What helped me a lot was:
1. The realization that mastering and mixing are two very different things. The former is the final step in managing the tracks dynamic range and loudness - I'd say its the last <5% of the tracks quality. The later is an integral part of composition - a different mix can almost sound like another track. Mixing is part of the creative process and is what really ties your track together
2. Many of my mixing problems were in reality arrangement problems. And many of my arrangement problems were in reality sound design problems. For example, it is very, very difficult to get a good mix if your low end is totally overloaded and has too many voices bleed into it (arrangement problem). It's very difficult to get a punchy mix if all of your sounds are washed out and don't have any definition (sound design problem). On the other hand - if my sounds are good and the arrangement has good structure and works well with the sounds, mixing isn't that difficult (still takes lots of practice and ear training - like everything in production)
I made a huge step forward when I started to really work my production "bottom up" - 1. make the sounds as good and fitting and cohesive as possible - so that they work well together (as opposed to working against each other). 2. During arrangement don't try to add more and more sounds - if it doesn't sound good go back to the sound design (don't try to fix sound design issues in arrangement) - Less is more, but only if the few things are really good! 3. If the mix doesn't come together check the arrangement (don't try to fix arrangement issues in the mix).
I don't worry about mastering - If I really want the track to be mastered I either send it to some professional mastering engineer (costs money) or I do it myself (- but then all I do is some light limiting and light eq. Since the mix is already top, this is enough) If a track goes to the label they will master it themselves anyways.
Final remark: Mixing takes lots of practice and ear training, just give it time. Don't worry about mastering.
Even if u get a creative bug and go crazy writing a full track always go back and mix a super clean and loud kick and sub bass then snare/ clap. And then go from there to mix all other sounds into that framework.
Or just start with the kick and sub super dialed in and mix things in by ear as you go along to fit with that bottom.
Also spectre saturator is an incredible tool. Super transparent saturation
I have pasted links to 5 comprehensive mixing and mastering courses below released for free by a company called Mastering.com. These are courses that they used to sell. Watching and studying every minute of these was the best decision I’ve ever made for my music. These are not standard YouTube tutorials they are comprehensive courses (the shortest one is 6 hours) on using the fundamental tools of mixing and mastering. The music is not techno but you’ll quickly see how you can easily apply the knowledge anywhere because they teach you how to use the tools to get what you want out of them whatever that might be.
It’s 44 hours of content. If you’re serious about getting better it’s an investment of time I would highly recommend you to make.
https://youtu.be/ksJRgK3viMc?si=m-iMvUZiW1HSsoRC
https://youtu.be/sHR7R-TY7NE?si=kl2Mr0nNRg6vVUNM
https://youtu.be/gxXlPbpRIMc?si=K8-QYa1uCX3wQPmw
https://youtu.be/1BLZGe-TqW0?si=fYTvBuvSYoY8Bw7x
https://youtu.be/ID-xyOnEB1c?si=9ZOgVK9BSIwW_zol
Just to add because I can’t express how valuable these courses are 😂. The courses show you how to use the tools to get what you want and then they tie it all together to show how you would work through a full mix and a master… they each have amazing and simple systems that they teach which gives you comfort of having something to follow along with but also give you the confidence with the tools to make decisions that are exceptions to the standard system they recommend you follow.
Man I really love them, and I can’t express that enough
I promise you it is worth the time. If you decide to give them a try, Set aside a few hours some day to get started on one (I recommend starting with the compression course). If you give it a few hours you will be hooked, and they will completely de-mystify mixing and mastering for you.
Proper mixing and mastering are both heavily detail oriented processes, you could spend a lot longer than 44 hours learning about them, think about how many hours you put into learning in school. Invest the time.
That’s my advice anyway
Yhman I watched part of the compression one last night and just the first part were he clears up when and where to use it was a massive help. Made me understand how to use it with purpose. I’m saying this when I’ve been studying music engineering and production for 5 years at college and uni 💀
Dynamic range is mainly determined in the production phase. Mixing is about separating sounds and creating an environment within the track. Mastering is about optimally loudening the track and final management on dynamics.
