--- In logic-users@yahoogroups.com, "Benjamin Dreessen" <forums@...> wrote: > > Message posted by Benjamin Dreessen <bjdreessen@...>: > >...but I feel a bit > like I'm chasing my tail. Yeah, I don't think it's chasing your tail if you actually apply things that you hear directly back to your mix. If something sticks out too far on one system, try to pare that element back a little in Logic, making sure you don't alter your main monitor image too much. Consider it another step you're taking towards a line of best fit which an ideal monitoring environment would be more likely to give you in the first place. I'm also in a very unsatisfactory monitoring environment, so while I mix on the monitors in the main, I play my mix in earbuds, on a big hi-fi, on monitors, in a car, on computer multimedia speakers, and I respond to things I hear in each and come back and make level/EQ wiggles. In effect, I'm averaging the bumps between all these sonic images, and it seems to work - I end up with mixes that carry pretty well in all of these environments. re: The loudness war. I don't totally sneer at loudening, only partly :) Heck, I use a brickwall limiter, I just push the mix into it less than most people. I try compression on all my tracks but I never leave it there just for the loudening principle if I don't like what it's doing. I really do like the fuller sounds that compression has made available to us in general, but I also believe it's mostly gone too far when every pop/rock record is represented by an eerily similar, unyielding brick like waveform in a sound editor. And I still think the majority of these sound good and big overall. I mostly notice the lack of dynamics if I take a step back and consider the percussion in comparison to everything else - that's when I am aware that no drum hit is actually really cutting or punchy, it's just that I'm seduced (and not negatively affected) by the overall loudness. If I put on some less compressed electronica immediately afterwards, I can hear an incredible snap in the percussion that pushes through the mix and which seems to be lacking from current pop/ rock records. As a sample of what I use to master tracks: Not much! Monitor speakers plus all that cross-checking on different systems. I use mostly Elemental Audio plugins. They're inexpensive but I'm not sure you can buy them in their original form atm, they're in a halfway house as their equivalents are being produced by Roger Nicholls, who absorbed EA. So I use : Firium (their linear phase EQ) if I want to make a slight overall EQ change here or there, though I'm sure I'd be happy to use Logic's own Linear Phase if I wasn't in the Firium habit from my Logic Express days. I use Inspector XL for my level and spectrum watching. My brickwall limiter is Finis, and sometimes if it's a more drastic mix, I ease it into Finis with Logic's regular limiter (on soft) to reduce pumping. I can now hear tons of 'stuff' after mixing regularly for a couple of years, yet I still find the effect of a regular limiter extremely hard to detect.