The Mix Bus Explained

does your mix bus look like this and it sounds like this you need to take control of your mix bus hey guys Joey here and in today's video I'm going to show you how to set up a mix bus this is a bus that everything in the song passes through sometimes it's tough to know what should go on in the mix bus especially for beginners I'm gonna give you a good starting point with some standard tools that'll make your mix stand out from the crowd and at the end I'll show you a few Advanced tips to supercharge your workflow there's a lot of content so let's just get started the first step to designing your mix bus is to understand which problems it solves the mix bus is a tool that gives a song a cohesive sound it does this by controlling problem frequencies gluing a mix together and adding harmonics to enhance the depth with that out of the way let's jump right into compression [Music] the mix bus compressor has two main jobs taming extreme transients and adding glue to a mix taming transients is a technical process that keeps loud sounds from taking the focus away from the lead Melody any VCA compressor with attack and release controls is a great choice for this myself [Music] this compression can be applied to specific frequencies with the multiband compressor this is a great way to focus the control of the bass for example [Music] glue is a little more complicated the goal is to get the song to react to itself to create a sense of movement an uncompressed mix will push and pull the sound separately adding a compressor on the mix bus allows the movement of a mix to push and pull cohesively that makes big moments feel more impactful this takes a while to hear but once you've mastered it you'll notice it everywhere myself inside [Applause] [Music] Pro tip the first step of a glued mix is proper editing if your tracks don't really hit at the same time it won't glue no matter how the compressors are set EQ is an important tool on the mixbus it's one of the last chances to adjust the brightness or darkness of a mix [Music] this is also a great spot to Target any remaining problem frequencies a dynamic EQ is great for stopping annoying buildups of frequencies learning how to EQ an entire mix is a skill that takes a lot of practice but a few subtle moves can really bring it to life another great tool to use on a mixbus is saturation the goal is to get a more exciting and full Sound by adding harmonic content to the entire mix depending on the goal of the song This Could range from Super subtle tape emulation to all-out Distortion I'm going to use jst maximizer to apply some saturation check it out [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] I threw myself [Applause] [Music] the different settings in the sauce control adds a completely different vibe to the mix which one was your favorite let me know in the comments below enhancing the stereo field is a trick used by mixing and mastering Engineers for ages maximizer has widening tools built in so that you can try this in your own mix I'm going to start by controlling the low end for these examples I'd recommend getting in a good listening environment phone speakers just aren't going to be able to accurately reproduce the effect [Music] now let's add some depth and dimension on the higher frequencies yourself [Music] awesome the guitars feel a lot wider and the drums have a little more depth this trick is awesome at small doses but pushing it too far can make things sit unevenly if you feel like you have to push a ton of whiteness on a song there's probably an issue in the EQ of the individual tracks now let's get into some of the more advanced ways a mix bus can level up your production [Music] did you know that you can set up more than one mix bus in a session this can be done to create alternate versions of a mix it's also great for optimizing a mix to be Mastered on different formats to set up an alternate mix bus create a send from each of your instrument groups then adjust the levels going to this bus I'm going to create an instrumental mix so I'm going to send everything evenly and just leave out the vocals now when I print this bus I'm only rendering the instrumental one cool tip with setting up buses like this is that you can print the song once and get all the alternate versions that the artist or the label may need [Music] foreign for more information on how I set this up check out this video on our YouTube channel another effective use for alternate buses is mixing for different formats different streaming platforms have different loudness standards and your mix will sound different at these standards check it out broken by using jst maximizer's built-in loudness analyzer you can hear how the mix changes at different RMS values if a master bus is going to do a ton of limiting to reach a certain loudness it's normal to need a little more volume on the drums this helps them cut through a wall of distorted guitars and layers of vocals if you know the master is going to be more Dynamic the drums could be brought down it may even be necessary to boost the guitars to sound right one other thing to keep in mind is how the song is going to be distributed songs being mastered for vinyl need a very narrow low end having wide low frequencies can be cool for a digitally released EDM song but all that sub information can actually cause the needle to skip on a final record the point of these alternate mix buses is to make sure that the song sounds how you intend when it's mastered in different styles take your time and experiment with this stuff it really does make a difference foreign the final tip in this video is the top-down mixing approach this is a huge topic that deserves its own video but here's the basic idea the mix bus is the first thing that's dialed in on the song Get the song balanced and start processing the entire mix Engineers who do this love it because it saves a lot of time there's no need to make every single track brighter if there's a high shelf boost on the whole mix bus it also helps get stuff into context faster since the Dynamics processing will be gluing the mix along the way the drawback is that if you're not making the right decisions on the mix bus it'll make each track more difficult to deal with because of this I'd only do top down mixing if you're an experienced engineer would you be interested in seeing a full-length video on this topic let me know in the comments below and that's it the mix bus is an insanely powerful tool that's often overlooked it's not as exciting as parallel compression and the latest damn Sim but mastering your mixbus is going to make your mixes stand out from the competition if you want to add size volume and excitement to your mix bus check out jst maximizer this plugin is the Perfect final step to the mix bus it uses a set of custom designed Dynamics saturation and stereo field processors that can take any mix to the next level download your free trial today at joeysturgistones.com thanks for watching and if you like this video hit that subscribe button don't forget to check the links in the description below and tap that Bell to get notified whenever we upload new videos until next time happy mixing [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: Joey Sturgis Tones

Views: 36,185

Keywords: home recording, audio production, mixing tutorials, Joey Sturgis Tones

Id: kD5aUVVaP78

Length: 9min 46sec (586 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 14 2022