yo, obviously the most effective technique is having a great mixdown but is there anything else you’d add to a tune before sending it out to djs or mixing it yourself in clubs, ideally this is the type of shit i’d leave to mastering engineers but cutting dubs is long fam
so export->bit of compression? i’ve heard that doing stuff after exporting is better than wacking stuff on the master channel
if answer is just tight mixdown cool, just wondering really so interested in any opinions
(was mixing some of my own stuff with other peoples yesterday and found that even though i liked the mixdown i did they still seemed a bit lacking in punch when stacked against other peoples dubs, not even mastered releases)
If I was sending to a label or planning to get it cut to vinyl, then I’d have a professional mastering engineer do it for me. Someone like Fanu who knows their shit and has a track record.
If I was just making a club-playable copy for my own use on CD/Mp3, then I’d make the mixdown as tight as possible then put a compressor on the master with a brickwall preset dialled back to about 40/50% to get it up to a level where on a loud system it’s indistinguishable from the tunes I’m playing it along side. (I’d A/B it with a.n.other tune to ensure they sounded roughly alike)
labelwise, if you have a good mixdown and the label is interested, they will look after mastering stuff.
also lack of punch is as well a mixdown issue. ( i think ive seen you write something like pulling things down to let other stuff come through)<- couldnt be more true than that. if your snare for example lacks punch or has difficulties stying up (after layering different freqs, so you get a full snare) try simply turning stuff down except the snare before doing any other treatments.
selfmastering wise i dont do much, just trying to bring the levels up a bit.rolling off the low end, rolling of the lows on the sides, really ridiculously slight amount of compression and then limiting until the limiter starts doing stuff and turn it back down a cent (its not supposed to do stuff for my purpose) this should be enough if your mix is tight
it will be slightly different for every track, but try eq>stereo imaging>exciter>compression>limiter or a variation on that signal path, then again it might well not need all of that
or for a small fee send it to me and ill do you a ‘demo’ master run through tla, spl and looptrotter hardware