Mixing: A General Overview

[petermennitirecords]

Yo, one thing I realized I do when I'm mixing that might help you guys - don't be afraid to use the meters to rough out your mix. Your ears have to be the final word on your mixdown, but if you use the meters to approximate what you think the level *should* be and then tweak it with that as a baseline, its a lot quicker and easier to get it perfect than if you're just going at random.

[MrNiceguy]

Okay so I analyzed the spectra of some different hooks / choruses of electro, dubstep and d&b tracks to get a general view.
Something they have all in common: every frequency turns out to be pretty loud, the spectrum basically looks like a big brick (maybe a little less volume when the frequency increases, but still they look pretty massive).
Seems logical if you want a club to start shaking...

My tracks don't look like this at all! My spectra look more like a slide you would find in any playground, volumes are going down exponentially as frequencies increase. Basses are allright, but I can't seem to boost the mid- and top end. This might also explain the troubles I found playing my tracks on my mixer, see previous post.
I compared a track before and after mastering, but no big differences could be found. Just a similar exponential curve.
I tried to turn down the volume on my sub bass to decrease the difference in volume between bass and the higher stuff, but this didn't really work out. Turning up my lead synths leads to a harsh sounding noisy track.

Any ideas on how to deal with this? I have read many webpages today in order to solve my problem, but I can't find a page that describes my problem.
Thanks!

You can actually run the freqency spectrum through a program that compansates for the human ear's dificulty at hearing increasingly low freqencies. a friend of mine ran my standard cubase low to high downward sliding freq spectrum through a program like that and ended up with a much more understandable flat spectrum that peaked and ducked at the logicaal freq areas. I think the program was something in matlabs not sure...

[runemopar]

I usually have the problem of my mix looking like a canyon, lol

[Saigonshredder]

My wav files look weird and mishapen like a fragmented hooply-doo. I just made that word up.

[Gasp]

The big bricks you find on professional tracks are usually due to a mad amount of mastering thats been done, especially on dub step tracks as i've found with dub step these days loudness is king. What we also tend to forgot is that perceived pitch is usually a lot different to actual frequency, i was listening to a track with a beautiful sub thinking to myself how the hell did he get it like that, it turns out it had a shed load of resonance and was compressed in the right spot at somewhere closer to 500hz rather than the expected 80-100..
Another example of this is kick drums, an amazing and unintuitive way to get them fuller and 'louder' is to add a high click.
*gasp* ikr

[Saigonshredder]

The big bricks you find on professional tracks are usually due to a mad amount of mastering thats been done, especially on dub step tracks as i've found with dub step these days loudness is king. What we also tend to forgot is that perceived pitch is usually a lot different to actual frequency, i was listening to a track with a beautiful sub thinking to myself how the hell did he get it like that, it turns out it had a shed load of resonance and was compressed in the right spot at somewhere closer to 500hz rather than the expected 80-100..
Another example of this is kick drums, an amazing and unintuitive way to get them fuller and 'louder' is to add a high click.
*gasp* ikr

That's interesting.