Mixing / Production

When I'm happy with a mix, I usually bounce it down and listen to it on my home stereo, MP3 player, car stereo, and round a ...

Over the last few years I've collected quite a few sample libraries in Giga format, but now that Tascam have discontinued...

I run a cheap and very cheerful recording studio in Cambridgeshire, England, and I am constantly asked whether I do mastering...

I'm doing a demo for a local act and we've tracked layer upon layer of overdubbed guitars: there are 10 rhythm parts with...

I have noticed that, when matching up my tracks with more professional productions, my songs are lacking a certain clarity....

I've recently started working at a classical radio station in my area, and I was fully expecting to have to deal with mono...

I've been wondering what order people use when mixing. Mixing the instruments in order of priority? Mixing the rhythm section ...

I've got a fairly basic home setup based around a Yamaha AW16G multitracker, but I've seen an Aphex Aural Exciter and wondered...

I've recorded a couple of songs with just three tracks: acoustic guitar, bass and lead vocal. I'll obviously pan both bass and lead vocals in the centre.

Over the last couple of years Ive mixed quite a lot of songs, but only single tracks here and there. Now Im about to mix an album, and Im wondering what would be the best way to do it. The recording has been done in a very decent studio, and they have been adding some programmed elements afterwards. I want to avoid a situation where I mix all the tracks so that they sound great on their own, only to realise later that they wont fit together as a whole. How would you approach this? Would you mix one track, and use it as a reference for the other mixes? Would you re-use some of the settings (for example, use the same plug-ins for the same tracks, with some tweaks)? Sadly, the budget doesnt allow for a separate mastering job, so I would have to do some limiting and final tweaks myself.

Parallel compression is something Im just beginning to explore. Its not something Ive used much in the past, but Im seeing its potential for beefing up groups and whole mixes. However, if I set up a compressor on a send channel, rather than processing the whole signal via an insert effect, wont I get phasing? Also, if I set up compressors on several send channels and filter out certain frequencies on each channel (for example, roll off everything but the low-mid range on one, roll off everything but the high-mid range on another), then wouldnt this just be the same thing as multi-band compression?

SOS reader Gordon Staines of Cheshire emailed us because he was having difficulty using NIs Guitar Rig 3 with his Pro Tools M-Powered setup. Using NIs Rig Kontrol USB interface and controller, with Guitar Rig 3 running in stand-alone mode, he was able to get exactly what he wanted from it, “no latency, and it sounds great live just plugged into the phono inputs on my Marshall AS100D acoustic amp, of all things, or even when I just have the headphones in the controller for practicing. My problem is getting the same sounds out when laying down tracks.”

I have someone coming into my studio to do some recording and I'm looking for a way to achieve a 12‑string guitar sound for...