Mixing/Mastering VST's

[mrlmmsguy]

Just was wondering what the good people here used for mixing and mastering.
BX cleansweep was supposed to be free and, but it had some "register in fourteen days, get a free trial, but give us
your contact etc." crap.
What's a good plugin for for cleaning out the low end and straight up cutting out certain frequencies?

[brandystarbrite]

Easy Q.
Alot of Lmms users here use it.
That's how I found out about it.
It really works good.
http://rs-met.com/freebies.html

Also, check this post: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=688

[slapkev]

What's a good plugin for for cleaning out the low end and straight up cutting out certain frequencies?

Cutting out certain frequencies can be done easily with the highpass/lowpass/notch filters built into LMMS. If you need more control or can't use (or are already using) the built in filter, LMMS ships with at least highpass/lowpass plugins. If you want, you can try VST plugin solutions at the risk of crashing or losing VST plugin settings.

That being said, I firmly believe that fixing the problems you listed start before mixing, at the initial sound design step. Or rather, not introducing those problems by working with smarter technique. Solid sound design will prevent muddy/murky low end from the beginning, and if you are keeping track of where each element sits in the frequency spectrum as you make/add/tweak them you won't have to deal with them in the mixing stage as they will already be sorted. I don't typically have to do a mixdown on my projects because I do it dynamically as I work my way through the writing process. By the time a song is done, I usually just render it and go straight to mastering.

[Snarf]

That being said, I firmly believe that fixing the problems you listed start before mixing, at the initial sound design step. Or rather, not introducing those problems by working with smarter technique. Solid sound design will prevent muddy/murky low end from the beginning, and if you are keeping track of where each element sits in the frequency spectrum as you make/add/tweak them you won't have to deal with them in the mixing stage as they will already be sorted. I don't typically have to do a mixdown on my projects because I do it dynamically as I work my way through the writing process. By the time a song is done, I usually just render it and go straight to mastering.

I wholeheartedly agree with this, but how do you reconcile the kick drum with bass parts? They occupy basically the same range of frequencies.

[slapkev]

That being said, I firmly believe that fixing the problems you listed start before mixing, at the initial sound design step. Or rather, not introducing those problems by working with smarter technique. Solid sound design will prevent muddy/murky low end from the beginning, and if you are keeping track of where each element sits in the frequency spectrum as you make/add/tweak them you won't have to deal with them in the mixing stage as they will already be sorted. I don't typically have to do a mixdown on my projects because I do it dynamically as I work my way through the writing process. By the time a song is done, I usually just render it and go straight to mastering.

I wholeheartedly agree with this, but how do you reconcile the kick drum with bass parts? They occupy basically the same range of frequencies.

Sidechaining and compression, or both. Some people use dynamic EQ where they cut the conflicting frequencies from either the kick or the bass while the other is generating noise in the same frequency. A trick I normally use is sending all my percussion to a drum bus, then sending that bus to another mixer channel with a lowpass filter and a peak controller. The lowpass is set to match the effective range of my sub/bass instruments, then I use another EQ on either the premaster bus or the synth bus (wideband EQ, like the included DJ EQ). The low frequency band of the EQ is connected to the peak controller output and both are tweaked until the percussion has enough room to sit solidly in the mix.

Here is a quick and dirty example: https://lmms.io/lsp/?action=show&file=8397
Channels 5 and 6 are routed to 4, 4 is routed to 1 and 3. Channel 3 contains the lowpass and peak controller. Channels 7 and 8 are routed to 2. Channel 2 contains the EQ that is chopping the lowend of the synth output of the song. I typically run everything through that bus to make major room for percussion. Channel 1 is where I typically do global processing as I like to keep a clean master channel should I want to A/B other songs/work in the Sample instrument.
Edit: In my haste to throw together the example I forgot to set the lowpass in channel 3, however the percussion samples I used don't have enough low end in them to really trigger the system with more accurate values.