Preparing Tracks For Studio Mix
oot
38 Posts
Say I have a song with 10 tracks of instruments and shit in something like cubase or acid...What would be the best way to output each track for the studio engineer as far as levels were concerned?Should I just output each track as-is from my personal mix? or should i bump each track up in volume as loud as possible without distortion, and just re-mix in the studio with the engineer? is there a standard volume level that is deemed "appropriate" and/or i should not go over?holla!-oot 
Comments
first off, find out what kind of gear the mixer is using. is he/she using pro tools? nuendo? logic? cubase? analog tape? dats? adats? radar? if they are using software, there are ways of directly importing your session into their application without having to do much at all. once you find out what they are using, you might be able to export whats called an OMF. this allows the engineer to import your session and have it appear pretty much exactly like it looked at your house, only in whatever program they are using.
if you have plugins on your tracks, dont apply them. if you are taking this to someone else to mix, chances are they will want to use there own gear/ plugins.
you are not going to want to make each track as loud as possible. that would eat up all the headroom, and the engineer would just have to turn it back down. if you are paying this person to mix for you, they should know how to make your shit loud if you want it loud.
normally I'd bounce each track so you have 10 tracks of equal length in wav format, put it on a CD and hand that shit to the engineer and tell him to crank that shit to 11.