Hello Noel,

The way I do things is I have the song finished in my head both lyrics and melody (found it very interesting how you write yourself in your other thread) I probably find this the most enjoyable part as well

I then lay out the chords in biab use a suitable midi style and may or may not try out a few realtracks then save and open in Realband. I select the realtracks that suit best and generate a whole bunch of them, probably six or seven full tracks for say the lead guitar. I save in realband and then open the lot in Cubase 5.

I use an m-audio fast track pro with its asio drivers in cubase with the sound outputed to a pair of old goodman speakers I have.

I like using cubase because its very easy to edit the realtracks using the scissors tool and muting the parts that I dont like. A lot of cubase I don't understand because so far there is no need for me to go into the advanced stuff.

I do the vocal, listening through headphones and becuse I'm not a great singer will export the audio give it a very quick pitch correct in melodyne and reimport into cubase.

I then do the panning and try to get the levels right, and use a few instances of the Ezmix plugin.

I check that all the track levels are below 0db and then in the master stereo out I stick in the Ozone and used the country basic preset for this song, although I have started changing a few of the settings in ozone and may even adjust the EQ in the stereo out in cubase.

The mixdown usually doesn't sound too bad to my ears at this stage.

I export the mixdown, and get it to playback in WMP though the computers own set of logitech speakers (it sounds very bassy) and this is where I notice a difference compated to the goodman speakers mixdown. As a commerical CD plays fine thoguh the logitech speakers (and usually ok as well if imported as an audio file into cubase) I probably take the logitech as more of a true reference of the mixdown then the goodman speakers. (I have turned the bass controul up full in the goodman speakers and vey little treble) so as to try and calibrate the sound between the 2 sets of speakers.

There is another opton to me which is to use asio4all in cubase instead of m-audio asio, that way I could use the logitech speakers to listen to the mixdown.

I have actually asked about the speaker issues in a different thread with lots of good advice from different posters. Its probably a case of seeing what is going to work best for me.

Before I upload to youtube I use audacity to make a 128 bitrate mp3 and and make a quick picture and muusic video with Muvee auto-producer.

I must try that Ozone preset of yours Noel

Thank you Tim for your commets about the song.

Musiclover