multi-trackrecording with Reason and ReWired app

What are you re-wiring into? Cuz if you're talking about that attack-release fade-in/out BS, that's coming from improper settings in your mastering suite. Try readjusting the attack setting as well as the release setting on your compression. That's why I hate the mastering in Audition for my track. It's great for the recorded vocals, but sucks for a mixdown of the track. Which is why you're probably getting a compression error (fade-in/out of certain pieces of the track)

Honestly the easiest way to multi-track out is to route each instrument to a separate port on your hardware interface (I think that's what its called in reason...) which is actually a pain in the ass with all the mixers and splitter/mergers and shit... OR... just solo each track, one by one, and export them out to individual wav files and then import them into audition and master each track separately. Other than that I'm at a loss. I use rewire to just throw a track into audition, then record vocals, than master the track in reason, then go back and master the vocals in audition. My tracks sound pretty damn crispy doing it that way.

It'll do what it do till it done
You keep it pimp... I'm a keep it gangata!

http://www.myspace.com/1andonlycapricornone

Well...to answer my own question and provide the key to good mastering in/from Reason: just take it back to the oldskool ;-)

I was getting fed up with comparing and listening to different solutions for multi-tracking and mastering from Reason, so I went back to basics using the ground rules of mastering and applying them to Reason:
- EQ sounds separately with 2-param EQs as needed to prevent sounds boosting gain in certain regions and draining it in others
- pan heavy basses to the left depending on their frequency and gain and prevent them from overlapping
- hard mid-tones slightly to the right moving into the middle
- high-pitched sounds spread out over as many free parts of the spectrum as possible while using slight delays and some reverb here and there to sort out sounds that are triggerred simulateneously

Result: a rather radical change to my combinator layout and the way I mix them up, about a day's work and the best sound I've heard popping out my speakers in ages..
Checked the waveforms after a frist quick record, solid as a rock and nice and full, just they way I want them, don't even have to post-process or master...so, this is my official farewell to the (semi-)automagical mastering tools, plugins and extravaganza used in almost all DAW software packages...I'm taking control over my mixes in my own hands again and even just a first test-set at 41kHz sounds ff'ing brilliant now.
Wish I hadn't overthought this hoping to rely on tools to not have to worry about my mix too much. It's basically laziness gone bad trying to make the tools shape my sound the way I want it without paying too much attention to the actual mono/stereo mixing itself which I used to do religiously (as everyone should probably...)
I should have never stopped doing it this way but I've landed with my two feet on the ground again and I'm liking what I'm hearing, so problem solved and finally back to making music instead of researching it ;-)

Later,

H

"I blow minds for a living..." (Jello Biafra, 1991)
...or at least try to (me, just now)

What you're really doing when mastering is filling up the L+R stereo spectrum as much as possible with as much gain as possible without overloading either L or R in total gain or sounds interfering with each other.

It doesn't really matter what frequencies you pan right or left as long as you make a first choice for which side of the spectrum you want lower and higher tones to be on and initially stick to it.
But before even doing that, there's one very important thing that most people don't really know or care about until they end-up in an actual studio doing an actual mix: a "track" as in multi-track is by definition a mono signal when mixing. There's no such thing as a stereo track...if a recording was done in stereo there's one Left and one Right track, to be included in a final stereo mix further down the road.

And this is exactly why you should NOT put high-gain low-bass sounds in the middle: look at it as (in my case anyway ;-) that already too fat bass sound being split through the middle to L and R and the two halves effectively fired off at themselves from two opposite sides of the room at equal gains: you effectively end up with half the gain, it's almost a sound/anti-sound set-up.

To prevent this from happening tou need to mono-ize and separate the frequencies that have the most gain within the stereo field so you can spread them out and both prevent sounds in the same frequency range clashing with each other as well as clashing with sounds that either have harmonics within the same frequency range or similar amounts of dB gain in the exact same spot and time, basically forcing total output power to be divided over two sounds rather than maximizing it for either or both.

