Post processing mix sets

[photojojo]

Curious to what kind of sound adjustments anybody does to mix sets after recording? Normalize? EQ stuff? Filters?

[Patch]

In theory - none of that should be necessary, provided you got the levels of your tracks right before mixing them, and didn't let the meters go into the red (too much) while you were mixing.

Don't fall into the trap of trying get your mix as loud as possible!

[photojojo]

Your right. I've never needed to do any of that, but I read somewhere (don't know where) someone say something about running a mix through a filter to give it a warmer sound or something along those lines.

[Patch]

I remember a while back people were recording mixes in Ableton, then running it through a DJ mixer and recording the output from the mixer. Supposedly making the mix sound a little better.

Horses for courses - try a few things and see what works for you.

[BentoSan]

I keep it simple:
Open it up in a wav editor, if there are any rogue realy short peaks then do a little volume automation to take them out - were talking about a spike thats a mere fraction of a second here.

Now find the highest peak in the track and adjust the gain until its just before it digitally peaks.

If you wanted to you could put on a LITTLE bit of limiting, but i wouldn't recommend it - been using the elephant vst for transparent limiting purposes recently, pretty decent plugin.

Mainly though i think just applying some gain to your mix is the most important thing to do, i dont record very hot so i don't risk getting digital peaks, then just apply some gain afterwards to make up the difference.

[bumtsch]

Some volume automation to even things out a bit, and a tiny hint of EQ.

[Jester]

a little level tweaking in audition does the trick.

[tekki]

At some points some compressions and some limiting will do wonders. Loving the Sonalksis plugs for this.
Will make it a lot easier for ya, instead of automating volumes.

[Citizen_Insane]

Working with what I have I just run the .wav recording of the set into garageband, check that it doesn't go into the red, maybe increase the volume a pinch if there's room (I'm pretty conservative with the master volume if im recording it), and snip off the few seconds of silence between starting recording and the music, and finishing the mix and stopping the recording.
Then I just export it as a 320kbps mp3, I'm pretty sure garageband does some normalizing when it exports though.

[kiss-o-matic]

I know this is the lazy approach, but is there a nice semi-auto approach to levelling out everything? I have to mix in somewhat low-volume quarters due to my living arrangement, and quite often (usually, actually) I find one track is louder than it needs to be.