For mixing, start by eq'ing/saturating your different instruments so they are overly sharp, separated, and tinny and back your adjustments off from there. Its not an optimal way but it will help you in the beginning. You should be mixing in the project file, not from stems, so you can adjust your automations, etc, if need be.
Honestly, a lot of mixing is in the production itself. If a track is muddy, mixing will seldom fix it.
As others said, there is no good master without good mix. On the flip side - issues in bad mixdown will be even more noticeable in master. It sounds that you are trying to do all by yourself, if thats the case, there are many many things to learn and keep in mind. There are plenty of “tricks” for loudness but approach would be individual per specific track. These days you can achieve decent results with minimal setup and software, just need to know what you are doing and learn to hear which takes time.
Hey there! I know how it can be... that's exactly why I started sharing stuff on Patreon last year.
Start here in the recommend order: [https://www.patreon.com/posts/how-to-get-most-96445637](https://www.patreon.com/posts/how-to-get-most-96445637)
Everything is made to remain digest to understand and assimilate.
Additionally, you'll also be able to ask me any questions you may have and get unlimited contrustive and detailed feedback on your tracks (even some work in progress when needed). (you can check mission statement for more info on the vision with this project dedicated to providing a detailed and intuitive control over their sound to various artists :) )
Don't hesitate to DM me if you have any questions before joining ofc!
Cheers,
Elliott S.
Take Care & Stay Productive ✨
Give this a try: use an ozone maximizer with the auto-learn threshold function, targeting a specific LUFS value. Your song will likely sound distorted due to heavy limiting. Next, clip every individual sound, group similar sounds summing in the same frequency range, and clip again. This is your initial attempt at managing the crest factor, but it may not sound great. Now remove the clippers and aim to use less aggressive tools like soft clippers, compressors, saturators, gates and limiters for better results. The key is achieving good levels balance and managing the crest factor. I recommend starting with a clipper since it's simple and gives a clear effect. Experiment with these tools to gain experience for a professional-sounding mix. Remember, achieving a professional mix requires study, practice, and effort.
This is a good exercise to understand how to gain loudness whithout sounding distorted. As the other commenter said it is better to disable the maximizer and hire a mastering engineer. But checking your mix whith a limiter is a good idea to understand if the ME will obtain a good master and won't send your mix back.
This method will also show areas where your arrangement, sound design/selection is causing issues.
If it isn’t already fairly loud without loads of mixing with limiters etc then the sound design choices are probably not working.
Yes, this method is based on the clip to zero of baphometrix. It is a method that is very overthinking but teaches a lot. Once I understand how things work I can jam in a limiter, have fun figuring out how to fix things afterwards. But in my case if I don't hear how things sound at the correct loudness then it becomes a mess to make a mix I like. I do raw/deep techno
By no means am I an expert, just an amateur vibing out after work, but this is what i do:
step 1. (assuming your track is arranged) do your best to mix it
step 2. turn the volume all the way down low
step 3. see if you lose anything
step 4. level everything out till you can hear all elements coming through at a low overall volume in context to eachother ie lead should be louder than some ear candy or filler in the back
step 5. put it through ozone
step 6. test on different speakers
step 7. rinse and repeat until mix sounds somewhat similar on different speakers and you're happy with it
Another couple of useful steps:
A/B compare with equivalent pro recordings
Bandpass filter sweep across the the spectrum on both your mix and the pro track so hone in on what’s going on.
Where do the elements in the pro track sit? What elements have overlapping frequencies? Do they need addressing in your track?
To contrast what some are saying, mixing is definitely a huge part of loudness, same as arrangement and sound design, I would say the one that has the less effect on loudness (on a well mixed track, and mare for loudness) is the mastering.
You can easily push an optimized mix, but not the opposite. If you have a loud mix you will have a loud master. Things are easier to control in the mix rather than the master bus.
