A few common mistakes.....

[Torque]

I'm not the perfect mix engineer and i don't have a million hits. I mean damn...i don't even make minimal and am generally not interested in doing it. What i do know is that in this forum there are a few people that really want to learn some stuff and are at the point where they can understand possibly what i am about to talk about. I'm not about to talk about how to make this or that sound that you heard on a record because if you're not interested in finding out how to make something you've never heard before ever and don't have the musical talent to make a track with good content that's worthy to be played on a dancefloor, then you have the seeds of your own destruction sewn already and will be blown out the water by the people with the real chops out there doing this for a living to feed their families.

What i can do however is tell you a few easy things that i have picked up that may keep a record with good content out of the bargain bin at your local vinyl shop and eventually out of the regrind pile at your local record pressing plant hopefully.

TOO MUCH REVERB
One fuckup that dance music producers make by putting too much reverb in their mixes. The sh!t sounds good up close or on headphones but father back in the space of a club the room is adding even more reverb into the mix and you end up sounding washed out and muddy and there's no longer the presence in your mix to pull people to come from the back to the front.

Here's another one...
OVERCOMPRESSION
If you have compressed all the dynamics out of your mix already by the time the mastering guy gets the track to put onto vinyl he's going to have a hard time getting it to go onto vinyl because your software limiter is making square waves and that makes the needle jump off the record, so in order for him to make the needle not jump out of the groove he has to do one of two things.

1. the good vinyl cutter will take time with your music and maybe fix your eq and put some sort of multiband compression or expander to try to save your mix and get some dynamics back that you may have compressed out. After that round of compression he may have an audio signal with a softer knee on it that isn't so square so he can cut it at an acceptable volume.

2. the lazy cutter will just turn down the gain and cut at a lower volume so the needle wont jump

So after all that bs most likely what you'll end up with either way is a sh!t sounding record. To top all that off you're now about to take that piece of crap no dynamic sounding record and then run it through another round of limiters at the club that they always have before the power amps so you can't blow the system out with sudden bass spikes. What this ends up sounding like is a big noisy constant bass sound and a foot that's just basically a tap and that's not what keeps people on the floor and dancing. They need to feel that foot.
An overcompressed record will work momentarily because to the listener it appears loud but it also causes listener fatigue so it may have them dancing right after it's dropped but then you'll see people slowly walk away or stop dancing. A good dj will see this and move on to the next record but even when you do this you're basically fucked because one of two things will happen. You will either put on the record with more dynamic range which will appear quieter and speed up the exodus from the floor unless you know enough to turn up the gain a little bit and let the limiter at the club hit it a little bit. Most newer guys don't know how to do that or are too busy with the beat matching in their set to pay attention because their still learning that part of the game. The second thing that happens is that you put on another overcompressed record and since the crowds ears are already fatigued you'll see the floor continue to clear. Either way you've taken a record with good content and turned it into a dud for the long term.

BAD VINYL CUTTERS
Beware of vinyl cutters and know which machines are best for cutting the kind of mixes you're throwing at them. The most popular machine tends to be the neumann lathe mainly because it's the easiest to operate. This machine was made for cutting records with wide dynamic ranges like classical music. It also has a floating cutting head that lifts up to make a more shallow cut to conserve space on a record when the volume is lower on certain parts in a song to conserve space on a record which also makes it better to cut full albums on. This machine was not made to cut at super high volumes like dance music demands and what ends up happening at high volumes because it's not made for it is that more vinyl compression is apparent killing a little more of the dynamic range of the music. If you want to know if a record is cut on a neumann machine all you have to do is look at the part of a record where the breakdown is and see if there is a dark band around that part of the record. That is there because since the machine doesn't have to push heavy bass through the cutting head the floating head lifts up a little and the cut is more shallow. Also if you find a record like that that is a dance music record put it on the turntable and watch the vu meter and turn the record up till it peaks at 0 db. If the meter is not jumping from at least around -12 to 0 db or more something was messed up in the process of cutting it. Either the mix was bad dynamically to begin with, the mastering engineer is not a good one and applied too much compression, or the machine he was using to make the cut was not the proper machine for the kind of mix that was trying to be cut. If you take note of that and pay attention and find out where the record was cut and find more records and listen to them coming from that same place and find that all their records seem to show up with a below acceptable volume level or fucked up dynamic range just don't use that guy. I hate to say it but some of the worst cuts i've ever heard seem to come from europe and most of them are done on neumann machines. Some mastering houses over there are good and use that machine but i'm not going to tell who because then i would be feeding the U.S. competition. And i'm not going to tell either what other machines are the good ones either. Just be smart and look around, you'll see who the real pro's are. Loud does not always = good
Beware!

