FX, FX order, and Mastering info
I have been reading a lot about mastering and general effects order lately and wanted to post what I've learned, if anyone has anything more to add (or correct) please do so.
Sonic Maximizer
You should usually add a sonic maximizer before any other effect to a solo track. For instance, if you add it after a reverb, it will maximizer the reverb tails and make it sound fake.
A maximizer adds harmonics and distorts the signal (though in a clean way), for this reason adding it after other effects could cause nasty distortion or boosting of certain frequencies too much.
For mastering a Maximizer should be last in your chain because you should have already gotten rid of any boosted frequencies by EQ'ing and compressing during your mastering session.
Distortion
In general distortion, like the maximizer should be used first in line on a solo track. But, since we are always looking for new and interesting sounds for our synths you could experiement it in other places in the effect order and see what strange effect distorting a long reverb tail (VERY unnatural) or a boosted frequency go nuts.
EQ
Since we usually have pretty high quality DAWs here (being all digital with plug-ins(no A/D conversion) our tracks tend to be very bright with boosted frequencies and harmonics all over the place. This usually sounds great when you're listening to a solo track, but when you mix these tracks together you get mud. Listen to a PVD track, listen to how punchy his kick and bass is. This is because he rolls off the low frequencies from other tracks that don't need to be there (like the lead,snare,hi-hats,arps). Basically he has the bass taking up the bass frequencies and nothing else, the kick having anything less then 100, maybe more, rolled off. No other tracks are below around 250hz. In general you want to roll off all frequencies from all tracks below 80hz(gradual roll off with nothing below 40hz). You will be suprized how great your song will start sounding when you clean up the bass eqs.
Highs I haven't been able to find much information on, but in my own experience and experimentation adding *a little eq(like 3-5db in the 7000-15000hz range) to the hi-hats can make them sound really crisp. Snare the same thing but a little lower.
You shouldn't need to really notch any frequencies unless you need to fix a problem in your track (like a filter sweep that has an area of nasty loud resonance). Also, keep in mind that your compression will also flatten out stuff for you so you're just looking to make sure each track has it's own place in the mix.
Get a Pro audio CD(NOT AN MP3!!!) by an artist you like that has really great sounding mastering and study where they place each instrument in the mix. I'm not a big PVD fan, but I must say that his recordings seem to have the highest quality out of all trance CD's. Most psy-trance CD's also seem to have great mastering quality. Way Out West comes to mind also. Compare their mix to yours.
Compression/multiband/Limiting
Probably the most important effect that you can use is the compressor. If you had a theoretical perfect compressor you wouldn't have to EQ your tracks at all. All the tracks would compress the correct frequencies perfectly and your mix would come together like a nice flat puzzle. But they aren't perfect and don't have a brain with ears so....
You will get nice results compressing most tracks on their own. Play with the compressor settings and you can get cool "breathing" effects that are popular in a lot of dance music (James Holden ahem).
A compressor works by "compressing" everything above a certain threshold db. You adjust how much compression by changing the ratio and threshold. 2:1 at -14db will compress everything above -14 by 2:1 so now everything in your track above -14db will have it's volume lowered by 1/2 so you can hear more of the quieter parts of the track and less of the "loud" parts effectively flattening the sound out. Most compressors will also automatically do a gain adjust to raise the overall volume of the track since it will be quieter. The result is a perceived louder track with less dynamics. Want to hear music that has tons of compression? Listen to the rock band Aerosmith (yuk), they have so much compression that thier songs have absolutely zero dynamics (you can't hear any volume differences between the instruments, the lead guitar is just as loud as the hi-hat, the snare is just as loud as the bass, ect...).
A limiter works as a compressor set at the ratio 1:infinity. If you limit a track to -0.5db everything above -0.5 will be compressed so much that nothing will go above -0.5db in the track. Limiters work great if you want to avoid going over zero db and getting nasty digital distortion in your tracks/songs. They also work great as hardware devices as a way to avoid blowing your speakers in your studio.
Final Mastering effect order
In general, you would want to master with the following order:
DC offset adjust (makes all your waves centered properly and helps your mp3 quality a lot since the mpeg compression wont be cutting off frequencies you need)
EQ
Compression
EQ again to fix any problems compresson caused
Limiter
sonic maximizer (if needed and on a low setting)
Have fun and I want to hear some quality productions now!
This information comes from articles I've read in Keyboard magazine, on-line internet forums, some books I've read, Electronic Musician magazine, and my own experience and experimentation, your results may vary and I suggest researching the subject since it's more involved then this simple explanation.
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