MPC hip hop mixing/mastering and audacity

My bass drums are overpowered through headphones, and barely heard through laptop speakers. other than the bass drums, the other tracks are fine.how do i fix this? What is a good db level for my 50-100hz. Also, I've been experimenting with mixing in audacity, i'm using the compressor and eq, but I'm not sure what I'm doing - could someone shed some light? and do i apply normalizer afterwards or hard limiter/what should i set it to? Any help would be grand! my songs sound terrific through monitors, but i'm having difficulty getting it into an mp3 format so my buddy can just add and mix his vocals in. Any general mixing tips for hip hop production on the mpc, and mastering with audacity would be greatly appreciated!

turn ur shit down

I don't require mixing techniques yet so I can't offer advice. I do know there's
An e-book from the MPC samples website which you should definitely cop. Relating
directly to the topic we're talking about.

I don't imagine there's a set formula for each sound either so experimentation will
be required also. Good luckk

Certain speakers can respond efficiently to certain frequencies. Therefore you have to use an approximate level that you can find by listening to your music on a few different systems.

You might find it some use if you read up on "Gain Staging" aswell, as that will affect your overall mix eventually. There are no definite levels for each element, it is specific to each track you make.

An EQ is a way of selecting certain frequencies and either "cutting" or "boosting" them. Again, you should google that because there's different kinds of EQ, and different ways of using them creatively. There are rough frequency guides but again it's completely different for each sound you find.

A compressor is a way of controlling the dynamics of a sound. Basically you can control the ups and downs in volume, but at an extremely quick rate. There's also side-chain and multi-band compression but again I feel you should google that to get the basics down first. Just beware that it can be used subtly or you can really squash the sh*t out of a sound. There no definite settings for compression, the best thing to do is learn it's function and experiment. See what sound YOU like.

You should also note the order in which you use EQ and compression. Sometimes it's more suitable to use one before the other. For example if you're cleaning up a sample I would probably EQ first and compress second. That's because otherwise you are raising the volume of all the unwanted frequencies first during the compression stage before EQ'ing. But there are no definite rules, just basic things you should read up on before you do your own thing.

Hard limiting isn't too much different from compression except it doesn't let anything past it's threshold. Again I hate to break it to you but there's no shortcuts or miracle settings, you just have to learn what these things do and then apply the theory to your work.

My tip... read more.

I'm not sure that you can have a good mix using Audacity, unless if you multi track on it, (but I don't think you're doing it, seems to be hard in audacity)?
I think you should get another daw, reaper is free for example, and then track out one track at a time, and get some good VST's.

There's nothing wrong with Audacity, you can multi-track on it, and I'm pretty sure it hosts VSTs like a DAW.

For all we know this guy has torrented the Waves mastering plug-ins haha

scoobylol wrote:For all we know this guy has torrented the Waves mastering plug-ins haha

Who hasn't?!

Me you rogue! Haha. I can't excited about plug-ins, no matter how good they might be. So it's not worth buying or torrenting them for me.

Remember Cozsterico the SOPA-eye is watching and waiting! Like a digital Sauron.

scoobylol wrote:Remember Cozsterico the SOPA-eye is watching and waiting! Like a digital Sauron.

As Williams would say... "When it comes, I won't even notice.... I'll be too busy looking gooood!"

I've got my core plugins that I use all the time, but I've kept my Mac clutter free. Being a software 'collector' is thankfully a thing of the past.

LOL Williams! I love a good Bruce Lee film. My personal favourite is probably Way of the Dragon. That cheeky jazzy cymbal break that plays when they're fighting in the back just before...

BAM

Dragon whips his tail!

My bass drums are overpowered through headphones

jpeg wrote:turn ur shit down

and barely heard through laptop speakers.
Fail

how do i fix this?

jpeg wrote:turn ur shit down

What is a good db level for my 50-100hz.
Different for every track and sample, you need to figure that out
with your own ears.

Also, I've been experimenting with mixing in audacity, i'm using the compressor and eq, but I'm not sure what I'm doing
Read a book on it

do i apply normalizer afterwards or hard limiter/what should i set it to?
Different for every track and sample, you need to figure that out
with your own ears.

Any general mixing tips for hip hop production on the mpc.
All over the internet and e-books here that can possibly help you.
You need to jump in and stop asking how cold the water is when you have a pool.
Dip a toe and find out, jump the hell in!

What your asking comes with experience, practice, dedication, research.
These are things you must do for yourself, ie there's no cookie cutter answer for the db of your own stuff.

All faders virtual or real should be set at +3db.

To get a J Dilla Kick somewhere around the +15db mark is fine. Boost 36hz approximately 10db.

Compressors should be set at 9:1 at all times with an attack of 100ms, release at 1 second and a threshold of -20db. Make-up gain should be +50db.

Every channel should be hard-limited where possible.

Master channel should have a -17.398db scoop out the middle.

scoobylol wrote:All faders virtual or real should be set at +3db.