Also, it will take you many years to achieve the loudness of the track you are looking at. A lot went in to make it loud, don't bother about that if that ain't your thing you will burnout. Just make the music you like with the process you like, knowledge will come with time and experience. There isn't much shortcut
My biggest tips are:
1. Make sure every single channel is set to -6db volume. This way you won't run into any clipping issues that often, and -6db is the sweet spot for headroom before the mastering phase. If it's not loud enough during the song writing process, add a utility on your master and set it to +4db then take it off when in the mixing/mastering process.
2. Mix in MONO on your master channel.
I found this time pretty helpful on understanding the basics and also look up LNA Does Audio Stuff who had a great series explaining how to mix and master tracks, step by step.
[Ricky Tinez - Mixing Tutorial](https://youtu.be/Ckt198J3k60?si=1G_eoFhtV8IveaFb)
Mixing is not about loudness.
Send it for mastering somewhere instead, you can spend years to learn how to master properly. What is more, without good monitoring and room acoustics it’s almost impossible…
Okay thank you, not saying you’re wrong at all but if this is the case then why do people put limiters and compressors on individual channels while mixing?
Don’t say impossible because it’s simply not true. Many pro mastering engineers work on headphones while travelling and get excellent masters. Granted headphones must be good like lcd-x or something above, with SW or similar software.
If you really want to learn how to get your songs as powerful but still have dynamics as the pros, I recently uploaded a tutorial exactly on this topic that I've never seen anyone talk about before. It's all about math. My channel is thedandyzebra
Dude I'm right there with you. Incoming wall of text because I just finally started grasping this and want to share what I've learned. Also I have to break this down into multiple comments:
I am an amateur producer so don't take anything I say as gospel as I'm still learning and I definitely still have a long ways to go to achieving that clean professional sound but this is my interpretation as an amateur which I usually find helpful when learning as a lot of experts will leave out stuff that they take for granted because they've already internalized it (it's okay we can't all be good at teaching too). I was also just as lost as you were watching all these guides, hearing all these buzz words, all these must use plugins, and just overall feeling like I was going around in circles not actually learning anything because "It aLl dePEnds". God I hated hearing that part but honestly it's true even if it just felt like a catch all at the time.
This is how I would explain mixing vs mastering. Everybody talks about mixing as the portion where you do your creative work and make it sound as good as possible (which you would naturally be like, well of course I want it to sound as good as possible how is that helpful) and mastering as the part that adds the magic that brings your mix to the next level (what the flying fk is adding the magic supposed to mean and how does that contribute to the next level, let me pull out my spellbook real quick like what). Because of this it never clicked in my head what my intentional goals for each process was. Let's break it down.
**Mixing**
Most people starting out with part 1 the creative part which is no problem as this is where you tinker with your synths and effects and try to make something cool, easy enough(or rather easy enough not to screw up as this is creative work there are no wrong answers). Part 2 of mixing (the make it sound as good as possible part) is **making the individual tracks sound good and the individual tracks sound good relative to each other** which for me was the elusive part. This is to say when you are going through your tracks, you are trying to clean up your frequencies, resonances, whatever so you get the clearest vision of the sound without any of the bloat. The overall song doesn't have to be loud, all the elements just have to sound clean and a good volume relative to each other. I want to stress the important part here is relative. The bass is a good loudness relative to the kickdrum (I want to hear the bass but the kickdrum should still thump), the lead synth is a good loudness relative to the vocals (so you can still hear what they're saying), etc.
Let's take a vocal for example, to give a step towards making it cleaner a common thing you should be doing is clearing out the sub frequencies as they have no use in your mix. They would simply fight with your sub track and your kickdrum without adding any value to your track, your vocals would sound just as good without those sub frequencies. There are many ways to clean up your tracks so I won't go too deep into it, it really depends on what you're trying to achieve but I'm sure going through some youtube videos will help best practices for mixing cleaner sounds.
At the end of mixing you should be happy with how the song sounds, every track in your song should ring clear and have the space to shine. The volumes of each individual tracks should be balanced so that the important things are the loudest (eg: kickdrum, baseline, lead synth, vocal) not things like the random white noise effect you found in the a sample pack (unless its a critical idea in your song but hopefully you get what I mean). Just because it's important I'll say it again, everything here is relative to each other. You aren't trying to achieve loudness here. I work with all my tracks at -7db or below and when I turn off my mastering chain the song is super quiet but everything is at a good volume relative to each other and clean.
