Mixing Acoustic Pop: mixingchosen.com The Mix Academy: bit.ly/mixacademy Stereo buss masterclass: youtu.be/GEZLlc6x1is Learn compression: learncompression.com Learn to mix hip-hop: mixinghiphop.com Ear training: quiztones.com Mixing articles: theproaudiofiles.com In the fourth and final video of our acoustic mixing series, we cover processing on the stereo buss. Software/Plugins: - Avid Pro Tools - Waves Kramer Master Tape - Waves L2 Ultramaximizer Peak Limiter - Slate Digital Virtual Buss Compressors - iZotope Ozone 5 Complete Mastering System --- Transcript: Before I pull open the plugins, let me put that to the side just for a second. Let me recap. You see the in brown. We've got the acoustic guitars and the picked acoustics are going to are going to an aux. They're going then out to the all music. The strummed acoustics are going to an aux, and then they're going out to all music. Those two instruments are then meeting. All music is right here. I'm adding a little bit of compression. We covered that in another video, but that's a slate, and that's also from video three. We handled the M-S EQ, and that's there. The All Music goes out to the sub-master. It's a stereo bus, two bus. It could be called a couple different things, but I picked up sub-master, I want to say it was back when I did the expert certification for Pro Tools 7 or something like that. My instructor mentioned the sub-master, so that stuck with me. So just so you know what I'm talking about, that goes out to the submaster, and the submaster is here, where all vocals, all drums, all music, all the effects, low end, high end. You guys follow Dave Pensado, you know he uses this technique. I want to give credit where it's due. And let's pull open the first plugin. I'm using the Kramer. You can see the preset has been untouched. It's the mastering soft clean compression preset. I think I may have dialed the noise down. This plugin is the first plugin that those, anything in the song hits, and sometimes I'll swap it out for the Studer. Sometimes I'll swap it for the J37. Okay, cool. So let's play it from there. And then I'm going to bypass it so you guys can hear what happens when I remove each thing from the stereo bus. The volume changes, but I'm mixing into this chain that I'm walking you through right now. I'm mixing into it from the very beginning. There's a couple points in the process that I'll cover, where I'm going to keep checking in with my two bus, my stereo bus, but for the most part, I am mixing into this, actually not for the most part, I am 100 percent mixing into this from the very beginning. Plugin number two in the chain is the beautiful slate VBC. We are hitting the linear phase multi-band waves. I'm going to introduce you guys to how I, everything from importing the session into the mix, and getting the client files, and all that kind of stuff. But for now I'm just going to keep it short and sweet. But stay tuned. The next in chain after the linear multi-band is an L2. I'm merely using that to help lift the track a little bit, because what's next is I use iZotope Ozone. I start with this. Like I said, I'm mixing into this from the very beginning. Some things that I've done, really, really small touch of EQ. You've got selected the analog circuit there, the harmonic exciter, doing just a little bit of stuff. throughout the mix. Whenever I'm starting a mix, whether I'm starting with a kick, the bass, the vocal, from the very beginning, I'm watching what's being sent into Ozone and how the multi-band is effecting and is responding to what's being sent into it. So not too much low content. I didn't pay too much attention to the low end of it, other than the fact that I didn't want it really doing anything, doing much. But the low mids, if I hit Play here. You can see over here where I'm rolling my mouse around, the reduction is still pretty minimal. You know, two, three dB of reduction, but that's just affecting the low mids. For now, the acoustic guitar and the vocal not really calling for us to smash the low end of anything like that, but moving on, we've got the maximizer. I've got that set to IRC2, and then I've pulled the threshold down to give me the reduction that I like. So a couple parts there, it's hitting it pretty decent. I'm staring at this just about the entire time that I'm mixing and kind of watching where I'm at, where I'm going, and I bring in tracks, mainstream tracks that have been mastered, and I'm watching what they're perceived loudness is to RMS, all that good stuff. And then I will kind of A, B, and match, and feel like if I've got the right vibe with mine, if I need to go back to the drawing board with my levels or compression in the track. I'd be willing to guess that I'm compressing less in the mix than I would without this stereo bus chain.

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