Logic Pro 9 HELP ME OUT, TONS of logic 9 questions

[steven hewlett jr]

Hey guys, I have a lot of questions. I am a soldier in afghanistan, and i recently released an instrumental album on Itunes called just music. When people heard it from the download on itunes or amazon, they said it sounded a bit mal- nourished, but when i mixed the tracks on my mac they always sounded really good from a few different type of headphones and some descent speakers. The levels were messed up. I am a workstation kind of guy roland fantom to be exact, i am used to that full thick studio sound it creates. I fell in love with the crisp editing and raw instrument sounds that logic has and switched over. I am happy but lost a bit. If you know a lot about the program, is there any way you could drop some clues and tips my way. I have yet to use the wave image format for any of my recordings, so that may be an issue as well.

 

[Pete Thomas]

I would suggest you ask specific questions, you are more likely to get results if you do that (start a new thread for each question.

I would advise:

Check out the FAQ section - http://www.logic-users-group.com/index.php?q=126.html

It's also well worth checking out the recent Sound on Sound magazine Logic Tips, it has a special section this month on getting started. Even taught me a thing or two.

Best of luck

 

[sonnykeyes]

Hey Steven, everything sounds good on headphones, and it's virtually impossible to balance levels on them. When it comes time to mix, you need to listen on speakers. Good luck!

 

[georgelegeriii]

I second the Sound ON Sound recommendation as well, it is a fantastic article I would suggest every Logic Pro user take a look at. It is a very good overview of Logic, going over many things like track types, buses, preference settings, and is good for both the new user as well as old timers like me ;-)

www.soundonsound.com

 

[steven hewlett jr]

alright thanks guys i appreciate it. will ask specifically but i dont want to sound rediculous, When i see adds for logic or see it on tutorials on youtube all of the screens have the sound in wave format, even on the homw screen image for this website, and i have had the program for almost 1 year and i have yet to get my screen to have my music displayed in that format. secondly i tried to open a project i had already finished, in the master area of the project and it would show up as one of the tracks on the song edit/ creation screen- but no matter what setting i put it on, it would not read any of the signal from the song- it was just an extra track. I wanted to know if there was a specific way to load a completed track into the master area and push it through that channel? thanks again for all of your assistance if anyone can answer any of these questions it would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Pete Thomas]

alright thanks guys I appreciate it. will ask specifically

Actually what I meant was for each question, start a new thread (topic) and make the title for that topic relevant to the question.

If you ask several questions within one thread it gets complicated and people won't find the questions as easily as if you had each one in it's own thread with a title.

 

[zerobeat]

"Malnourished" often means that it was not mastered (or badly mastered).

Most people can't master properly. And I'm even talking about many brilliant mix engineers. It's a very specific and targeted skill, and there's zero shame in not being somebody who can do it well. Imagine being able to build the most brilliant house ever, but then letting somebody else do the electrical work because you'd either do a sloppy job or even worse cause a fire.

Also, mixing on headphones can lead to a few problems:

1) weak stereo imaging (because any difference between left/right in headphones is greatly exaggerated compared to speakers, so one tends to be very tame in this regard).

2) weakly mixed vocals (or other "lead" instruments). That's because it's a lot easier to focus on these elements in headphones compared to speakers, partly because there are no very low frequencies to get in the way. The distance between a headphone's speaker and your ear is too small to produce the long waves necessary for bass. What you're often hearing are overtones, not the root frequency. And sometimes nothing at all if the low frequency was very pure (sinus or near sinus).

which leads to:
3) not realizing that there are tons of low frequencies in there causing a hogging of the soundstage.