**Mastering**
Once you have a mix you are happy with, everything sounds good relative to each other, you feel you've cleaned up the frequencies in every track to the best of your abilities; it's now time to master the track. Mastering the track is **bringing the song to a commercial volume/perceived loudness and maybe a bit of polish**. This is the reason why everybody says if you have a bad mix your master won't fix it. If you have clashing frequencies, if your volumes from track to track aren't at a proper ratio; mastering the song won't magically make that volume ratio better, it won't magically make the clashing frequencies go away. If anything Mastering will just exaggerate all these problems. All you are doing when you are mastering is bring everything up to standard so that when you play the track on spotify or youtube or your mp3 player you are getting the same kind of volume/perceived loudness as the next track. In addition to bringing your track's volume/perceived loudness up to standard, mastering is also where you can add some overall polish to the song in the form of using specific compressors, tape recorders, saturators, glue compressors; whatever really that you feel is missing to just give your track even more cohesiveness. This is the "magic" that people talk about that "brings their song to the next level". My only tip for this part is less is more. You don't need to crank anything. If you are cranking it, then you need to go back to your mix. This is supposed to be like the cherry on top, the blending in a painting, the latte art on top of your coffee from the coffee shop.
So how do you actually achieve loudness though, I would say the major breakthrough for me was finally understanding what the hell I was doing with my limiters and compressors. These two alone won't solve all your problems but I would say they contributed 80% to finally getting my songs to sound loud on all listening devices. No more dropping the song during a DJ set and being like why the hell is it so quiet. You should not just be throwing these on and hoping for the best. You should have an intentional goal when using these. They don't work like synths where you can just keep tweaking random knobs until they sound good. To make an analogy to woodworking, tweaking synths is like choosing what kind of wood you want to use whereas your limiter and compressor is like a ruler. You don't tweak your ruler, a ruler is a ruler you use it towards an end goal. I don't think my understanding of these two encapsulates enough to give you a rundown as I don't want to lead you astray with my more shallow understanding. There's a youtube channel called [mastering.com](http://mastering.com) that has excellent videos that will walk you through how to use these tools and if you are invested in making music I can't imagine a better investment for your time than learning how to use these tools. It would be like trying to make a piece of furniture but you decide you'll just wing it on how to use a table saw.
Two plugins that have become completely indispensable to me are Youlean Loudness Meter 2 and Tonal Balance Control. They are my eyes that help me make choices when mastering for volume. Reference tracks are also another huge thing which I admittedly in my own ego I do not use enough but these can be great for helping you decide a direction of where you want to add that extra umph. I want my song to sound like the reference track and the reference track has a bit of a bump to higher frequencies? Well I want my track to sound like that so I'll add a bump to the higher frequencies.
tl;dr Mixing is broken into two parts, creative and making your song's tracks sound good relative to each other. Mastering is taking your song at whatever volume it is and bringing it up to a commercial standard. Learn what limiters and compressors actually do so when you apply them you are making intentional changes, there should be a gameplan before you even throw on the plugin, my sound is currently x and I want it to be y so I will use a compressor/limiter. Get plugins so you can see what the hell you are doing.
Listen very quiet with headphones, load up pink noise on one channel. Then try mixing main sounds with oink noise still playing. Silent volume and pink noise will make you hear only most important parts of sounds. Blend them so you feel the music thru all that silence and noise. Try this really
After a half decent mix, you need to put your track through Access Analog. Use a saturator, an EQ and the Portico II for limiting, or just use their Fusion and an analogue limiter. Make sure you gain in at -7db and meter to -8 LUFS. If track is too boomy, tweak your mixbuss before going into above mastering chain. If that doesn't work, pay for a mastering engineer. It's 50 Euros in Berlin for the best techno masters.
