Mix Quality - Reducing Distortion and Boosting Bass

[RockBandFan77]

Hello! New to Rock Band Authoring and having a few glitches along the way that I would love some help with. I am working with some fairly rough tracks (a friends band) and I am finding the mix is being considerably altered through the RB creation process. Specifically:

• How do I get a low or muddy bass track to really cut through the mix? I have followed the EQ tips provided but still no luck...
• How do I reduce distortion in the final mix? I can get rid of distortion in Reaper with a master limiter but once I bring the mix into rock band it is clipping and distorting hard. Any tips or advice?
• Any other plug-ins / techniques that might help these two issues would be huge. Really want to maintain the integrity of the original tracks but the distortion is killing me

Thanks in advance!

[Dastard]

There's only so much you can do with mastering, it sounds like you're dealing with some really amateur recording (not to say anything of your friends band, but I've dealt with the same recording quality) and there's a certain point at which the only thing you can do is pony up for a professionally engineered recording set up or spend a while learning how to do it yourself the right way.

The earlier on in the recording process that clipping/compression/artifacts/etc. present themselves the harder it is to master out at the mastering level.

[RockBandFan77]

Hi Dastard, thanks for the reply! I think that the original recordings are likely a big part of the problem here but I am actually finding a big increase in distortion as tracks are imported to Reaper as media and converted to stems. So while the original mix is not perfect (unwanted hums and noise exist), the quality is really much worse in the in game version. Most notable is the fact that the bass really cuts through on the original mix and I can not reproduce that sound without really distorting the mix.

Am I do something wrong?

Thanks so much for your help!

[keneke]

Have you tried adjusting the attenuation for the tracks in the Audio tab in Magma? Might give you some joy.

[TheOzone]

Make sure you're rendering out the separate audio tracks after altering them in Reaper. Exporting only does the MIDI,