How do you engineer/mix your tracks?

[augusts99]

People of LMMS, I have been strugling the past year with correctly engineering/mixing my tracks. Every time I upload a track on soundcloud or youtube, the mix is bad and often the bass or 808 is compressed and lowered. Even though I often check, before uploading, if my track will be penalized on loudness, my track still seems to be compressed and lowered.

My questions therefore are: how do you deal with this? How do you engineer/mix your tracks? Do you use limiters, and if so, which limiter do you use? What programs/vst do you use in general?

I don't necesarily want to have a perfect upload, I just want to have a decent upload that is not compressed or has a worse mix. Is it possible to achieve this free, without spending money?

Thanks in advance!

[musikbear]

Every time I upload a track on soundcloud or youtube, the mix is bad

How do you engineer/mix your tracks?
Is it possible to achieve a good mix without spending money?

Imo you ask two different questions:
1) How to achieve a good mix.
2) How to upload a good mix on SoMe

1) is easy to answer, but hard to achieve: A good mix has sound-space for everything you have added to your project! That is the answer!
How to get there is to spend a lot of time. A good mix can take longer to achieve, that it took to compose the track..
First and foremost frequency monitoring, and separation. That means a lot of EQs and also spacial panning of instruments in the soundscape.
What i tend to do is to blend in the percussion alone, and balance that on its own. Then i start adding instruments one at a time, and make sure they are audible, and does not 'harm' the persussion. Everything must be crisp. I often find that hats can be apitn, they are surprisingly loud, in narrow freq. bands Solution: EQ !

The other Q' 2) is really more of a export issue.
anything you distribute on streaming sites will be transcoded and down sampled to 128kbps MP3, -so that is your target! I am not sure if uploads on soundcloud are processed anywitch independent on the upload, i would not be surprised, if they have an algorithm for compression, even if the upload is 128 mp3
Perhaps others knows better?

[slapkev]

anything you distribute on streaming sites will be transcoded and down sampled to 128kbps MP3, -so that is your target! I am not sure if uploads on soundcloud are processed anywitch independent on the upload, i would not be surprised, if they have an algorithm for compression, even if the upload is 128 mp3
Perhaps others knows better?

Everything using 128kbps MP3 is no longer accurate. You should upload lossless (wav, aiff, flac, etc) to any site that allows it, with the proper headroom they want (which is different almost everywhere). This way, they can offer the highest quality on their premium streaming. Almost all services these days offer higher quality streaming options for users that pay. Here is Soundcloud's article on HQ streaming: https://help.soundcloud.com/hc/en-us/ar ... -streaming

Soundcloud in particular currently uses 64kbps Opus for their free streaming. Even if you upload in that exact format, they will re-transcode the audio. Upload lossless with the right headroom, and you'll be set.

[vortexsupernova]

I think its possible, only need good knowledge.

Have you tried capping your song at 0 db? In the waveform display, make sure it does NOT hit red. Use a good peak limiter, avoid the ones in LMMS (I recommend the free Limiter no. 6 and set the ceiling to -5 db)

Each streaming site has its targeted LUFS and dynamic range. Soundcloud has a terrible compression that results to distorted highends and muffled low ends, that even its targeted LUFS/loudness wont work. If you want good output even for the non premium members, set the sample rate to a shitty 32000 hz It is not possible to change samplerate while working in song editor (still 44.1. Khz) and might only work in export. You might also create steep slope in eq that cuts off freqs above 16khz at the master (be careful, steep slopes create clippings, so put it before the peak limit). Youtube also pretty much disregards frequencies above 16khz.

Every time I upload a track on soundcloud or youtube, the mix is bad

How do you engineer/mix your tracks?
Is it possible to achieve a good mix without spending money?

Imo you ask two different questions:
1) How to achieve a good mix.
2) How to upload a good mix on Soc Med

1) is easy to answer, but hard to achieve: A good mix has sound-space for everything you have added to your project! That is the answer!
How to get there is to spend a lot of time. A good mix can take longer to achieve, that it took to compose the track..
First and foremost frequency monitoring, and separation. That means a lot of EQs and also spacial panning of instruments in the soundscape.
What i tend to do is to blend in the percussion alone, and balance that on its own. Then i start adding instruments one at a time, and make sure they are audible, and does not 'harm' the persussion. Everything must be crisp. I often find that hats can be apitn, they are surprisingly loud, in narrow freq. bands Solution: EQ !

The other Q' 2) is really more of a export issue.
anything you distribute on streaming sites will be transcoded and down sampled to 128kbps MP3, -so that is your target! I am not sure if uploads on soundcloud are processed anywitch independent on the upload, i would not be surprised, if they have an algorithm for compression, even if the upload is 128 mp3
Perhaps others knows better?

[slapkev]

If you want good output even for the non premium members, set the sample rate to a shitty 32000 hz It is not possible to change samplerate while working in song editor (still 44.1. Khz) and might only work in export.

LMMS project playback uses the sample rate your system audio device is set to. I personally wouldn't bother changing that - just make sure the render at the sample rate you choose sounds fine post render. If it doesn't diving into that might be a good use of time.

[vortexsupernova]

If you want good output even for the non premium members, set the sample rate to a shitty 32000 hz It is not possible to change samplerate while working in song editor (still 44.1. Khz) and might only work in export.

LMMS project playback uses the sample rate your system audio device is set to. I personally wouldn't bother changing that - just make sure the render at the sample rate you choose sounds fine post render. If it doesn't diving into that might be a good use of time.

I usually use other programs (not lmms) to resample, only on exported wavs and mp3. (And oh, forgot to say, use other program to resample from 44.1k to 32k and keep both versions as separate files, because it may not be possible to turn back the lost frequencies after resampling depending on the undo methods). I tried it and yeah it sounds fine post render, just the top ends removed as expected

[brandystarbrite]

I normally do almost everything in lmms. But sometimes I would export the track, and import it into audacity and use its plugins, to make the track sound better.