Making a "digitally mixed" Compilation CD

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Posted by marsh on Feb-03-2005 16:08:

Making a "digitally mixed" Compilation CD

Hey People

I'm hoping to draw on some peoples wisdom and experience here-

I've just completed a digitally mixed compilation CD for commercial release showcasing all Australian Trance!!

I used Acid Pro for the mixing of it, Wavelab for minor pitch correction, and Cubase to master the mix and give it consistency start to finish.

Looking back over the result I have produced, and what I've learned from the process of doing it, I have a few questions relating to sound quality, flexibility, that I'm gonna hit you guys with-

Firstly, I have a traditional musical background and understand harmonic mixing, so I used pitch correction/shifting on a few tracks to make them fit into the mix alot better- I noticed during this process that the sound quality suffered proportionately to the amount of shift/correction applied - needless to say, I tried to be as subtle and sparing as possible!!. I vaguely understand why this occurs- resampling, analysis, and shifting has to occur etc.. but does anyone know if there are better or worse ways to acheive pitch modification results, or are the algorithms much of a muchness?

Secondly, the acid audio engine seemed to me to be less than appealing (?!?). I used it for the first time for this project and found the quality and clarity to suffer a bit when comparing it to the original WAV's used. I could be imagining this (the mind is a powerful thing!!), but trully I feel that it lacked a little and am considering Ableton for it's all in one versatility for the next project (yeh, get ready- Australia is stepping up to the plate trance wise!!). Anybody shed light on this?

Otherwise, I welcome suggestions and advice on putting together top notch quality commercial digitally mixed cd's as I still have by no stretch become competant at it quite yet!!! So put your two bob's worth in please!!

Thanks in advance

Posted by ONION on Feb-03-2005 16:24:

You might want to look into something like Mixmeister or something like VirtualDJ and Native Instruments Traktor....

As for mastering the whole project... stick with wavelab

Good luck mate

pm me for more details

Posted by DickieThijssen on Feb-03-2005 16:32:

Mixmeister is many times better imo, at first it looks like it cant do a thing but when you're familiar with it it can do everything, what a masterpiece that software is...

Posted by marsh on Feb-03-2005 16:36:

Thanks for replying mate

I've played with traktor - fun, but not practical for the kind of brutal mixing that was mandated for this mix, which involved cramming 16 tracks into 80 minutes, whilst preserving the best musical elements of each and mixing them together coherently (and trying to make them play nice!!). Virtual dj also looks like more of a live mix recording type thing that you can go back and make adjustments to. I like the look of Mixmeister though - due to the way you can visually arrange the track. This was one advantage of acid over traktor- although, traktor does sound better... grrrr..... why is it so hard!!!

Have you had pleasant experiences using mm?

Posted by marsh on Feb-03-2005 16:37:

quote:
Originally posted by DickieThijssen
Mixmeister is many times better imo, at first it looks like it cant do a thing but when you're familiar with it it can do everything, what a masterpiece that software is...

Thanks for that - downloading the demo now!

Posted by ONION on Feb-03-2005 16:41:

Posted by Chewporka on Feb-04-2005 04:15:

Ableton is the goods for this sort of application.

I hear ya onion.. which track was yours?

Posted by ONION on Feb-04-2005 08:44:

quote:
Originally posted by Chewporka
Ableton is the goods for this sort of application.

I hear ya onion.. which track was yours?

i didnt enter...

Posted by DickieThijssen on Feb-04-2005 11:21:

quote:
Originally posted by marsh
Thanks for replying mate

I've played with traktor - fun, but not practical for the kind of brutal mixing that was mandated for this mix, which involved cramming 16 tracks into 80 minutes, whilst preserving the best musical elements of each and mixing them together coherently (and trying to make them play nice!!). Virtual dj also looks like more of a live mix recording type thing that you can go back and make adjustments to. I like the look of Mixmeister though - due to the way you can visually arrange the track. This was one advantage of acid over traktor- although, traktor does sound better... grrrr..... why is it so hard!!!

Have you had pleasant experiences using mm?

I use mixmeister all the time, its features are heavenly ... I made megamixes like armin did at his last show of 2004. I bet i could have made that mix many times better, just because i use mixmeister (i guess armin used acid, not sure though)... Only thing about mm which could have been better is the number of eqs (only high and low), there should have been one for mid also (though that would take more time creating mixes)... One thing is also not powerful enough: beatmatching, sometimes it doesnt recognizes the beats well and you have to manually adjust it (for me thats no problem, it takes a few seconds, just use ears and eyes)

Posted by tonkproject on Feb-04-2005 12:24:

i use to do all my radio mixes with Acid Pro and it is "stealing" a lot from the original quality....i contact the sonic foundry(4 years ago) and they couldnt tell me what was happening but of course they denied that the software had some problems when you load to much on it.i had a 30 min show and i tink somethimes i use to have something like 40-50 tracks in my mix,so rendering wasnt agood choice...i had to record my mix audio....ableton i think is a very good choice,very flexible and quite cheap comparing with Cubase.the bpm and pitch features can help you a lot,specially when you do a mix......+ the new features:you can choose to run your samples from your memory or hdd....+ the plugins are more than great and dont eat you cpu...check their website.
of course,that's my opinion as an ex Cubase user switch to Ableton.

Posted by ZxZDeViLZxZ on Feb-04-2005 14:58:

ableton live is really good it supports vstis heavily so thats a plus.