The EM Poll

Twelve Common Mixing Mistakes

Jul 1, 2007 12:00 PM, By Michael Cooper

           

Vocals Consistently Too Loud or Too Low

We've all been there. You thought you had the perfect mix, but then you hear it on a friend's stereo system, and the lead vocal suddenly sounds too loud, in front of and divorced from the backing music. Or it's buried underneath an onslaught of guitars, making your clever lyrics lost to all ears. What went wrong?

FIG. 7: The Avant Electronics Avantone MixCubes are outstanding passive monitors to reference how well lead vocals are sitting in a mix.

Setting the perfect vocal level can be difficult. The vocal's balance with respect to other tracks will always sound different on different monitors. What works for me is listening on bass-challenged monitors such as the Avant Electronics Avantone MixCubes (see Fig. 7) or the discontinued Yamaha NS-10M Studio. Without prominent bass frequencies masking the lead vocal, I can more accurately gauge how loud the money track is with respect to the other tracks.

If you have only one set of reference monitors and use a subwoofer, turn off the subwoofer when setting the level of the lead vocal. Also, listen to the mix at very low volume to let the Fletcher-Munson effect decrease your perception of bass and high frequencies. That will leave you with an unobstructed window into the midrange, where the lead vocal primarily sits.

Slowly turning down your close-field monitors to the point of almost dead silence is another effective technique. If the lead vocal is the last track to become inaudible, you'll know it's loud enough to be easily heard on most if not all systems. If it's still relatively loud when all the instruments are practically mute, the lead vocal probably needs to be turned down.

Of course, some styles of music call for louder vocals than others. For example, the vocal should generally be mixed louder on a country song than on a rock production. But these guidelines should give you the needed perspective to make the right judgment call for your chosen format.

Vocals Alternately Dip and Stick Out

Lead vocals typically benefit from compression. That helps them sit at the proper level throughout a mix. Compression limits the dynamic range of the track so that it becomes neither too low nor too loud in the mix on any given phrase. But with a very dynamic vocal, it may be impossible to compress aggressively enough to accomplish this goal without completely squashing the track, ruining its timbre, and destroying any depth and nuance. If, after you push the compression as far as you dare, the vocal still dips too much on some phrases and sticks out too much on others, here are some alternatives.

FIG. 8: A lead vocal track is compressed by two Waves Renaissance Compressor plug-ins chained in series.

Try chaining two or more compressors together in series, with each adjusted to more moderate control settings so that no single one is going to squash the track (see Fig. 8). For instance, the first compressor could have fast attack and release times and a high threshold setting so that it kicks in with its high compression ratio only during peaks. The second compressor might be set to a relatively low threshold and ratio and moderate attack and release times so that it is processing average levels pretty much all the time, but with kid gloves. Here, the second compressor isn't expected to clamp down on transient peaks, so it can be set for more moderate action on average levels that will preserve the track's timbre and nuance. Meanwhile, the first compressor needn't have its threshold set so low that it will rein in the average levels of the vocal track — that's the second compressor's job, and it will do it more gently.

Despite the time-tested procedure of chaining compressors together in series, Roger Nichols Digital offers a far more powerful and elegant solution to reining in extremely dynamic vocals. The company's groundbreaking Dynam-izer plug-in divides a track's unprocessed dynamic range into as many as four mutually exclusive and contiguous zones (see Fig. 9). It can then independently compress or upwardly expand the track across each zone using different ratio, attack, and release settings. The key point here is that each compressor or expander applies processing only across the input-level range to which it is assigned. You can, for example, optimize the zone settings to upwardly expand the quietest vocal phrases, gently compress moderately loud sections, and smash transient peaks forcefully.

FIG. 9: Roger Nichols Digital’s superb Dynam-izer plug-in divides a track’s dynamic range into as many as four different zones for independent dynamics processing.

After using the foregoing techniques, the lead vocal still might fluctuate too much in level on a few remaining phrases. Don't be afraid to ride the track's fader to even out those sections of the vocal, and record your fader moves with your DAW or mixer's automation. Also, some buried lyrics may be brought out more effectively by boosting upper-midrange or high frequencies rather than riding the fader (remember to undo the EQ boost immediately afterward). In some of my mixes, the lead vocal's track will have dozens of fader and EQ moves over the course of a three-minute song, depending on how even the singer's performance was. Don't be afraid to do whatever is necessary to make the vocal track perfect.

The Perfect Mix

None of the techniques discussed in this article will lead you to a great mix on their own. They must all be taken into consideration at once and balanced against one another. For instance, striving for too much detail and clarity can result in a thin, icy mix that will sound even more fatiguing if brickwall limiting is applied to achieve competitive loudness. And a mix with too wide of a stereo image and key tracks panned hard left and right might lose needed center focus and punch.

Keep your original vision for the song in mind while you mix, asking yourself along the way if any of these 12 problems are beginning to creep in. Note if any corrective tweaks you perform introduce their own problems, but be aware that effective mixing usually entails a series of smart trade-offs. Putting these compromises into perfect balance is the key to an outstanding mix.

EM contributing editor Michael Cooper is the owner of Michael Cooper Recording in Sisters, Oregon. You can hear some of his mixes at www.myspace.com/michaelcooperrecording.