Advice for fixing muddy tracks?

Having trouble with LMMS? Ask about it here.
I've been stuck on the same song for over a month now lol.

I'm very happy with what I accomplished yet it sounds muddy throughout (lots of resonance). The main kick has a lot of bass but the drum track (solo) seems fine.

The drum track solo sounds good and it's mostly the instruments. There are lots of choirs and bells and many of them have lots of resonance.

ALSO, I have a compressor and no clippers (ceiling limiters). Should I add one? I'd like to make the sound more full and even throughout while keeping the volume below 0db.



After that I might take a break, create other things and go back to it after I gain more knowledge and experience. Thanks for reading!


PS - if you'd like to hear the song so far you can click the link below. Thank you again for your time. :-D

https://sndup.net/j7g8/
Electropocalypse wrote:
Mon Aug 22, 2022 12:50 am
I've been stuck on the same song for over a month now lol.

I'm very happy with what I accomplished yet it sounds muddy throughout (lots of resonance). The main kick has a lot of bass but the drum track (solo) seems fine.

The drum track solo sounds good and it's mostly the instruments. There are lots of choirs and bells and many of them have lots of resonance.

ALSO, I have a compressor and no clippers (ceiling limiters). Should I add one? I'd like to make the sound more full and even throughout while keeping the volume below 0db.



After that I might take a break, create other things and go back to it after I gain more knowledge and experience. Thanks for reading!


PS - if you'd like to hear the song so far you can click the link below. Thank you again for your time. :-D

https://sndup.net/j7g8/
Your main sound -the stomp is loud -It hard to believe that it does not clip(?)
First thing you need is EQs on all tracks, and here remove ALL lowest frequencies unless they are part of what you want!
You get that muddyness when many low frequencies collide and create that 'murmle hum'
So your ear and EQs are the tools you should use, and the more individual track frequencies you can subtract without loosing the overall feeling of the project, the better!
10BandEQ is fine for this -it ofcause need to be last plugin on the stack on each channel /track, because i do expect that you have individual busses for each individual song-editor-tracks ..Right?
musikbear wrote:
Mon Aug 22, 2022 5:07 pm
Electropocalypse wrote:
Mon Aug 22, 2022 12:50 am
I've been stuck on the same song for over a month now lol.

I'm very happy with what I accomplished yet it sounds muddy throughout (lots of resonance). The main kick has a lot of bass but the drum track (solo) seems fine.

The drum track solo sounds good and it's mostly the instruments. There are lots of choirs and bells and many of them have lots of resonance.

ALSO, I have a compressor and no clippers (ceiling limiters). Should I add one? I'd like to make the sound more full and even throughout while keeping the volume below 0db.



After that I might take a break, create other things and go back to it after I gain more knowledge and experience. Thanks for reading!


PS - if you'd like to hear the song so far you can click the link below. Thank you again for your time. :-D

https://sndup.net/j7g8/
Your main sound -the stomp is loud -It hard to believe that it does not clip(?)
First thing you need is EQs on all tracks, and here remove ALL lowest frequencies unless they are part of what you want!
You get that muddyness when many low frequencies collide and create that 'murmle hum'
So your ear and EQs are the tools you should use, and the more individual track frequencies you can subtract without loosing the overall feeling of the project, the better!
10BandEQ is fine for this -it ofcause need to be last plugin on the stack on each channel /track, because i do expect that you have individual busses for each individual song-editor-tracks ..Right?
Thank you for the great information!

I have 2 FX channels (1 - instruments, 2 - drums/perc with peak controller linked FX1 volume).
I think there is no clip because (1) I tried getting it to the lowest octave I could without clipping and (2) I turned the volume down to about 10 lol. It has a maximizer, saturator and a little mech distortion (using camel crusher).

I noticed that some of the high octave choirs sound very muffled. I kept turning them up (bad Idea) and ended up where there's no space for sound left (due to the compressor on the master channel).

I also used stereoenhancer effect on most instruments as it made them sound better. I'm not sure if going to the max on it is also not good. It seems to work on some things and others it makes them sound weird.


I'll try out EQ on each instrument and see how it goes. Thank you again. :-)


I have one extra question - is it better to use a multiband compressor or does 'Equalizer' (with the spectrum analyzer) work just as well?
Electropocalypse wrote:
Tue Aug 23, 2022 4:27 am
is it better to use a multiband compressor or does 'Equalizer' (with the spectrum analyzer) work just as well?
Compression will attempt to 'press' output dB of the compressed wave to a set value (threshold) so it kind of resamples a 'normalize-to-value'. That would be fine, except if a soundwave is close to 0 dB, then compression will result in distortion!
Compression on everything is imo a bit like lacy peak elimination.
Actually working with EQing on each instrument track takes much longer and more effort, but you are having control, not an algorithm.
That said, compression is great in percussion, where it really lift the parts that is weak and dampen those that dominates.
Its also interesting to compress a few instruments up against eachother, but thats fiddling and time consuming fun :p
musikbear wrote:
Tue Aug 23, 2022 3:45 pm
Electropocalypse wrote:
Tue Aug 23, 2022 4:27 am
is it better to use a multiband compressor or does 'Equalizer' (with the spectrum analyzer) work just as well?
Compression will attempt to 'press' output dB of the compressed wave to a set value (threshold) so it kind of resamples a 'normalize-to-value'. That would be fine, except if a soundwave is close to 0 dB, then compression will result in distortion!
Compression on everything is imo a bit like lacy peak elimination.
Actually working with EQing on each instrument track takes much longer and more effort, but you are having control, not an algorithm.
That said, compression is great in percussion, where it really lift the parts that is weak and dampen those that dominates.
Its also interesting to compress a few instruments up against eachother, but thats fiddling and time consuming fun :p
Interesting, that makes sense. I guess I should disable the compressor on master and instead use compressors on loud instruments with some EQ. What can I do with the master though?

I do also have parts where 3 to even 10 instruments are playing the same notes at the same time.

It seems that the way to go is control the volume manually and by using modulation. Still, should I add clipper (with a little knee) or something on the master, or is it better to leave it empty?


Thanks again for your insights! I guess there is no easy way of mixing/mastering, especially for getting quality sound.
Avoid using StereoEnhancer on kicks, because while it can make impact more vivid on a good stereo-working system it may sound dull in mono and even unusual due to phase difference, and this could be more obvious in bass than otherwise.