I have a whole live band two track song set up as two mono tracks in Studio One. The left and right channels are different and need different manipulation to bring out the best fidelity. I am also exporting out to a master file. My question is what is best done to be done on the mix and what is best to be done on the master? I have tried different things but realize that in the end it leads to over processing, however some processing needs to be done for best results.
I have found "Vitamin" to be a great asset as it allows spread by frequency, so I have put this on each track in the mix. The Vocals and the lead guitar are too loud for the mix so some compression is warranted. I have limiter2 set to -4.0 on my main mix master to help in this. When I try to add compression in on the mix (MultiBandDynamics), though I tried others before settling on this based on result, the Mix is coming into the master too loud, even with the 4.0 Limiter ceiling almost no matter how much I dial it back until I don't have it on.
And then I am still finding tweaks to do in the Master so I am using slight Pro Eq, and have played with Compression/Limiter on the master to see if it is better there. The Master arena is where I am trying to make sure al the songs sound like the same performance and to make sure I have compressed the Vocals and Guitar and brought out the reset of the band without clipping or going over -14LUF and trying to be 4-6 i nLRA and -1.0 on TP with a -1- to -14 RMS which seems to be good for the 40 year old tape source.
To be clear, I am sort of lost on what I should be doing in the mix and what in the master in order to bring out the best quality and properly apply processing. Any suggestions are appreciated.
