It's much better than most of the other kinds out there.


If anyone is really wanting to sort a mix out, I'd recommend getting all your track volumes sorted out before you do the mix, mix at around 80% peak, then gentle limit it so there's just a dash of limiting on the mix transients (ie. when 2 signals or more are overlapping).

Since most people don't play vinyl there's no real need for track by track detailed mastering like in some classic mix CDs.

Most pro mix CDs everyone here has listened to have probably been created with a sequencer, not a pair of CDs. I'd be hard pressed to name more than a few.
One CD that WAS done live, by one of the top house Djs in the states took him 3 whole month to perfect, so it's all a bit of hit and miss.

As with most thing, less can be more - especially mastering. Gentle as she goes.

(by 'better than most out there' I mean better in the hands of non engineering folk... there's plenty of better compressor/limiters that sound way better).

hmm I'm no expert on the subject but I have found your ability to master a mix is highly dependant on the source quality.

mike.p the first place you want to look is at your mixer and sound card because frankly, crap sound in means crap sound out no matter what you do afterwards.

If your using newer Pioneer gear and say hook everything up via the S/PDIF digital connections to a sound card with digital in it will make a marked difference to the quality of your recordings and any mastering you do will come out better as well.

If this isn't an option consider investing in a decent external sound card for recording like M-Audio anything or an Audio 4 or 8 which are also handy if you want to start playing around in Traktor or Ableton etc.

But yeah the most important thing perhaps is just to make sure your mix stays on or under 0db....easier said than done tho I find.

Yeah, I was assuming that, if the question was asked here, then something like L2 would be the likely sort of stuff available to him.

I saw an article a while back which referred to Rob Rives about his gear and he said that despite the alternatives he still made use of the L2. Now, whether that means he used it to find 1db of gain or 6 is hard to know but you can safely say he is no bunny and probably wouldn't be using something which was crap - having been an engineer for Tenaglia, Francois K, MAW and more for well over a decade as well as producing tons of his own stuff.

I would like to know though, what ppl like Deep Dish use when doing their mixes for limiting. When they did their GU mixes they required from each artist the branched tracks for every tune they used on the mix - basically redoing the mixdown/master of every single tune on their comp (so it all matched perfectly I'm guessing). Now THAT is pedantic ha ha.

Yea the way I had it set up to record was from the rca record out on my DJM800 to a 3.5 input on my macbook then into Audacity. Can't see any better way to do it until I get a external sound card like you mentioned.

I recorded a mix the other day and it actually sounded pretty good the way it is, more natural and less processed than some I've heard. Recording quieter seems to be key as you can always turn it up later. I'm still going to have a go at mastering it for practice. Just having a look at some tutorial videos on it now...

Thanks for all the advice guys

Was Rob Rives talking about the software or the hardware though?

Very different beasts.

wavelap ftw + a fuc load of patience, gain/normalise tweaks +the odd bit of copy past cut etc [ hey no live mix is perfect] some rerecord with some effects here and there etc etc .....wavelabs got alot of goodies.

agree with the levels etc i get em so they are just barely peaking at 0db at the loudest tracks then start recording