MIX CHALLENGE - MC077 June 2021 - Winners announced

[odistdan]

Thank You for sharing this mix

I made a Rough Mix During Gain staging then I approached mix with rest of the processing.

Drums: I wanted to feel the punch as opposed to drown them as they are in original Mix.
ProQ instances on all channels for mud cleaning and tone shaping
Followed by Compression. 
I used API550A EQ on toms with an Instance of Saturn with clean tape and subtle tube saturation on Low end and High end respectively. followed by Transient Designer for Increase punch
EQ, compressor and Plate Reverb on Drum 4.
Clap, Percussion, Tam and Cymbals have EQ and FX.


Bass: I struggled with the Bass a little as is Low end heavy and lacks clarity but is apt to fill what drums cant.

Two Instances of Saturn with subtle tube and Subtle tape to bring clarity in overall bass.
Followed by ProR with little bit of Cleaning and Boosting 68Hz by 3dB which then goes to Scheps Omni only for compression and another Instance of ProR to Reduce 68 Hz by 3dB.

Piano: Instances of Saturn with subtle tape style followed by Compression on Piano Low (Stock) and Piano Mid (Waves SSL comp) which then to Protools Stock Expander.

I used this signal Chain to control the dynamics in bridge section and the compressor was killing the dynamics more than I wanted I used Expander and Gave it a little desired pump. It’s a good feeling when dynamics respond how you want to respond them.

All three Piano going in a Bus which Has NI’s bus compressor.


Choir: Pro Q and Reverb.

Flute: Pro Q, Imager and slight boost of 1 db in sides.

Strings: Pro Q and MSED.

Choir, Strings and Flute are in a Bus which has side chain compression against vocals.

Didgeridoo: Vocal Doubler, Waves kaleidoscope to give movement and Izotope Neutrino to control the dynamic range.

Pads: Saturn with warm tape and eq.

Drone Pad: Pro q and MSED to reduce tad bit of mid channel.

Going in a Bus with side chain compression

SFX: Only eq on all channels.

Lead Vocals: Saturn for clarity, H Comp (50%), Pro Q, Desser, Eq mid boost, DC1A compressor, Sie Q

Lead Vocals 2: I reduced the volume and did some automation as it was coming in between.

Saturn, H Comp, ProQ, Desser, DC1A2.

Backing Vocals: H comp on backing 1 for contrast, followed by Eq and d esser.
Rest are Pro Q and Impact

FX:
Reverb, Plate, 1/2 Delay, 1/4th Delay, Piano Reverb, Drum Plate.

There is VU meter Ozone 9 elements, Relay for MONO/Stereo and SPAN.


PEAK is -5
VU never goes above +1dB

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pLZHNY ... sp=sharing

[MIX49248076]

Hello all.

I'm very happy to have the opportunity to participate.

This is my submission.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vNoc-k ... sp=sharing

This song gave me a mystical impression. I also felt it was stern. So I mixed it with an awareness of the spread of sound. I'm conscious of the feeling of echoing in the cave.

Editing Points
-. To create a cohesive sound, I applied compressors and EQs to almost all the tracks.
-. De-essing was also applied to the vocals.
-. I divided the busses according to their role, such as percussion or orchestra, and paid attention to the unity within the busses and the masking between them.
-. The reverb is a little longer overall, but the reverb component has more dynamism so as not to affect the dry sound (sidechaining and ducking).
-. I used a MS compressor on the master bus to balance the pleasing spaciousness and localization of the vocals.

regards,
Toshihiro ( mix49248076 ).

[fdelmo]

Hi all!

Here is my mix: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IO888H ... sp=sharing

I enjoyed mixing this project. I hope you like my take on it.

Drums: EQing and compression to clean some frequencies and give some color to the tone. The kicks "Drum1 and Drum2" are also EQed using a Pultec simulator to try to boost the lows without adding rumble and everything is compressed together in the BUS.
BASS: Boosted a bit of mid-highs and rolled off some rumble. The Pultec trick is used here too to give a nice rounded sound to the low end.
Piano: All three takes are routed to a group bus and all EQ and Comp is done there. Bass is slightly panned to the left and high slightly to the right, giving a better stereo image to the instrument.
Background VOX: Boosted a bit of high end for clarity and to leave room for the main voice in the front. The voices are panned 2 hard left and 2 hard right to gain more space.
Lead VOX: The track carrying more of the lyrics is treated as the main VOX and the second track is panned to the right and treated more like a Background VOX. There is a part of the song (towards the end) where only the second track sounds: I liked the effect of having the lyrics played by a BG vocal panned to the left and clearly more brilliant than the main (as it is boosted in the high end) so I left it this way. This can be changed in the second round very easily if you don't like it.
Flute, Strings panned left and right carrying the instrumental melody and the flute is pretty heavily EQed (tried to make it less piercing without removing clarity and warmth)
Didjeridoo and Synth are treated as pads, mostly just had to Eq the didjeridoo to try to "clean" the sound of too much respiration noise and attack and leave the Bass presence in the song.
Everything runs in 3 different Reverb busses (VOX, bg VOx, and instruments) which are set to create a fairly bright and ample sound without going all the way to "church"-like reverbs.

