Mixing Lesson # 1

[dawman]

I had a well known engineer critique our live mix last week and give me some tips.
He's a ProTools buff w/ a couple of really expensive hardware consoles, and tons of outboard gear guys like us would die for.
He has been an artist in residence at several Universities and offered to teach me online w/ several courses starting w/ EQ & filtering.
He sent me 6 wav. files of vocalists recorded dry doing a lengthty chorale.
I am using the DAS C350, and Master IT EQ since those are my high end plugs.
I have experimented w/ the Bass, Tenors, Altos and Soprano, but he assumed I knew what I was doing, and asked me to listen and EQ the files seperately, then combine them in my sequencer and Master them.

Sorry for the silly question but what is the term used in Cubase 4 for combining all of these files in a Project?
I am assuming that these were extracted from some sequencer so if I just transfer them into a Cubase project, I hope they line up.

Sorry, but I don't want to embarass myself with him just yet.
He saw the way I used Scope and the DAS Mixer w/ the wireless stuff and I assumed I knew sequencer apps.

I looked through the manual, and even have listened to my Digital Doctor DVD but I am pretty lame.
If someone could just describe the term they use I am sure I will be able to finish the lesson.

Thanks In Advance.

[Tau]

Import each audio file to the audio pool. Then drag them from there to the arrange window. If you drag to an empty space on the arrange window, a new audio track will be created for each wave. you can then drag the audio clips so that they begin in the same point in the timeline.

Better still, select them all in one go in the audio pool, and drag them together to the empty arranger! They'll all line up, each in its track.

Good luck,

T

[Tau]

As for the "term" used in Cubase for "combining", I'd assume it'd be "mixing". If I understand correctly, you're EQing each track beforehand, (as opposed to when listening to them all together), so there'll be no need to use the insert eqs. Simply adjust the volume faders, and apply some final processing on the master bus. I think that's what he meant, please forgive me if I got it wrong...

edit: of course, after you do the above, you'll have to mixdown the separate tracks to a single file, either in realtime (playing the whole mix and recording it into a seperate Cubase track or to VDAT, for example), or by rendering the master output of Cubase to a Wave file...
Anyway, this is a lot simpler to do than to explain, but I hope by now you should have enough keywords to search the manual and the DVDs.


T

[dawman]

Gotcha Thanks.

Yeah the tracks are to be corrected using EQ then compiled and mastered.
I guess they were extracted seperately and destyoyed somewhat as they sounded unfixable until tweaked.
They are to be mastered after being drug into the project...thanks again.
The DVD actually explains it in detail really well, I was looking in the wrong section.

Cheers.

[garyb]

just use the "import' function. cubase will place the tracks in the pool, copy them into the woking file if needed, and create tracks in the arrange window, all in one step.