Split Studio Session 15. The final mix and master of 'Behind the Sun'

Team members present: Mike, Lee and Bob

What was planned

Produce a final mix and master of 'Behind the Sun'

What was achieved

We all had identified small problems with our  previous mastered mix. The main ones being:

• The tremolo guitar was masked in the mix.
• The gunshot's were slightly too quiet.
• The horse whinny was slightly too loud.
• The reggae drums were being masked towards the end of the song.
• The vocals were slightly over-powering at times.
• The bell sound was slightly too quiet.
• The final bell's reverb tail was cut-off prematurely.

The various volume levels were adjusted using volume automation to get a better balance.
We added a small amount of compression to the vocals to prevent them overpowering the finale section. We also adjusted the level of compression on the reggae drums and increased the volume slightly to bring them forward in the mix.

We then produced a final master of the track using the following plugins;

• Studio Equaliser: Boosted the 200Hz frequency by 3dB to enhance the kick drum, boosted the 2kHz frequency by 3dB to help bring the vocals forward.
• Multi-band compressor:  Used a high threshold level and a 2:1 ratio to lightly compress the peaks. We wanted to retain as much of the dynamic range as possible.
• Stereo Enhancer: Used very sparingly to improve the stereo definition without adding unwanted artefacts.
• Limiter: Used very sparingly to slightly squash the loudest peaks during the song's crescendo.
• UV22HR dither tool. This was used as we are mixing down down from 24-bit to 16-bit resolution at 44.1 KHz.