Making your digital mixes sound better.

Hello, welcome to my new blog on music production! This is a project I created simply due to having way too much free time on my hands and quite a bit of knowledge of music production. I create electronic music under the moniker of "Binary Helix" and have spent quite a lot of time doing so.



Today, for my first post, i'm going to be focusing on the all important issue of sound quality. All across the internet, you see people complain about the quality of mixes done in DAWs such as Cubase and Ableton Live, especially compared to the sound of quality analog mixing boards. A big issue with this is the lack of headroom available in the digital world. Much as you have to watch your bass in the analog domain, your high end is of the upmost importance in the digital world.


Here's a good way of ensuring that you have the room.





You want to insert a trim plugin as the very first plugin in your chain. I recommend the Sonalksis FreeG, which you can download here. Make this the first insert effect on all of your audio tracks. Trim them so that the average output for everything in your DAW is around -20 using the "Trim" knob.


Some tracks may need this more than others, such as hotly recorded guitars or bass. Some may need it less, such as soft vocals or sub bass or synth pads.

What you are doing is changing the average level of your digital tracks to +4DBU, which is the professional standard for analog mixes. This frees up precious headroom, so your tracks do not hit the digital ceiling.

Essentially what this does is give your entire track more room to breathe. You may be wondering why you cannot do this with the faders on your DAW? The answer is that the DAW fader comes -after- all of your FX processors and whatnot. By inserting the trim plugin -before- your delays and eqs and compressors and whatnot, the signal feeding into all of those is lower. This means you stand virtually no chance of clipping any of them.



Some problems you may run into mixing in this method are having to lower the threshold of compressors much more. This shouldn't harm your mix, just keep in mind that you are working with a different reference point and you should be fine.

Overall, just don't run digital signals too hot pre mixdown. After you mix down the track and whatnot, THEN apply light limiting and whatnot as usual to get it up to listening levels, or ideally, send it to the mastering engineer. He will thank you for having such a quiet track :).