One of the advantages of DAWs is being able to see the ‘audio frequencies’ of each track. That allows the user to adjust EQ etc. accordingly, so each instrument can be heard as clearly/separately as possible, thus helping to avoid muddy mixes.
I don’t have a DAW or want one, so without knowing what the frequencies are on each instrument, mixing effectively would be likely to depend on me having a wealth of mixing experience and/or excellent, fine-tuned hearing (mine is just about average).
Although I’ve done a lot of recording over the years, my experience is limited to playing and singing, rather than mixing or engineering.
I find that without a visual guide to the frequencies of each instrument, I don’t know which ones need EQ adjustment to allow them to be heard clearly in the mix, although I know which instruments need to be panned centrally:- vocal, kick drum, snare, bass guitar - and that, for example, two rhythm guitars can be panned hard right and left and where other instruments are usually placed on the panning spectrum.
However, try as I might, I’m still likely to get muddy mixes, as I can’t easily tell which instruments are operating on similar frequencies. (For instance, some keyboard ‘tones’ might have similar frequencies to electric or acoustic guitars.)
I’d rather not have someone else mix my music, so I’d like to know if there’s an app or computer program (not a DAW) that can tell me about the audio frequencies on every recorded track of a song. If so, then I can use EQ adjustment, reverb/delay myself where needed and obtain clearer results with better separation.
(I apologise for not knowing all the correct technical terms, but I hope you get the gist of what I’m saying !)
Can anyone help please? Thanks!