MIX: Slight Bus compression to glue everything together.

[Coiled_Ear]

My mix - https://www.dropbox.com/s/o92grrpa8jici ... r.wav?dl=0
my main purpose was to make this more on ethereal side. So I started with voice and add Chaotic Hall from ValhallaVintageVerb. Then no compression, just a bit of EQ and I've done with that.
Then I did high compression on bass and on percussion as well but remained that on the dark side to keep ethereal spirit on the recording. Other instruments got only filtering especially in LF. That mixing was pretty fast honestly but I like the result. Cheers!

[KarlxVinten]

Hello

here is my mix - https://www.dropbox.com/s/sbju8jcqc363o ... n.wav?dl=0

Thanks for this beautiful song . I spread the vocals in the chorus portion nd gave a little groove on the mid section

Thankyou.

[David Hernandez]

Hello everyone.

This is my first time in a mixing contest, thanks for the opportunity.

Mix file: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WIHcj_ ... sp=sharing

Documentation:

I tried to keep it simple, without much processing, only when it was necessary.

I like to group the tracks by instrument type and i sum all the tracks of each group into an Auxiliary Track, so I've 7 aux tracks (drums, bass, piano, melodic, SFX, Lead Vocal & Back Vocals).

I put a Trim tool on every track to get some starting point of Gain Staging of my preference and I verify the Phase.

Drums:
- I used some sustractive EQing on the Drums 1, 2, 3 & 4 Tracks (Pro Q3).
- And I use some hall mid reverb on the Drums 3 & 4 Tracks and in the Clap Track.

Bass:
- I used some sustractive & additive EQing in order to get more attack from the bass instrument (Pro Q3). And another two for sidechain the Kick (Drum Tracks 1 & 2) and Drum Track 3.
- And a little bit of compression to reduce some peaks (CLA-76).

Piano:
- I used EQ on the 3 tracks of piano, only to cut low frequencies with a HP Filter depending on the track (EQ3-1Band). And another one for sidechain the Kick (Drum Tracks 1 & 2) only for the PianoLow track (Pro Q3).
- And a little bit of compression in order to trying matching the level on the entire PianoLow track (CLA-2A).
- Also, I use some hall mid reverb on the 3 tracks on different send levels.

Melodic:
- I use dynamic EQing for sidechain the Kick (Drum Tracks 1 & 2) and Drum Track 3 on the Pad track (Pro Q3).
- I close the stereo image on the Strings track (S1 Stereo Imager).
- Compression in order to reduce peaks and trying matching the level on the entire Didgeridoo track (CLA-2A).
- And some hall mid reverb on the Flute, Strings and Didgeridoo track on different send levels.

SFX:
- Compression in order to reduce peaks and trying matching the level on the entire Radio track (CLA-2A).

Lead Vocal:
- I used a Deeser to control the ese's and some compression (CLA-2A and Pro-DS) and another one on the Auxiliary for general compression.
- And some reverb and delay by send (I explain this on the FX Sends Section).

Back Vocals:
- I used a Deeser to control the ese's (Pro-DS).
- And some reverb and delay by send (I explain this on the FX Sends Section).

FX Send:
I used 2 Auxiliary Tracks for Fx paralell processing.
1. For Vocals:
An EQ3-1Band for cut low frequencies, an Abbey Road Chamber to get some first reflections and warm, a Pro-R with a Small-Mid Room reverb configuration and a Mod Delay 3 to get some reps (sync-ed to the tempo and with a corchea time) and again a EQ3-1Band to cut unwanted low frequencies from all the process chain.
2. For the other instruments:
As I mentioned before I used a mid hall reverb on some instruments, this is the reverb that I used for that purpose.
An EQ3-1Band for cut low frequencies and a Pro-R for the mid hall reverb.

Mix Bus:

- A Linear Phase EQ to add some on 250Hz, 2K and 4k Hz and substract some on 800Hz more or less.
- An Api-2500 to get some glue on the entire mix (only 2 or 3 dB of compression).
- An Schep Parallel Particles to add some warm on wide frequency ranges (mid high freq range).

And that's everything, but also is important to say that I used the Elastic Audio for some time alignment editing on the vocal tracks.

Thanks,

Dave

[studjo]

Holy moly - I have no clue if I'm still on time, but I worked on this a bit and thought it's a drag not to upload it as it is. I had a ton of fun doing this mix.

I can't go too much into all the little details (as usual) but here are some of the things I think are noteworthy:

1) I started the whole mix with the SFX tracks. I thought that stuff gives me a bit of a direction what's in the whole production and most of all I did this mix in 5.1 and the SFX tracks were a lot of fun to play around with that panning (what goes front - to what goes to the rears). I know you guys can only hear the Stereo downmix of this but I tell you 5.1 is so much fun

2) something for the plug in fans: on the drums 1 and 2 which I consider the kick I used the AVA Drum Flow plug in. It's amazing go check it out. Harrison makes awesome consoles and some amazing plugins. Drumflow got everything you need for Drums (Gate, Comp, Gate, Drum Character (amazing) and some Signal generater with Kick and Snare preset)

3) the bass was giving me some headaches with the Octave not being loud enough. I tried to fix it with an SSL Channel Strip doing some EQ - the Acoustica Cerise with a 1.8kHz boost for grab. Kinda did the trick for me...