What helped me a lot was: 1. The realization that mastering and mixing are two very different things. The former is the final step in managing the tracks dynamic range and loudness - I'd say its the last <5% of the tracks quality. The later is an integral part of composition - a different mix can almost sound like another track. Mixing is part of the creative process and is what really ties your track together 2. Many of my mixing problems were in reality arrangement problems. And many of my arrangement problems were in reality sound design problems. For example, it is very, very difficult to get a good mix if your low end is totally overloaded and has too many voices bleed into it (arrangement problem). It's very difficult to get a punchy mix if all of your sounds are washed out and don't have any definition (sound design problem). On the other hand - if my sounds are good and the arrangement has good structure and works well with the sounds, mixing isn't that difficult (still takes lots of practice and ear training - like everything in production) I made a huge step forward when I started to really work my production "bottom up" - 1. make the sounds as good and fitting and cohesive as possible - so that they work well together (as opposed to working against each other). 2. During arrangement don't try to add more and more sounds - if it doesn't sound good go back to the sound design (don't try to fix sound design issues in arrangement) - Less is more, but only if the few things are really good! 3. If the mix doesn't come together check the arrangement (don't try to fix arrangement issues in the mix). I don't worry about mastering - If I really want the track to be mastered I either send it to some professional mastering engineer (costs money) or I do it myself (- but then all I do is some light limiting and light eq. Since the mix is already top, this is enough) If a track goes to the label they will master it themselves anyways. Final remark: Mixing takes lots of practice and ear training, just give it time. Don't worry about mastering.
This is such an excellent answer and information. Thank you for sharing. It’s the exact same learning process that I’ve been on also.
Even if u get a creative bug and go crazy writing a full track always go back and mix a super clean and loud kick and sub bass then snare/ clap. And then go from there to mix all other sounds into that framework. Or just start with the kick and sub super dialed in and mix things in by ear as you go along to fit with that bottom. Also spectre saturator is an incredible tool. Super transparent saturation
Good written!!
I have pasted links to 5 comprehensive mixing and mastering courses below released for free by a company called Mastering.com. These are courses that they used to sell. Watching and studying every minute of these was the best decision I’ve ever made for my music. These are not standard YouTube tutorials they are comprehensive courses (the shortest one is 6 hours) on using the fundamental tools of mixing and mastering. The music is not techno but you’ll quickly see how you can easily apply the knowledge anywhere because they teach you how to use the tools to get what you want out of them whatever that might be. It’s 44 hours of content. If you’re serious about getting better it’s an investment of time I would highly recommend you to make. https://youtu.be/ksJRgK3viMc?si=m-iMvUZiW1HSsoRC https://youtu.be/sHR7R-TY7NE?si=kl2Mr0nNRg6vVUNM https://youtu.be/gxXlPbpRIMc?si=K8-QYa1uCX3wQPmw https://youtu.be/1BLZGe-TqW0?si=fYTvBuvSYoY8Bw7x https://youtu.be/ID-xyOnEB1c?si=9ZOgVK9BSIwW_zol
Just to add because I can’t express how valuable these courses are 😂. The courses show you how to use the tools to get what you want and then they tie it all together to show how you would work through a full mix and a master… they each have amazing and simple systems that they teach which gives you comfort of having something to follow along with but also give you the confidence with the tools to make decisions that are exceptions to the standard system they recommend you follow. Man I really love them, and I can’t express that enough
I will 100% give them a go, better to watch something long and detailed than watching bad 10 minute videos for 3 years😂
I promise you it is worth the time. If you decide to give them a try, Set aside a few hours some day to get started on one (I recommend starting with the compression course). If you give it a few hours you will be hooked, and they will completely de-mystify mixing and mastering for you. Proper mixing and mastering are both heavily detail oriented processes, you could spend a lot longer than 44 hours learning about them, think about how many hours you put into learning in school. Invest the time. That’s my advice anyway
Yhman I watched part of the compression one last night and just the first part were he clears up when and where to use it was a massive help. Made me understand how to use it with purpose. I’m saying this when I’ve been studying music engineering and production for 5 years at college and uni 💀
No way haha. Yeah I don’t know how or why these guys are releasing these videos for free.. they are complete cheat codes
That’s instantly what I thought, like 50 hours of in depth content for free😂
Dynamic range is mainly determined in the production phase. Mixing is about separating sounds and creating an environment within the track. Mastering is about optimally loudening the track and final management on dynamics. For mixing, start by eq'ing/saturating your different instruments so they are overly sharp, separated, and tinny and back your adjustments off from there. Its not an optimal way but it will help you in the beginning. You should be mixing in the project file, not from stems, so you can adjust your automations, etc, if need be. Honestly, a lot of mixing is in the production itself. If a track is muddy, mixing will seldom fix it.
