Tips for AI Mixing?

[Garen2073]

Are there any tips to make AI mixes sound better? Maybe less "mono-ey" Whether it be EQ or panning the drums, voices, etc... What can I do to make an AI Mix sound okay?

[Tex]

Define "AI mix".

[Garen2073]

I should've made myself clearer, sorry. I meant AI de-mixing. You know, how can I make the stems sound better and make the overall mix sound good?

[Tex]

I should've made myself clearer, sorry. I meant AI de-mixing. You know, how can I make the stems sound better and make the overall mix sound good?

The technique I think you are referring to is using a online "spectral" demix algorithm to pull a piece of recorded music into more basic parts like vocals, bass, drums, guitars into separate audio files. I personally don't like calling any of it "AI" it's really just clever math and signal processing.

Do you have a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) to drop the extracted files into? Many use the free Audacity.

[Tex]

Now as far as sound quality (EQ) you want to have a good baseline. That does NOT require a professional system just one adjusted so that reference material sounds "good". Your baseline could also simply be the original material to start with which is what I do. In other word just A/B between the original and the remix and stay tonally close to that.

I usually work in the mid-range not so much low end or high end. Steve Hoffman likes to say "The magic is in the mid-range" and that's very true.

If the source is noisy a DAW should have noise removal tool but use them carefully. My DAW has a noise sampler to get a fingerprint of the noise. Most of my adjustment are in the 1 to 3 decibel range. I also tend use broader parametric EQ sweeps and rarely narrow graphic EQ notches which is more often just undoing what bootleggers did I think. A DAW will have a graphic EQ thing (long row of narrow EQ points) but it really should also have a parametric EQ where you can manually set the EQ point and their notch widths. It's my understanding the EMI REDD desk had bass, treble, 5k pop/classical toggle and they also had a passive EQ module with 2.7k, 3.5 k and 10k. I think in 1968 the newer desk added a couple more EQs maybe someone has the actual values (I'm thinking 8k was one). I think bass was always around 100k. I've got the most mileage out of the established values listed. My early mixes used the narrow graphic EQs and they all sounded terrible.

A multi-band compressor is a good tool to make a limp sounding mix pump and jump. They used an inline compressor in the original Beatles mono and stereo mixes. This is why the Beatles "Rock Band" stems are kinda limp (many Pepper tracks) because the stems don't have that extra processing they did during live mixing in the 60s. I figured this out after struggling to get good mixes from the Pepper stems and then I turned on the 3-band compressor (last part of the signal chain) to a moderate level and holy cow the mixes came alive.

The "Help!" DVD mixes have excessive compression on the stems themselves which make every element continuously loud with no dynamics at all. I used those overbaked stems in two mixes but I'm not proud of it.

It's my philosophy that a good remix should sound like a "better" alternative vintage mix. The two should sit well with each other. By "better" we can all agree would be drums and lead vocal in the middle and a more pleasing sound. The alternative is what Geoff Emerick tried to do in the 1980s with "Sessions" and what Giles Martin has been doing recently to varying degrees of suckcess.

[jpgrcat1960]

46.WR 26.41 - Like A Rolling Stone, Twist And Shout, Dig It 15:25

Love to demix the Heather McCartney bit from Dig It, until the last 6:47 to her in background...

[Tex]

I'd like to hear advice from our other remixers who often work with poor quality material. I leave BBC and live stuff to more experienced people.

[mellowmatter]

I've only been tinkering with stem seperation tools, so much respect to those that can produce quality mixes.

[MoltenJackass]

It's funny how fast you progress. I listen to mixes I did 2 years ago and I find them unlistenable. "What the hell was I thinking at the time, I'd never do that now".
I find myself, and a few others here, remixing the same songs every few years as the software improves. Good luck!