@wektor 2nd listen and noticed its nicely mixed. Solid.
Wew thanks, my mixes are usually complete ass (if you peek through my previous post in this thread you'll be able to tell), I feel like this was an exception and I'm very glad it does make a difference to people after all!
After some basic EQing (highpassed synths, whatever else done to taste but tried my best not to dive into sound design once I had the sounds I was working with already) there's some multiband compression or gating on most of the tracks, just to make things pump/hit the right way.
fyi I'm almost completely clueless when it comes to compression so I just go for whatever preset sounds super punchy and overdone after random adjustments then play with dry/wet settings to use maybe 15% of that signal. Got to know about setting the tresholds in multiband compressors recently and it seems like yet another thing that you can spend 2h on doing. "Is it still too weak or does it sound like a noisia snare already?"
I think what usually does the trick is getting the levels of each track right (I usually start with adjusting the drums soloing out everything, then bass and so on) and A/B-ing with a well picked reference track, I think in this case reference was (its in that lovely grey area between dnb and electro, a different twist on neurofunk perhaps?)
I think he doesn't have that much stuff happening in the mid/highs as I do, hence I ended up with this funny (or perhaps old skool?) proportion of bass/everything else where everything is a little muddy but it still kicks.
Actually I lied. I didn't A/B it, I analysed the tune with izotope's tonal balance control and used it as a template to get the levels right.
Ih in my case seeing the spectrum and some proportion reference is very important as I'm usually deaf to that stuff (unless I mix tracks so A/B-ing results in something close to the same, maybe more intuitive actually).
Getting the levels right is half of the job done and you can really hear if they are right if you mix it with stuff. Makes me feel like I need some dj equipment at home.
I've just taken a look at my master channel in that project and there's only the live limiter there. Turned up to +13dB that's all. No mastering tips from me I suppose.