Enchancing Your Digital Music Recordings

Are you interested in enhancing your digital music mix? Many professional musicians believe that the only way to achieve perfection is by using an analog mix, however; many newcomers are protesting that digital all the way is the way to go. What's your opinion on it? Sure analog mixes sound great for rock and roll as well as classical music, however there are ways to perfect your digital mix to match and even surpass the analog tracks out there.

Mixing Like the Pros

If you are simply recording at a in house recording studio (one you built), know that there will be many obstacles to achieving an accurate and great sounding mix. First, if you are mixing your tracks down on a workstation that you recorded them on and then burning to CD, that will not be enough alone to perfect your mix. Sure the manual might say it's an all in one machine, however, real professionals know that it's just the beginning of composing great songs. Every time you bounce tracks down on the workstation and print it down directly to CD you're losing most of the quality of the song. Not only will the machine normalize all of the vocals, the track won't have any "punch" to it. Most workstations store WAV and AIFF files in its memory before burning the songs to CD. This may be great when it comes to converting your files directly onto a computer, however, the quality will be very poor.

Mix Down Layer by Layer

When you mix your songs, start from the very beginning and work your way to the end. This means stripping the song layer by layer in order to get the perfect mix. While most professionals recommend using analog when doing a stereo mix, it's possible to mimic the same mix by doing digital the right way. When using effects, don't go overboard with compression, limiting or reverb during the mastering and finalization process. Too much compression will make your song sound forced and out of sync with real time. Experiment by creating different mixes with different effects and remove the master stereo fade option if selected, this will prohibit you from getting the clarity you need out of your song. A few survival tips to remember when digital mixing are, add kick to reduce the sound of the snares and to turn up vocals to reduce the bass. Sticking by those two rules will certainly ensure that your mix is maintained well. Another tip to remember is, if you think your mix isn't on point, grab one of your CD from your favorite artist and compare their quality to yours, sure you wont be able to mimic their sound exactly without a big studio, however; if you do it right, no one will ever know the difference.