How good should my mixdown sound?

SuprSi

I've always had real struggles getting my tracks to sound professional, even after mastering. It's the main reason I haven't released anything in over 4 years as the last track I produced, which was the best I'd written, sounded absolutely brutal on mixdown and after mastering.

I didn't realise until it was too late as I only had a set of headphones to master it with. Anyway, seeing as I just couldn't make my tracks sound good on a stereo, I just stopped finishing tracks.

That's changed now though and I have 3 or 4 new tracks that I'd like to get out there. I've been doing quite a bit of work on mastering, trying different bits of software, using EQ a lot more, etc., and have had a lot more success, but they still don't sound like I'd want them to.

I'm tempted to send one of them off to a mastering company to see if they manage it, or whether it's just that my mixdowns are crap. Which leads me to my question - should my mixdown sound good on all stereos? Rather than focusing on the master sounding good, should I be focusing on making my mixdown sound good before anything else? I'd think that if my mixdown sounds good, the master will too.

Neurojazz

There are a multitude of points where things can wrong in mixdowns.

Start at the beginning, your source material. Google 'gain staging' and make sure your not driving the inputs too hard.

You'll never make anything that sounds great on all devices, but you can make mixes compatible with most. If you have money to burn, Waves offer a load of plugins to help shape audio to balance out, but again look at the source material... learn to eq things in the correct way early, check there's sub harmonic rumble, clean, gate things, use side chain compression to mute other background material that doesn't need to be heard.

Mastering at home will present a huge issue. Modes. The room you are in is shaping what you hear when you attempt to master. You might think you need more/less x,y,z but the waves of sound are bouncing around in the room, tricking your ears. Back to the source, get some meters, compare other material to try and get an idea of what's right. Home production is sorta doomed to a point, so you have to understand what's against you to be able to fix it (or leave the stems clean, and hand those off to a proper dance music production facility)

I would personally just **** mastering, and have fun with the production side (but check your source!) = gain staging.

Van Doozy

SuprSi wrote: »

Which leads me to my question - should my mixdown sound good on all stereos? Rather than focusing on the master sounding good, should I be focusing on making my mixdown sound good before anything else? I'd think that if my mixdown sounds good, the master will too.

Amateur opinion here, so you can take it or leave it, but I'll give it anyway. Yes, your mixed track should sound reasonably good on everything, and yes you should be focusing on achieving a tasty mix before considering mastering. It's [almost] all in the mix imo.

The master is the absolute final gloss but the track should be over 95% there. I have a track in the feedback thread today, done at home, no mastering, you can check that out if you like for a benchmark. Like I said I am no pro, nor am I claiming to be - but it's reasonable in terms of quality, I think.

SuprSi

Thanks for the feedback, it's really appreciated. It's really annoyed me over last few years. I forked out for a really good set of headphones, specifically for producing music, but they've not helped as much as I would've hoped. I think the most neutral sounding system I have is the stereo so I reckon I'll use that to gauge how the mixdown sounds.

I'll have a look at gain staging too. I'd love to send the stems to a production facility but think that'd be a little pricey at this point