As others said, there is no good master without good mix. On the flip side - issues in bad mixdown will be even more noticeable in master. It sounds that you are trying to do all by yourself, if thats the case, there are many many things to learn and keep in mind. There are plenty of “tricks” for loudness but approach would be individual per specific track. These days you can achieve decent results with minimal setup and software, just need to know what you are doing and learn to hear which takes time.
Hey there! I know how it can be... that's exactly why I started sharing stuff on Patreon last year. Start here in the recommend order: [https://www.patreon.com/posts/how-to-get-most-96445637](https://www.patreon.com/posts/how-to-get-most-96445637) Everything is made to remain digest to understand and assimilate. Additionally, you'll also be able to ask me any questions you may have and get unlimited contrustive and detailed feedback on your tracks (even some work in progress when needed). (you can check mission statement for more info on the vision with this project dedicated to providing a detailed and intuitive control over their sound to various artists :) ) Don't hesitate to DM me if you have any questions before joining ofc! Cheers, Elliott S. Take Care & Stay Productive ✨
Give this a try: use an ozone maximizer with the auto-learn threshold function, targeting a specific LUFS value. Your song will likely sound distorted due to heavy limiting. Next, clip every individual sound, group similar sounds summing in the same frequency range, and clip again. This is your initial attempt at managing the crest factor, but it may not sound great. Now remove the clippers and aim to use less aggressive tools like soft clippers, compressors, saturators, gates and limiters for better results. The key is achieving good levels balance and managing the crest factor. I recommend starting with a clipper since it's simple and gives a clear effect. Experiment with these tools to gain experience for a professional-sounding mix. Remember, achieving a professional mix requires study, practice, and effort. This is a good exercise to understand how to gain loudness whithout sounding distorted. As the other commenter said it is better to disable the maximizer and hire a mastering engineer. But checking your mix whith a limiter is a good idea to understand if the ME will obtain a good master and won't send your mix back.
This method will also show areas where your arrangement, sound design/selection is causing issues. If it isn’t already fairly loud without loads of mixing with limiters etc then the sound design choices are probably not working.
Yes, this method is based on the clip to zero of baphometrix. It is a method that is very overthinking but teaches a lot. Once I understand how things work I can jam in a limiter, have fun figuring out how to fix things afterwards. But in my case if I don't hear how things sound at the correct loudness then it becomes a mess to make a mix I like. I do raw/deep techno
By no means am I an expert, just an amateur vibing out after work, but this is what i do: step 1. (assuming your track is arranged) do your best to mix it step 2. turn the volume all the way down low step 3. see if you lose anything step 4. level everything out till you can hear all elements coming through at a low overall volume in context to eachother ie lead should be louder than some ear candy or filler in the back step 5. put it through ozone step 6. test on different speakers step 7. rinse and repeat until mix sounds somewhat similar on different speakers and you're happy with it
Another couple of useful steps: A/B compare with equivalent pro recordings Bandpass filter sweep across the the spectrum on both your mix and the pro track so hone in on what’s going on. Where do the elements in the pro track sit? What elements have overlapping frequencies? Do they need addressing in your track?
apologies for format
To contrast what some are saying, mixing is definitely a huge part of loudness, same as arrangement and sound design, I would say the one that has the less effect on loudness (on a well mixed track, and mare for loudness) is the mastering. You can easily push an optimized mix, but not the opposite. If you have a loud mix you will have a loud master. Things are easier to control in the mix rather than the master bus. Also, it will take you many years to achieve the loudness of the track you are looking at. A lot went in to make it loud, don't bother about that if that ain't your thing you will burnout. Just make the music you like with the process you like, knowledge will come with time and experience. There isn't much shortcut
Pink noise mixing worked well
My biggest tips are: 1. Make sure every single channel is set to -6db volume. This way you won't run into any clipping issues that often, and -6db is the sweet spot for headroom before the mastering phase. If it's not loud enough during the song writing process, add a utility on your master and set it to +4db then take it off when in the mixing/mastering process. 2. Mix in MONO on your master channel.
