Beginners Guide To Mastering DJ Mixes
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Beginners Guide To Mastering DJ Mixes Posted on: 14.06.2011 by Latoria Kavulich Hey folks. I thought we should start a dedicated thread related to post recording techniques we can use to make our mixes sound awesome.Here's a great article i found covering the basics of mastering your mix: Finishing a DJ mix can be an exciting occasion. The satisfaction of knowing that you seamlessly blended and weaved an arsenal of your favorite jams is tough to beat, coupled with the excitement that comes from sharing it with your friends for the first time. However, before you race off to your Soundcloud and Facebook pages to post your new creation, there are a few steps you should take to give your compilation that extra level of polish. This tutorial is geared towards entry-level DJ | |
| Georgann Courington 31.10.2011 | Is there any specific amount of time you should be playing each song when you're recording a mix? I've always been confused as to whether or not i've been playing the track too little or too long. I've seen people saying 51 tracks in 90 minutes? WHA-? I don't get it.. If I want to make like a 1 hour mix, do I play the whole song? or just the buildup and the drop? |
| Regan Berzin 27.10.2011 | mmm newbie question here but how can one split tracks in ableton live? |
| Khadijah Wojtach 14.09.2011 | So I just tried out with Live instead. For some reason it speeded up the mix ? Now I'm trying to so the bpm to 110 instead of 120. Am I doing something wrong? |
| Celine Surico 26.08.2011 | GarageBand also has some other cool mastering utilities such as multi-band compressors. Takes a while to learn to use them but hey GarageBand is a default iLife app with Mac computers. |
| Hanna Ridenbaugh 26.08.2011 | thought i'd bump this thread. very helpful |
| Casey Ari 28.07.2011 | Very useful thread! Thank you. |
| Latoria Kavulich 27.07.2011 | i would suggest setting your maximum volume to -1db or -.1db. |
| Khadijah Wojtach 25.07.2011 | Audcity also has a Hard Limiter, though not as feature rich as the one in Adobes product. Before Hard limiter: After Hard limiter: Looks better to me! Can't really heard much of a difference though, expect for the vol being a bit lower (obviously). I don't know the quality of Audacity's Hard Limiter, so feel free to correct me |
| Rosalind Riedl 24.06.2011 |
Originally Posted by Jester.NZ
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| Latoria Kavulich 24.06.2011 | In most audio editors when you "save as" you have the option of file format, bitrate etc. You can also reencode using itunes, just go to preferences and change the import settings. Just remember if you want to burn a mix off onto a cd, keep it under that magical 80 min mark (unless you burn as an mp3 disc of course) |
| Rosalind Riedl 24.06.2011 | Does anyone know how to lower the bitrate so I can fit it? It's at 320 right now & would like to lower to atleast 196. |
| Thomas Libal 20.06.2011 | 90 Minutes CDs are available as well, but then you need to be lucky if your CD-Drive accepts them (ie. Car-Audio). |
| Antonetta Wikel 19.06.2011 | Not unless you pitch the whole thing faster. With CD the limitation is either 74 minutes or 80 minutes depending on which size CD you buy. |
| Belen Wermes 19.06.2011 | question. is there a way to compress a wav. file that exceeds the cd-r's limit, so that it can fit on an audio cd - but still universally playable on most cd players? |
| Thomas Libal 15.06.2011 | I would recommend using Garageband to make your mastered mix into a podcast. You can set marks with Links and afterwards have a) a online-version which can be skipped through and a CD with CDTEXT and individual songs. |
| Latoria Kavulich 15.06.2011 | Example of "Hard Limiting" by Jester Here is an example of a recent mix from my soundcloud group, "Haze Day" by DJ Prowe. The Editor I am using is Adobe Audition CS5.5 64 bit. As you can see there are some rather obvious spikes in the recording, these are the transition points in this mix. Zooming in to the first transition, we can see that the wavform has flattened off at the 0db mark which isn't good, but the rest of the mix is fairly level at around -3db. What we want to do is beef up the level of the rest of the mix but reduce the level of these peaks along the way. The tool we will use for this is a Hard Limiter, which in Audition looks like this: So for this mix we will set a maximum amplitude of -1db and a boost of 2db. This will level out the mix a bit. The "look ahead" time and "release" time you will need to experiment with for the best results. Now after 15 hours of processing, here is the same section from before after the hard limiting process .. And zooming out, we can see the overall levels of the mix are nice and even, and hopefully sounds awesome |
| Shelia Salzsieder 15.06.2011 | Why not just use Normalization instead of tinkering with every little bit? |
| Leeanna Ayla 15.06.2011 | Great find Jester!! I always record my mixes on the quiet side. I can always add volume, but if it's clipped there's nothing you can do. |
| Lena Schirado 15.06.2011 | Great post. Props. +1 |
| Latoria Kavulich 15.06.2011 | Yea you can add markers to the wavform and split the file up into individual tracks with audacity. |
| Deeann Cheron 15.06.2011 |
Originally Posted by Jester.NZ
But in regards to splitting mixes up into individual tracks (as all my mates i have given a mix to have said "bro it would be choice if i could flick through the tracks eh!") so audacity is the best option for this in your opinion? big ups to you and all the moderators for all your knowledge on this site. even though i spend more time doing my djtt homework at evening and get to wired with knowledge to be bothered having a mix ha ha. |
| Latoria Kavulich 14.06.2011 | mp3gain can be used to normalise your mix. Sometimes thats all thats needed if it sounds a little quiet. |
| Deeann Cheron 14.06.2011 | Should the same steps be taken when recording on my kontrol s4? I have seen in earlier post of yours about mp3gain as well. i run all my tracks through there, should i be running my recordings through there as well? Where to start, where to stop lol Poor simple brain, so much to process. believeing i will check out audacity. does this convert wav to mp3 as well. |
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