How to use reference tracks for sound levels?

[u/OOGIEBOOGIEMANEEEEEE]

How could i use a reference track for leveling my drums in fl studio? I have tried isolating the frequencies with a fruity parametric eq 2 but it only worked with the low end instruments and hi hats and i do not want to use a ai stem separator. if y'all have any tips or plugins it would help thanks!

[u/Levelup_Onepee]

Actually, I do have a method that is not totally different to your idea. It seems you are fairly new at this, I'll give you my rule of thumb. Take into account that this doesn't replace knowing how to mix, is just a tool like bringing a magnifying glass to the music.

First of all, if you use a commercial reference track, you need to turn its level down by a lot. It should be at the same perceived volume that your unmixed track. -12dB isn't too much if it gets you there.

Your reference song sits in a channel inside your proyect with no effect on whatsoever, for easy A/B'ing. 

Then plug in an EQ in your master and use HPF and LPF to isolate a band of interest. Say for example from 500 to 1k Hz. Listen to the reference. Find which instruments are dominating in this band and which are behind. Then A/B to your track. Find the differences. Learn from the reference, you are not obliged to copy anything. Mix using your ears. 

I'll leave to you to choose the bands. You could have just 2 (highs and lows), or 3, or up to 10 (each for 1 octave). 

Well, you get the idea. I hope it helps.

[u/BludgeonedRecordings → u/Levelup_Onepee]

Fantastic piece of advice

[u/Doomzham]

Use your ears and go as you feel

[u/npcaudio]

Leveling drums, or any other instrument in a song, comes with two things. One is experience (listening to lots of music, and experiment/practice in your mixes), and the other is your taste too.

Assuming all instruments or elements can be heard in a mix, you have room for improvisation and automations.

There are no rules that says the drums for example should be louder than the vocals, guitar, or the other way around. You can find many good and known songs out there where drums are much quieter than everything else, and songs where it feels much louder than the rest... why? Because its an artistic decision.

Apart from making sure everything is heard (no frequency masking, clashing and knowing how to eq, balance, compress, apply effects, etc), you also have room for giving a bit of yourself when mixing music. That's the difference between you and a machine.

[u/alexaugustusmusic]

Totally get the EQ isolation struggle. Snares and toms share so much range with guitars and vocals that you can never really pull them out cleanly. A few things that work better:

1. Match the loudness first. Level your reference and your mix to the same loudness (a free meter like Youlean Loudness Meter works great) so you're comparing apples to apples. Most reference mistakes come from the reference just being louder.

2. Compare the balance, not isolated parts. Flip back and forth and ask simple questions: is the kick as forward as theirs? Is the snare cutting through the guitars as much? You don't need to hear their snare alone to tell if yours is 3 dB quieter in the mix.

3. Use a spectrum analyzer in a mix-matching mode. Something like Voxengo SPAN (free) can overlay your mix and the reference so you can see if your low end or top end is heavier or lighter overall.

4. Listen to the transients. Even when you can't isolate the snare, you can hear how hard it hits compared to yours. That tells you a lot about level and compression.

5. Reference in short loops. Pick one bar of a chorus from each and A/B them on a loop. Short, focused comparisons are so much easier than whole songs.

Metric AB (Plugin Alliance) is a great paid option that does loudness matching and A/B switching in one plugin if you want to streamline it.

[u/LuLeBe]

I don't think there's an easy way, even stem separation only gives you an incomplete picture. I think I'm roughly there now, after making countless tracks over years where I wasn't. I start out with getting the drums reasonably well balanced when soloing just the drums, and then compare the full mix to a full reference mix. I'm not sure how much isolating frequencies helps since your snare might occupy different frequencies for example.

[u/Independent-Owl-2640]

Is that for mixing or mastering process? Using reference tracks for mixing is not about being closely to the reference. Because references usually are already mastered, so you don't actually know which decisions where made in the mastering process. Use your ears and don't follow just the spectrum analyzer, hear the dynamics, the cohesion, masking, etc.

[u/ObviousDepartment744]

Listen with your ears

[u/[deleted]]

[u/atopix → u/[deleted]]

English only here. Reddit doesn't auto-translate your comments.