[miro pajic]

well, you're basically right with all you're saying but i would guess it's the TOTAL minority of people who would/want to understand your words.

check the beatport top100 (minimal or techno....) talking of over compression or extreme loudness. we all know it has reached a level of madness. no wait, i think in the last WEEKS it even went higher. tracks are so LOUD now that i just can't believe it. it's a dck measuring contest with an attitude of "teenager-ism". (I can't believe how strong high frequencies are boosted to distortion...)

it's sad but in the end even the big boys have to find a compromise in competing nowadays to not look like jerks. So, no matter what you or others may preach about loudness, compression etc....90% will not give a damn. the kids will buy a louder release on beatport first i think.

I'm also old fashioned and have done dozens of records and believe in dynamics, certain rules and quality music but IT is unstoppable i guess.

things go their way - we can only accept it. trying to fight it will lead to own frustration.

[New Guy]

indeed, 2 years ago it was -12db RMS. Last year it was -11db RMS.
Now it is -10db RMS, i even know a few tracks that have -9db RMS...
Can it go much louder? I really hope that it won't!

And what you said about the fatigue due to overcompression, that is so spot on. I witnessed it myself a lot of times in the clubs that people started dancing to a wicked track and then as the track went on they gradually started to move off the dance floor.

It really is a stupid trend, but does reflect a lot of aspects of our current society. Everyone is shouting at one another and no one wants to listen to the other, so they try speak louder and louder believing that this way they will be heard.

Anyway fck it. To me it seems that the wisest thing to do in the long run is not go a long with this current trend. Good music will stand out and not because of its loudness but because of its musicality and appeal.
If we keep reinforcing the current trend we will not stop it, we will just prolong it. We should focus more on a counter action.

[Torque]

If you feel the need to learn even more i would recommend you google Ed Wolfram. Ed is an old recording engineer from Detroit and was the head engineer of detroit's largest studio, United Sound. He's the guy that invented the direct box. On top of all that he's mixed some of the biggest records Motown ever put out. If there wasn't a machine that did what this guy needed to do in the studio he just invented one. He was also a main contributor to the making of Cool Edit Pro, and his inventions and improvements have been used by companies like Soundcraft and Ampex. This man is a straight up treasure in Detroit and one of the most intelligent genius level people i've met in the record business.

you can start here:
http://www.musicfromdetroit.com/news.html

[steevio]

Anyway fck it. To me it seems that the wisest thing to do in the long run is not go a long with this current trend. Good music will stand out and not because of its loudness but because of its musicality and appeal.
If we keep reinforcing the current trend we will not stop it, we will just prolong it. We should focus more on a counter action.

exactly,
i've been making tracks at -13 or -14 for a long time now, ok probably people surfing beatport will think WTF this sounds weak, but who cares ?

the loudness wars is not a new thing btw, i was releasing hard techno tracks in the ninetees that were -10, not becuase i wanted to, but because the cutting engineers didnt want to lose their reputation for loud cuts, and didnt have much choice but to keep up.

counter action - the new dynamics revolution, i like it !

[tone-def]

i've been looking at some record grooves and it seems i can see the breakdowns on both european and american records. but some of the european records had darker looking breakdown.

[patrick bateman]

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=3 ... 036&ref=nf

[loopdon]

Thanks to everyone contributing to this thread!

I'd welcome some pointers in here...

Records that work nicely and aren't squashed to buggery,
that have the needed dynamics, i.e. reference material.

I know this isn't painting by numbers but some ruff values for levels etc. could help a lot of people out.