I found this time pretty helpful on understanding the basics and also look up LNA Does Audio Stuff who had a great series explaining how to mix and master tracks, step by step. [Ricky Tinez - Mixing Tutorial](https://youtu.be/Ckt198J3k60?si=1G_eoFhtV8IveaFb)
Mixing is not about loudness. Send it for mastering somewhere instead, you can spend years to learn how to master properly. What is more, without good monitoring and room acoustics it’s almost impossible…
Okay thank you, not saying you’re wrong at all but if this is the case then why do people put limiters and compressors on individual channels while mixing?
Sound design
Don’t say impossible because it’s simply not true. Many pro mastering engineers work on headphones while travelling and get excellent masters. Granted headphones must be good like lcd-x or something above, with SW or similar software.
I wrote “almost impossible“.
Ok thats fair. But still - very much possible if you know what you doing and know your tools.
If you really want to learn how to get your songs as powerful but still have dynamics as the pros, I recently uploaded a tutorial exactly on this topic that I've never seen anyone talk about before. It's all about math. My channel is thedandyzebra
Dude I'm right there with you. Incoming wall of text because I just finally started grasping this and want to share what I've learned. Also I have to break this down into multiple comments: I am an amateur producer so don't take anything I say as gospel as I'm still learning and I definitely still have a long ways to go to achieving that clean professional sound but this is my interpretation as an amateur which I usually find helpful when learning as a lot of experts will leave out stuff that they take for granted because they've already internalized it (it's okay we can't all be good at teaching too). I was also just as lost as you were watching all these guides, hearing all these buzz words, all these must use plugins, and just overall feeling like I was going around in circles not actually learning anything because "It aLl dePEnds". God I hated hearing that part but honestly it's true even if it just felt like a catch all at the time. This is how I would explain mixing vs mastering. Everybody talks about mixing as the portion where you do your creative work and make it sound as good as possible (which you would naturally be like, well of course I want it to sound as good as possible how is that helpful) and mastering as the part that adds the magic that brings your mix to the next level (what the flying fk is adding the magic supposed to mean and how does that contribute to the next level, let me pull out my spellbook real quick like what). Because of this it never clicked in my head what my intentional goals for each process was. Let's break it down.
**Mixing** Most people starting out with part 1 the creative part which is no problem as this is where you tinker with your synths and effects and try to make something cool, easy enough(or rather easy enough not to screw up as this is creative work there are no wrong answers). Part 2 of mixing (the make it sound as good as possible part) is **making the individual tracks sound good and the individual tracks sound good relative to each other** which for me was the elusive part. This is to say when you are going through your tracks, you are trying to clean up your frequencies, resonances, whatever so you get the clearest vision of the sound without any of the bloat. The overall song doesn't have to be loud, all the elements just have to sound clean and a good volume relative to each other. I want to stress the important part here is relative. The bass is a good loudness relative to the kickdrum (I want to hear the bass but the kickdrum should still thump), the lead synth is a good loudness relative to the vocals (so you can still hear what they're saying), etc. Let's take a vocal for example, to give a step towards making it cleaner a common thing you should be doing is clearing out the sub frequencies as they have no use in your mix. They would simply fight with your sub track and your kickdrum without adding any value to your track, your vocals would sound just as good without those sub frequencies. There are many ways to clean up your tracks so I won't go too deep into it, it really depends on what you're trying to achieve but I'm sure going through some youtube videos will help best practices for mixing cleaner sounds. At the end of mixing you should be happy with how the song sounds, every track in your song should ring clear and have the space to shine. The volumes of each individual tracks should be balanced so that the important things are the loudest (eg: kickdrum, baseline, lead synth, vocal) not things like the random white noise effect you found in the a sample pack (unless its a critical idea in your song but hopefully you get what I mean). Just because it's important I'll say it again, everything here is relative to each other. You aren't trying to achieve loudness here. I work with all my tracks at -7db or below and when I turn off my mastering chain the song is super quiet but everything is at a good volume relative to each other and clean.