On top of this, since inserts and effect are created for "tracks" and not "mixes", most real-world as well as Reason-based effects are really just mono effects even though they accept and pass through stereo signals. Take the DDL delay line for example...the only reason why it normally gives a rumbling/drumm roll kind of sound if you hook it up to a stereo signal is because the "hot" side (left) is delayed as intended, while the "cold" side (right) just passed through. This effectively makes you hear the right side (undelayed) first, and the left side (delayed as intended) second.
Reason sadly is one of the few packages that adheres as much as possible to real-world physics as well as real-world effect and audio design, which makes it unforgiving initially, especially if your knowledge about audio, soundwaves, frequencies, etc. is limited.
Which is probably the biggest single problem that people have with it and why people keep claiming Reason has bad sound quality or sounds "muffled"....without knowing the basics on stuff like multiple-mono-to-stereo mixing and the actual workings of effects the music itself might be a composition but the eventual outcome and soundquality are a complete gamble.

There's a myriad of was of dealing with spreaind frequencies over the spectrum with gain as high as possible, but in Reason, the basics I always use are:
- on multi-channel devices like the Redrum, unless all samples and sounds you use are your own making and you know exactly how they'd fit together, NEVER use the main out, but individually wire all channels to matching mixer channels.
Try and divide the sounds you're using in different tonal groups either by ear/feeling or through nifty use of Reason devices (for instance the Vocoder doubles as one of the best multi-band software EQs ever allowing separate band outputs as well)...just a basic low, mid, high will do and make sure you prevent overaps between the rhee groups. If you've got a bass sound with a higher pitched "thump" or "click" in there somewhere, try and EQ it out of the original bass sound and have a separate mid- to high-pitched sound on a separate channel trigger simultaneously to get the same sound, but easier mastering/mixing. Also, beforehand, check your bass samples to see if they're normalized across L and R...if not, do so and only hook up the left "hot" side of all bass sounds to mixers and effects, apart from an intermediate mixer carrying a number of bass-sounds to the next one in line...hook it up stereo to the next chaining master or separate channels.

Once you've done all that I use my simple basic rule of thumb: the heavier and gainrich a bass-sound is, the more you pan it to the left, filling up pieces of stereo field in between stereo and fully L mono with as many different bass frequencies and gain levels as possible. Try and do the same for heavy mid but to the other side and less extreme. Spread high-pitched sounds over both sides (and even one or two in the middle depending on gain and frequency) while listening to possible interference or other problems. I prefer to layer my mixers within combi's for different sound types (beat, percussion1, percussion2, etc.) grouping more or less similar (at least in frequency) sounds, slightly changing their panning on their "frequency" mixer and panning the full stereo ouput on the next mixer it plugs into as well until it sounds rights. This makes the initial sounds stereo panning relative to the comeplete frequenc band's position and allows for easier tweaking.

THere's probably a thousand more tips, tricks and stories to tell, but I'm a bad teacher as well as an impatient one and it's getting late ;-) Start experimenting WITHOUT any of the MClass Suite mastering combi's or devices, just hook outputs straigth through, have a little think and experiment with what I mentioned. You'll find the sound you like eventually and once you do and understand what the F is going on, you're a long way there....

Later,

H

- deliberately consider every low-mid to lowest-bass tone to be mono

"I blow minds for a living..." (Jello Biafra, 1991)
...or at least try to (me, just now)

Coming up quickly ...took a while to get my new home-studio set-up, new workflow, etc. now I finally had the time to do so...I'm happily in between jobs at the mo, waiting for a new project I took on starting October ...normally not as lucky in terms of spare-time.
Did a first attempt at recording a track today I started last weekend to check a first rough manual-master-mix from Reason and was surprised by the initial clarity so won't be long....opening track for a liveset I've been working on for a while now and I hate posting old or recent stuff while (I think) I'm working on something better. Also rather laidback and pretty easy on the ears compared to most of my stuff so probably a good first post in any case, won't be long ;-)

"I blow minds for a living..." (Jello Biafra, 1991)
...or at least try to (me, just now)