Dangerous Music has published a 2 part video in which engineer Luca Pretolesi of Studio DMI in Las Vegas demonstrates stem mixing and drum mixing.
In part 1 of this EDM mixing video, Luca demonstrates how he uses stem mixing for an electronic dance track by the EDM artist Borgeous.
By separating vocals, effects, bass, percussion, kick drum, high synths, and guitars into stems, Pretolesi can treat each “in a very transparent way but also add some color and texture.” Luca shows how he uses the built-in analog audio processor circuits from the Dangerous 2-BUS+ for a very simple stem mixing workflow instead of using outboard effects. It’s just like working in the box, but with all the sonic and routing benefits that analog summing has to offer. Watch and see how Pretolesi builds the song with each buss, explaining his techniques along the way.
“Dealing with preprocessed stems is absolutely normal. My routing is essentially the same as working in the box using a bussing system, but instead of sending all the tracks to the master buss I send 8 stereo buss outputs digitally to a pair of Dangerous Music CONVERT-8 D to As, which feed my summing device, the Dangerous 2-BUS+,” says Luca.
The second part of the video focuses on drum mixing.
Pretolesi demonstrates how he uses two of the Dangerous 2-BUS+ analog audio processor circuits on his drum stems. He utilizes ‘Harmonics’ on the kick, and ‘Paralimit’ on percussion. As you listen, note how he accomplishes so much without any external cabling, patching or latency since the effects are built right into the 2-BUS+.
“I have kicks going through a buss on the 2-BUS+. I use the harmonic distortion to give the kick sound a certain tone, color — a richness and thickness. I do less mixing in the box and can more easily make decisions on the final sound, it’s a more gentle, more organic sound,” explains Luca.
More information: Dangerous Music