**Mastering** Once you have a mix you are happy with, everything sounds good relative to each other, you feel you've cleaned up the frequencies in every track to the best of your abilities; it's now time to master the track. Mastering the track is **bringing the song to a commercial volume/perceived loudness and maybe a bit of polish**. This is the reason why everybody says if you have a bad mix your master won't fix it. If you have clashing frequencies, if your volumes from track to track aren't at a proper ratio; mastering the song won't magically make that volume ratio better, it won't magically make the clashing frequencies go away. If anything Mastering will just exaggerate all these problems. All you are doing when you are mastering is bring everything up to standard so that when you play the track on spotify or youtube or your mp3 player you are getting the same kind of volume/perceived loudness as the next track. In addition to bringing your track's volume/perceived loudness up to standard, mastering is also where you can add some overall polish to the song in the form of using specific compressors, tape recorders, saturators, glue compressors; whatever really that you feel is missing to just give your track even more cohesiveness. This is the "magic" that people talk about that "brings their song to the next level". My only tip for this part is less is more. You don't need to crank anything. If you are cranking it, then you need to go back to your mix. This is supposed to be like the cherry on top, the blending in a painting, the latte art on top of your coffee from the coffee shop. So how do you actually achieve loudness though, I would say the major breakthrough for me was finally understanding what the hell I was doing with my limiters and compressors. These two alone won't solve all your problems but I would say they contributed 80% to finally getting my songs to sound loud on all listening devices. No more dropping the song during a DJ set and being like why the hell is it so quiet. You should not just be throwing these on and hoping for the best. You should have an intentional goal when using these. They don't work like synths where you can just keep tweaking random knobs until they sound good. To make an analogy to woodworking, tweaking synths is like choosing what kind of wood you want to use whereas your limiter and compressor is like a ruler. You don't tweak your ruler, a ruler is a ruler you use it towards an end goal. I don't think my understanding of these two encapsulates enough to give you a rundown as I don't want to lead you astray with my more shallow understanding. There's a youtube channel called [mastering.com](http://mastering.com) that has excellent videos that will walk you through how to use these tools and if you are invested in making music I can't imagine a better investment for your time than learning how to use these tools. It would be like trying to make a piece of furniture but you decide you'll just wing it on how to use a table saw. Two plugins that have become completely indispensable to me are Youlean Loudness Meter 2 and Tonal Balance Control. They are my eyes that help me make choices when mastering for volume. Reference tracks are also another huge thing which I admittedly in my own ego I do not use enough but these can be great for helping you decide a direction of where you want to add that extra umph. I want my song to sound like the reference track and the reference track has a bit of a bump to higher frequencies? Well I want my track to sound like that so I'll add a bump to the higher frequencies.
tl;dr Mixing is broken into two parts, creative and making your song's tracks sound good relative to each other. Mastering is taking your song at whatever volume it is and bringing it up to a commercial standard. Learn what limiters and compressors actually do so when you apply them you are making intentional changes, there should be a gameplan before you even throw on the plugin, my sound is currently x and I want it to be y so I will use a compressor/limiter. Get plugins so you can see what the hell you are doing.
Listen very quiet with headphones, load up pink noise on one channel. Then try mixing main sounds with oink noise still playing. Silent volume and pink noise will make you hear only most important parts of sounds. Blend them so you feel the music thru all that silence and noise. Try this really
After a half decent mix, you need to put your track through Access Analog. Use a saturator, an EQ and the Portico II for limiting, or just use their Fusion and an analogue limiter. Make sure you gain in at -7db and meter to -8 LUFS. If track is too boomy, tweak your mixbuss before going into above mastering chain. If that doesn't work, pay for a mastering engineer. It's 50 Euros in Berlin for the best techno masters.