Friday, February 8, 2013

Four Ways to Get Rid of a Muddy Mix: Audio Recording Advice


A lot of recording engineers mix and mix their songs, only to keep coming up with a final mix that sounds muddy and muffled. So what should you do? Their are plenty of reason why this happens and here are four ways to try to fix that mess.



 


1. Stop leakage. This is the first place to start when trying to prevent muddy and muffled mixes. Before recording try your best to get all of the leakage you can out of the microphones. If you have to change mics or the directions and angles of the mics don't be lazy, just do it. If you're having problems with muddy mixes then you might want to try all kinds of different microphone situations.

2. Boost your highs. Try boosting some of the highs but don't boost a huge bandwidth, try boosting them in peaks and add just a little reverb . Highs can help brightening up some of the instruments, but be careful too much can make extra noise and can take away from the natural sound of the mix.

3. Try cutting the lows. Cutting the lows while boosting the highs can help get rid of that muddy sound. Just make sure you cut them in the right place. You want to make sure you can still hear the bass of the instruments; you are just trying to cut out the muddiness. Two or Three db around 300hz is a good start.

4. Take it easy on the effects. Don't assume that just because reverb and other effects make the song sound cool that it is the best thing for the mix. If you're using a lot of reverb, eq, echo etc. then try to back them off a little because to much can make your mix sound muddy and artificial.


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