Is this a good approach to mixing my sound

itsallgoodgames wrote on 1/4/2017, 10:59 PM

Hello there, i make youtube videos with some narration and background music.

So in my project i have 2 audio tracks

1)MUSIC

2)VOICE

So my approach after the last 3 days of nonstop tweaking and head scratching and reading is:

Lower gain on music clips a lot(I did -15db actually) so i can hear my voice clearly(at least to myself)

Apply Noise Reduction and Fletcher Munson EQ to VOICE TRACK

Then in Master Mixer I added preset compressor [Sys] 3:1 compression starting at -15 dB, and set [Sys] Soft Limiter afterwards.

No normalized clips.

My logic is I lower the music clips to hear my voice, then i use the compressor to raise the loudness of all the quiet stuff, and finally just in case add a limiter for any sudden peaks.

 

The only uncertainty for me is the 3:1 compression at -15dB, i may change it to one of the other ones like the 2:1 at -18dB maybe.

But hopefully the rest of my settings are solid? and no normalizing required.

Comments

Musicvid wrote on 1/5/2017, 2:38 PM

You do need to compress your music track quite a bit and drop the volume. But the rest sounds like over processing.

Then, look up the word "ducking."

Post back with a link to your results.

itsallgoodgames wrote on 1/5/2017, 2:54 PM

Allright so what i ended up doing is:

For the voice sections I ducked most of the music -20dB and one piece -22dB.

I used noise cancellation and FletcherMunson EQ on voice as well as lowering and additional frequency that was causing high hiss sounds in my voice.

Then on the final mix i used compressor with settings -24db 1:1.5 ratio. This raised some quiet sections which sounded nicer to me and made the whole video a bit more even overall. Finally i used a very subtle soft limiter -2db with 1:2 ratio.

And in my final 11 min video I had 4 or 5 spots where i used volume envelope to lower my voice a bit because of clipping.

When i uploaded to youtube the total volume was actually lower than in the editor, but it still sounded allright to me, and im not sure how i could make youtube play it louder since it was already pretty loud in the editor.

Here's my final result