To get a J Dilla Kick somewhere around the +15db mark is fine. Boost 36hz approximately 10db.

Compressors should be set at 9:1 at all times with an attack of 100ms, release at 1 second and a threshold of -20db. Make-up gain should be +50db.

Every channel should be hard-limited where possible.

Master channel should have a -17.398db scoop out the middle.

i would get a multitrack daw to start off with, if your trying to mix to a two track its not gonna happen.

kb89 wrote:My bass drums are overpowered through headphones, and barely heard through laptop speakers. other than the bass drums, the other tracks are fine.how do i fix this? What is a good db level for my 50-100hz.

a problem you may be having is that your kick drum is only sub bass (think 808), so it wont ever reproduce on a laptop speaker that well. try getting another kick sample with some more punch where you can hear the mallet hitting the drum, this is somewhere around 3.5 to 4khz, give this sample a low cut (so it sits well with your other kick and doesnt cause phase/ masking) and put it on top of your bassy kick, now mix each of their levels until it sounds good.
you may want to apply a low pass filter on your more bassy kick sample, while you apply a high pass filter on your more punchy/papery sample.

if you do it right, youll be able to hear the mallet/paper (as i like to call it) of the kick through your laptop speakers, but when you play it through your monitors or something else that reproduces bass better, youll also be able to hear that low end.

kb89"Also, I've been experimenting with mixing in audacity, i'm using the compressor and eq, but I'm not sure what I'm doing - could someone shed some light? [/quote]

read about ball park eq settings of certain instruments, ill include a little graph to get you started, read it and try all of the suggestions and the frequencies around them.
eq'ing is just cutting and boosting certain frequencies so everything sits well relative to the mix. as a general rule of thumb, dont boost or cut too dirastically unless its for artistic descision or your really trying to clean up a shit sounding sample. generally boosting and cutting no more than 4db is a good ballpark to start off with.
skinnier q settings make more surgical cuts as fatter ones make more rounded off sounds, the skinnier the q the less natural the sound.

heres some ballpark estimates as to what alot of instruments hit at, find a sample of each of these things and try cutting and boosting at each frequency shown, also keep in mind that these are just guidelines so go outside of these frequency ranges and experiment around.

acousitc bass: plectrum 600 hz to 1k
lows 60 to 100
strings (arco) 2 to 3 k
fullness (boom) 100 to 300

electric bass (D.I) fullness 150 to 300
edge 1.5 k to 4k

kick point or beater, 2 to k5, usually around 2.5 to 3 ish
bottom 60 to 80
boom 100 -400

snare fulness 250 -400
crispness 3-5k

cymbals/hats shimmer 5k to 10k
ring 200hz - 1k

front toms skin or strike 4-5k
body 200 to 600

floor toms fullness 80 - 150

acoustic gtr body 200 -400
openness 2 to 5k

vocals

prescence male 5k
presence female 5 to 7.5k
sibilance 7.5 to 10 k
boomyness 200 to 400 hz
fullness 80 to 120

electric organ- bass 80 -120
body 160 to 250
prescence 3 to 5k

piano- bass 80 to 150
brightness 2-5k
tinny 3k (narrow band or fit)
honky tonk attachment on upright piano resonance 30 to 50 hz

(watch out for pedal thumps in lower frequencies)

brass -fullness 100-250

reeds- brightness 5-7k

strings- string buzz2 to 5k (dip)
edge 7.5 to 10k
fullness 200 to 300 hz

and i also found out that if you want to cut or boost static in a sample 10k is around where it sits


[quote="kb89 wrote:and do i apply normalizer afterwards or hard limiter/what should i set it to? Any help would be grand! my songs sound terrific through monitors, but i'm having difficulty getting it into an mp3 format so my buddy can just add and mix his vocals in. Any general mixing tips for hip hop production on the mpc, and mastering with audacity would be greatly appreciated!

dont worry about a normalizer right now and jus work on your mixes. save the hard limiting for the mastering engineer after the song already has vocals on it.

people normally record to a song before it is hard limited unless your rapping on a shitty 2 track industry beat hard limited 128 khz mp3 file or something. your goal is to NOT sound like these, alot of them are very hard to mix because they left not dynamic range in the files.

as a general rule of thumb i leave ~2.5 to 3 db of headroom before i send my mix to a rapper to spit on. dont worry if its not the loudest most squashed thing you have ever heard, the rapper should still be able to get his point across and your beats should still have some dynamic integrity left in them during the recording process.

if you must put a limiter on something before you print it to mp3, just be sure to not over do it... you dont want 16 db of gain reduction at all times!
think light compression/limiting.
when compressing a vocal i usually aim for 3-6 or 7 dbs of gain reduction at the peaks, so i still keep some of the vocalists dynamics but i also tame their dynamic range a little.

watch this video about compression, he explains the basic controls and features of an audio compressor.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-CoFUvj9Q0

nuthing wrong with two track mixing u should aim to have ur shit sound tight out the box