My attempt to make a fat house song

[mycathasrabies]

This is the first time I've ever tried to "master" a track...

I was kinda going for the deadmou5 sound, what do you think?(about the mastering/eq)

http://soundcloud.com/dr-violent/master-trancer

[Filterkat]

quite like the track, kind of progressive, techy house. Nice work. needs more compression though if you want to "beef" it up a bit and make it sound "fat"

[mycathasrabies]

I'm a little lost though... how would I go about doing that?

It's already compressed AND bussed with EQ. I've tried getting it louder with a maximizer but that overkills it. It pretty much can't get any louder everything is gained up.

Maybe I should go back to my original file, group everything and compress that and get it to its max, and then repeat the steps?

Or Do i use equalizers or something else? Confusing sometimes..

[Filterkat]

how are you compressing the tracks though... thats the main thing. are you just chucking a compressor on the tracks and leaving the default values or using the presets? or are you tweaking the compressor yourself? dont use presets or leave the compressor as is. Tweak it until you get the maximum effect out of your compressor.

Chuck an EQ on the master out and a compressor on the master aswel and tweak them both aswel.

Heres a track i just finnished this afternoon. id say its pretty "fat" sounding.

Let me know what u think

[Filterkat]

hmmm dunno why it says the tracks not available. it works fine on my soundcloud

[mycathasrabies]

I have everything bussed separately, some EQed and compressed together, and then all compressed using a multiband compresser with range/q.

I don't use any presets I just set the thresold for the low,mid, and high, and gain it up. Then I EQed the master with added mids and highs(using a paragraphic EQ).

I'm messing around using limiters, multiband maximixers, even a saturator and nothing can help boost this song without kill the lows or killing the sound..
I even bus the final wav and then compress it and it still can't get as fat as I want it.

[Garygary1]

Filterkat, that drop at 2:30 on your new track just made my girlfriend start dancing. Job well done

[Filterkat]

@Garygary1 - Awesome! It was kind of intended as a track for the ladies Usually if theyre dancing, everyone else is dancing Thanks for letting me know, that made my day.

@mycathasrabies - Personally i wouldnt use a multiband compressor, or a maximizer. If anything id use a standard compressor with a fairly low threshold then pump up the output gain on the compressor, and maybe use a limiter, but only on the master out, and only to JUST stop the master out from clipping, not for overkill. Yeah audio stuff is tricky sometimes. But once youve got a good method of doing things that sound good, stick to it. Personally id try and steer clear of multiband ANYTHINGS... they told us that at audio engineering college, i forget exactly why, something about destroying the dynamics though. And we never used multibands in the studio. once actually, a multiband compressor on a guitar, and it was because the guy asked for it.

(Edit): so wait you say you bus your tracks to a master EQ? k thats good and all, should be doing that anyway, but are you also EQing each seperate track individually? i put an EQ on basically every channel strip and fiddle with the levels. usually the mid to highs, sometimes the lows on the kicks and bass tracks. Helps give the tracks more "width" and also helps beef it up. try putting an EQ on each seperate channel strip as well as having your master EQ

[mycathasrabies]

Here's pretty much what my track looks like:

Hi Kick & Low Kick harmonically mixed together
Which is then harmonically mixed with a low bass and Hi bass.
Some synths are grouped together, and one is sidechained.
Everything is bussed.
I went back and EQed up EVERY channel with gain, some with added mids etc.
And as well every bus channel has EQ on it, gained up at 2db.(including the master)

Then I bounce the wav file, bring it up into a new track.
Bus that to A L and B R.

Thats as far as I can get without destroying audio. After this I try a mixture of limiters, compressors, maximixers. Nothing.. I tried pretty much all settings you could use for a compressor.
I did some google searching and even went as far as going back to the original file, and compressing every track just a tiny bit, but no, nothing I have done has given me that FAT waveform in traktor.

BTW I'm using ableton. Any tips?

[Filterkat]

dunno dude, im not too familiar with ableton, i use logic and reason mainly, but ive heard good things come out of ableton. Ill ask one of the guys on my label what he uses in ableton, his tracks sound pretty fat, usually when i master them i barely have to do anything to his tracks, just a slight EQ tweak and very minimal compression.

After listening to your track again, id probably bring the bass up a lot more, its too far in the backround and you need to push up the low end on the EQ of the bass, and the kick is a bit thin. Sounds like a kick id use for the intro of a track personally. compression wont fix that, have you tried maybe using another "fatter" kick?

as for harmonic mixing of the kick, its pointless. you can harmonically mix a kick to a certain extent, but really, your just changing the dynamics of the kick and people dont really tend to notice that shit. Kicks are generally "toneless" or dont have a particular note or key to them. Plus if you harmonically mix your kick, it can make it hard to distinguish from the bass or the other "harmonic" parts of the track, since youve basically got the kick going at almost the same "note" its less distinguishable. Its like if you played two different sounding guitars but the same notes, maybe an acoustic, and an electric, sure, you can tell theres 2 guitars playing on the track, but its sorta hard to distinguish them from each other because they sound simmilar. Contrast is what makes tracks sound "big" and dynamic.