4) I really had some trouble the get the mix quiet enough for this challenge (-16dBLUFS). My normal mix came to -14dBLUFS withoutn any masterbusprocessing. I had to turn it down - something I'd never do in real live!

5) I had some fun doing some minor pan automation on the Rev Cymbal. I hope you can spot it.

Btw the Reverbs are an AMS RMX16 and the UAD Plate mixed together. the delay is the stock tape plug in in Pro Tools ...
Let me know if you guys wanna know more but right now I gotta catch some sleep ...

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Q5BW1U ... sp=sharing

[Denzzony]

Greetings!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/10HGWut ... sp=sharing

EQ on every channel. SSL compression on drums. Parallel bus with compression on drums . Send plate to drums. Bass - Kush TWK , parallel compressin. Plate on group with piano. Group with flute , pad , choir - ultraverb . Didgeridoo – Kush TWK/ Shimmer . Vocal – L1 / MJUC/Decapiator/Pro-MB /Howard Benson Vocal . Master track - mid/side compression / standartClip/ TaupeTape/ Ultramarine/ tape machine24/ Oxord Limiter .

[diegoneryproducoes]

Dei punch aos instrumentos de percussão graves e tirei um pouco do sustain com um transient designe.
O baixo recebeu um compressor com side-chain pra que esses elementos graves apareçam. Controlei os vocais com automação e compressão. Utilizei basicamente eq nativo do Reaper, ultrachannel, ssl e 480 reverb.

Minha MIX:
https://mega.nz/file/e8JBlC7D#n3-iO1A_q ... fEx7h6wNSw

[White Punk OD]

screen shots:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing

mix 44100/24:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1J1TRTG ... sp=sharing
(I worked at 48k and then downsampled. 48k for mastering on request.)


Thanks to Hiedi Limebeer and Rod Alexander for the lovely opportunity. Thanks to "mix challenge" and staff.


What can we do with his tune?
My perception was lack of rich arrangement (to make the sound change throughout the song), and the vocal tracks have to be brought up to a competitive level.

Effects: Frozenverb, Little Plate, OriRiver, Tal-Dub2 (mainly a repeat function for the low-frequency drone sounds and riser components)

vocals
I opened and examined the raw tracks in the wave editor, deleted a number of pops, plops and clicks.
Then I looked at the spectrum and listened. For the two main tracks, I used a sharp FFT hand drawn filter to mitigate some harsh spikes in the HF band, and fill some gap in the presence range.

Then, one after one, I created a number of mults for the vocal tracks, to get together some density. See the screen shots.
It's really by instinct only, thus hard to tell what the logics were.
One mult uses Nectar with autopilot.
Another one got printed (CPU congestion) and used Nevo (Soundspot) "Verb Sucker" preset, which gives it some modern hyperspace sound, then SPL Deesser, and a "Coffin" reverb impulse to give the voice some decent full and a bit dark sounding virtual recording booth.
Then, there is a track with Pulsar Smasher. It is also a bit dark and creates some steady "body" in the sound.
Next, a 8-fold detune stack, described by Warren Huart as his "voice thickener". It has lots of stereo with.
Extra reverb was printed from a wide synth effect super long impulse, I think I got if from a "Pensado" library. This gives us the "cathedral" sound.
Furthermore, I used TDR Nova GE in autopilot mode, which gave me 6 ringing frequencies and room modes with a dynamic EQ feature, I had to tweak that a bit because it took away some power and brilliance, but it does a similar job like what "Soothe" is delivering.
I used another instance of TDR Nova (4-band) to compress some hollow frequencies that would overload a normal compressor. Also, this takes out some sibilants and harshness.
For sibilants, I removed everything hissy from the effect inputs, and from the detune stack.
As a channel strip, I used bx_console N. It has a bit of that EDM sound. The settings are typical, add air band, add presence, take out nasal band around 700, add some bass.

harmony vocals
panned in a way that the voice is wandering over the whole area.
"engineers filter" with a crystal hard tchebysheff at 600Hz. Sounds also quite hyperspace.
SPL Vitalizer, Airwindoes ToTape6 to make it sit in the mix.

Piano
I created stronger attack by each track, and used a LA2A clone that had saturation with a resonance selector, so each got a different resonance.
Phils Cascade, Nevo, and the Lagrange granular delay for the crazy echoes.

orchestra
flute, strings etc.
flute got multed, one left one right, one delayed, one advanced, so it is out from the center.
I used a trackspacer construction using TDR Nova, to create space for the vocals, and still keep density.

the lowest drum got a mult to create some low kick sound from it, using a gate to shorten the attack.

plz see the screen shots for further details.

There is quite some automation all over the place, with the purpose to create some "drama" and make the song entertaining and exciting.

Good luck to everyone.