Top Production Mistakes: Part 2

In Part 1... I talked about three specific areas of electronic production that are often lacking in demos submitted to myself and EDM labels. It is impossible to fit a comprehensive list of every issue producers encounter into one or even several articles. I will, however, continue my general discussion on techniques that can implement drastic improvements to your overall production. If you're already familiar with these tips, they can still serve as a helpful reference before submitting a mix.  

4) Bass is Weak

In past articles, I have heavily emphasized the role that a sub plays in EDM tracks. Simply put, the low sub-frequencies move the most air and cause the most vibrations in a club. This is, in essence, what differentiates a live DJ performance from listening to their songs on a consumer system or headphones.  

What Is a Sub?

Sub refers to an instrument rooted in subsonic frequency content. The device is essentially a sine wave, usually playing the root of the harmony or melody in a register below about 100 Hz. Since a sine wave only contains the fundamentals of a tone, it won't conflict with mid and high frequencies. In Massive, you get a sine wave by switching an oscillator to the Sine-Square setting and moving the wavetable position to the left-most place.  

 

Below is a graphical representation of this sub-oscillator playing note G-0. As you can see, there is a sharp decline in the level of frequency content above 100 Hz.  

 

Splitting the Sub and Bass

Bass instruments in many popular EDM tracks seem to have a wide stereo spread, but frequencies below 100 Hz are not responsible. Those frequencies should remain monophonic because of the high potential for interference. Instead, you can expand the image by layering something on top of the sub and widening that layer. You should high-pass filter it above 100 Hz to make sure it does not conflict with the actual replacement. Together, the two layers give the impression that the whole bass is wide. An essential advantage of splitting the bass and the sub is the ability to process the top layer more extensively without damaging the clarity of the sub frequencies (below 100 Hz). You could add a layer of audible grit while retaining the frequencies needed to give the track a solid presence in a live setting. This instrument is made up of two layers. The first is a mid-bass layer I made in Massive, and the second is a simple sine sub playing a G-0. The top layer has two voices that are slightly spread and detuned to widen the sound further.  

 

~ Full Bass

 

~ Top Layer

~ Bottom Layer

As you can hear, the full bass sounds wide even though the sub is mono. In general, keep frequencies below 100 Hz mono and central.  

Optimal Sub Range

The sub becomes jarring when played in a register that is too high. In a record that is too low, it is inaudible. Therefore, the optimal range for a sub to play is D0 to E1. Anything above E1 won't sound like a sub, and anything below D0 risks being inaudible on most systems or won't have enough impact.   

~ Here is a sine wave in Massive playing a G0. This is an optimal note for the sub

~ This is an F1 (Sounds a little harsh)

~ This is a C#0 (Difficult to hear)

5) Poor Balance

In order to have a mix that sounds compact and tight, you'll have to make good use of meters and other tools that give you visual representations of your mix.  

Stereo Balance

When you pan channels in different directions without justification, you increase the chances of having an unbalanced combined output. This can cause problems when you have the master or group effects (effects inserted on a stereo mix) that process the left and right channels individually. The best way to judge if your left and right channels are balanced is by looking at the built-in meters. It's a no-brainer. The two green bars represent the left and right channels, respectively. Keep an eye on individual channel metering, but most importantly, on your master channel. The image below shows that the left channel is significantly louder than the right one in my mix. If you're sustaining a reading like this on your master channel for more than a moment, you should have a look at your channel and fix the offset.  

 

Mono Compatibility

Regarding other widening techniques like pseudo-stereo or mid-side processing, you should take extra care as these can create asymmetrical stereo images. Also, these techniques often reduce mono compatibility, affecting the mix in a live setting (club systems are always mono). Summing left and right to check for mono compatibility is a critical task for any mixing engineer. A mix that sounds good in mono will naturally sound better and broader in a stereo setting. It's not the other way around.

Here is an example of two expansive stereo sounds being played in mono. The first example is how a mono-compatible sum sounds. The second exemplifies the strange distortion when a sum is not mono-compatible. Notice how the first example is much "tighter" than the second. Its tone is more confident and supported. The second example is a little "out-of-focus" compared to the first.

 

You'd have a problem if your lead would sound like the one in example 2. This is because different voices of the synth phase are used in ways that cause specific frequencies to be multiplied and others to be attenuated or eliminated. So, mono compatibility is an important step to get into the habit of checking. For more information on how to treat phasing, visit our article on Healthy Phase Relationships. Note that the reason sub-frequencies are kept mono and central is mono compatibility issues. This way, if anything is distorted on a summed live system, you know it's not the sub!  

6) Unstable Levels

As you pay more attention to level meters and analyzers in your DAW, you'll realize how volatile they are. Often, signals that sound at a consistent volume fluctuate a lot. When a mix is brought to mastering, too much variation in level will cause the limiter and compressor to work harder than they should have in certain parts of the arrangement and not work hard enough in other regions. When too much signal is fed into these plug-ins, they will distort. And the only way to properly mend this distortion is by adjusting the overall mix, which the mastering engineer can request if they desire. If you want more information on why it is essential to stabilize the levels of your different channels, you can check my article, Maximizing Loudness. To demonstrate my point, here is a processed snare followed by the original. The two sounds are outputting at the same level in Lumit, but the first one sounds louder than the second. This is because a freeware saturator and a compressor/expander are processing it. What I'm trying to show is that at the same level of reading in your DAW, there is still a margin of how loud the sounds are perceived. Because of this, it's essential to keep the level in SoundBridge as consistent as possible. You can get pretty far with that before you start damaging the sound.