Need some help making the sounds in my mix gel together, I know the basics of compression and eq but i'm not sure about how to make the sounds gel together within the frequency range of the entire track and within the stereo field. I know how to use panning but i'm only using Steinberg Cubase Elements 6, that's all I can afford, and as far as I can you can't pan instruments in stereo, all their is, is a single pan where you can move the sound left or right. I thought panning meant you can adjust the left channel's pan and also the right channel's pan independantly? Because of the single pan control in Cubase everything (every sound in the mix) is centred.

I know how bring sounds to the front by making any delay and reverb less on each sound, but i'm getting sounds taking making the mix muddy because of frequency response of the sounds. I'm not sure what eq filter width to use on certain sounds and at what frequency I need to cut or boost in order to make all the sounds gel together.

I make techno by the way.

I can't say for certain if it applies to Cubase Elements, but full fat Cubase has three panning options. Right click the panner and you get the options. Explained below.

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/dec04/articles/cubasenotes.htm

But you can pan any sound with the basic panner.

As for getting a good mix, this takes lots of practice and experience, but the general rule is to try to cut rather than boost.

There are lots of resources on the net, but experience is always going to be the best education. If you can get someone to help you you out or you can observe someone that is also very helpful.

Have a look at these:

http://www.samplecraze.com/free-tutorials

--------------------
http://soundcloud.com/richie-royale
http://www.mixcrate.com/richieroyale

Without going into the techicalities, you should be able to pan stereo or mono sounds with Cubase's pan control. If this isn't happening then there's something odd going on. First of all I wonder if you are actually listening in mono, and hence unable to hear the effect of panning??

I offer one-to-one tution in Cubase. If you might be interested then drop me a PM and I'll let you have details.

--------------------
An Eagle for an Emperor, A Kestrel for a Knave.

When I right clik in the pan field all I see is 'Stereo Balance Panner' meaning I can pan some sound to the right and some to the left but maybe it's because i'm using midi and not audio, i'm using soft synths and haven't exported any sounds to audio. Rarely do I ever boost eq, but i'm just not sure about how sounds in the mix should sound together.

I'm still not sure what you're expecting to happen. All a pan control does is move a sound between left and right. Don't right-click the control, just left-click and move it around.

It could be that the instruments you are using don't respond to MIDI pan messages. Try rendering one of the synths to an audio track (File => Audio Export, and choose the options to import back into the project as an audio track) and see if the pan control works on the resulting audio track in the way you expect.

--------------------
An Eagle for an Emperor, A Kestrel for a Knave.

Yeah I know how I could get round the Cubase Elements pan problem, like you said by exporting the mid file as an audio mixdown into a seperate Cubase track, then silencing the midi channel and letting the audio play. The main problem I have is with frequencies clashing, they don't clash much, but they clash enough to cause muddiness.

Why not put some examples up for us to listen to - otherwise all we're doing is guessing.

--------------------
An Eagle for an Emperor, A Kestrel for a Knave.

Yeah ok, give me a few days and i'll upload a semi-finnished version of my track for you to listen to.