Reply to Heavyweight house set (thoughts on gain structure)

Hi Guys!

This is a mix I did on a lazy Sunday afternoon, not much else to say about it really Right now I do this for fun and my passion for music only. I always had a thing for House, especially for Deep House. Since its become chic to refer to "Deep House" as some type of I dont know genre, I decided to call it House instead. I recently moved to a bigger city, hoping to have an audience that is a little bit more open-minded when it comes to listening/partying to music.

One of my biggest problems is my gain structure throughout the mix. For some reason I dont trust the auto-gain and limiter features in Traktor, i like to trust my ears instead.

Im certainly no audio pro whatsoever, but just because audacity is telling me Im running a little too hot in some parts of the mix this is no guarantee for immediate distortion right? Because what I believe sounds right, well I usually believe is right

So Im guessing that I have a pretty decent gain structure throughout the mix. All it needs is some equing or various other mastering tools which I don't have a clue of at all.

Should I start using auto-gain and the inbuilt limiter function again to have shitty sound right from the start? I know there is some kind of discussion going on concerning this. IMO - I really dont understand why people even use it. I used to use it. By the time I realized what a limiter is etc I was shocked by how it made my tracks sound!! I just dont see any solution in some computer algorithm telling me whats hot whats not.

I buy my tracks "wav-only" - getting the sound quality right in the first place so that I can focus on other things. So whats the solution to all of this? Or is it me being too fussy about it? Making it too complicated?

Maybe this will help to make it all a bit clearer, my recent mix i did this Sunday.

https://soundcloud.com/philipstangner/detachment

Any thoughts on this? Whats your take on gain structure? Cant wait to hear your ideas on this!


Thank you so much!

Philip