Quote Originally Posted by tekboi View Post
Thanks Jay! With getting my mix sounding louder through the EQing & compressor part of this process, can you please tell me how much is involved regarding the redlining on the master level in Ableton?? Do you have to stay away from the red, keeping it only at green?? Even though the mix doesnt sound loud? I can only assume once I redline, I am hitting a level of distortion, is that this correct?
The moment you go into the red, you are clipping the mix, and when it finally comes to mixing down into an audio file, all the times when the mix goes red will turn into a horrible squarewave distortion.

The trick with kicks is for them to punch in all the right places. That means they need top end click for them to cut through the mix, a bit of mid range smack to make them fit with other percussive elements and then a good bit of sub thump to drive the track along.

There's plenty of ways to create kicks with little to no sub bass. You could eq it down, or just filter it out altogether. Barry's suggestion to use lots of layers of kicks is great - because you can built the kicks in parts - top, middle and bottom depending on what your mix is doing.

A kick will sound perceptually louder if it has more high end energy, but that will be lost when its "felt" on the dancefloor as it won't have any bass smack. You also need to think about where you want the track to be heard. Kicks are hugely important because people dance to them. Sounds obvious, but if your kick gets lost in your mix, or doesn't have energy in the right places it will sound weak and undanceable over a big system, that treats frequency energy differently to headphones or studio monitors.

Try and build you mix as loud as you can without any clipping. Then once you've done that, you can apply a very gentle amount of compression or limiting to raise the overall track volume. But one you start doing this, you'll change the character of the mix. Mastering is a dark and complex art, and generally best left to people who understand the ins and outs of it all.

Focus on get your mix as tight as possible (loud with no red lights) and when you feel you can't go any further, get someone pro to master it. You will never get a "pro" sound by yourself if you're relatively new to production, its just too complex and difficult to achieve without comprehensive understanding of all the tools available and well trained ears.