25-07-2014, 01:22 AM
In my possibly non-existent mental continuum, it sounds like you rely more on compressors than EQs for balance purposes since you're using compression by default on large chunks of the mix. Lots of people like to work that way and there are some styles/songs where I prefer to work that way, too.
Of course I stage gains and do my best to set the levels before the real processing begins much the way you do, though I often find bass guitars and vocals won't balance even roughly without a little gentle compression, and I don't find setting levels very useful until the excess bass has been filtered with EQ, since that effects the volume so much. I LOVE ReaXComp for tricky bass parts and used that for this song, too, actually... and I use either that or IQ4 almost always for upright bass
But in the end you almost always find me checking out whether or not EQ will fix a balance problem before I try using compression... not so much because I don't like to use compression, though. Maybe because I like using it too much, and it gets out of hand in mastering like I talked about for way too long before.
My general process is this: Administration (cleaning, multing, arranging, bussing, so on... I spend about twice as much on this part as actual mixing :/), Filtering (low end nonsense, ugly frequencies), Rough Balance... and then I export the rough balance and use it as a reference against my constant push-and-pull of EQ/dynamics processing. But then mastering is a whole different barrel of monkeys and I'm still learning. How about you?
Of course I stage gains and do my best to set the levels before the real processing begins much the way you do, though I often find bass guitars and vocals won't balance even roughly without a little gentle compression, and I don't find setting levels very useful until the excess bass has been filtered with EQ, since that effects the volume so much. I LOVE ReaXComp for tricky bass parts and used that for this song, too, actually... and I use either that or IQ4 almost always for upright bass
But in the end you almost always find me checking out whether or not EQ will fix a balance problem before I try using compression... not so much because I don't like to use compression, though. Maybe because I like using it too much, and it gets out of hand in mastering like I talked about for way too long before.
My general process is this: Administration (cleaning, multing, arranging, bussing, so on... I spend about twice as much on this part as actual mixing :/), Filtering (low end nonsense, ugly frequencies), Rough Balance... and then I export the rough balance and use it as a reference against my constant push-and-pull of EQ/dynamics processing. But then mastering is a whole different barrel of monkeys and I'm still learning. How about you?
I'm grateful for comments and suggestions. Thank you for listening!