MIX CHALLENGE - MC079 August 2021 - Winners announced

[diegoneryproducoes]

Fun to mix. I used saturation and parallel processing simulation 1176 to bring clarity and definition. Eventilde filters and Ultrachanel on all channels gave me a great result. Effects are the usual. I used Lexicon 480 simulation. I felt the need to tune the vocals with reatune. With puigtech pulled bass and treble on the bus-master and two SSL compression plugins 2: 1.
My dinamic Mix -20LUFS:
https://mega.nz/file/ngYG3LrK#vRJg4iQE0 ... 8C-kOwPOvM

[Mister Fox]

A friendly reminder:
We're in the final 24 hours to submit your mix.

[pabloAT]

Dear all,
Many thanks to the song provider for the nice track to mix and to Mr Fox for taking care of this game.
Please find below my mix and details for challenge 79 :

[Dropbox's link to MC079]

Submission:
DAW = Cubase 11.0.30
Integrated LUFS = -18.8
True Peak = -4.46 dB
File Format: WAV, 44kHz, 24bit

Preliminary work
cleaning-up, raw balance, panning/stereo spreading, HPF on all tracks (>20 Hz depending on the track), LPF on some tracks. Automation to emphasize the primary (vocals) from secondary (guitars, percussions) elements from the mix. I've done some small time adjustments for some percussion elements.

Percussions
As asked by the client, I’ve separated with a gate the track “PERCU” into low and a high frequency tracks. On the low track I applied a bit of saturation and reinforced the overall sound with Cymatic’s Diablo. The high track benefited from SSL compression.
For claps, I applied SSL compression for separation and saturation. The shaker benefited from API-2500 compression, where I’ve a nice control of the attack and release. I’ve reshaped the little drum track with SlickEQ + API-2500 compression.
The percussion group benefited from sends to early reflection (hall), reverb (plate LX-480), saturation (decapitator) and parallel compression (diode 609).

Bass
Reamped with Ampeg B15N, a bit of SlickEQ, “transparent” compressor for evenness and CLA-2A compressor for details. Everything was sent to busses with chorus Dimension-D and RBass for extra-harmonics.

Acoustic Guitars
Different tracks benefited from API-2500 compression and API-560 to open a bit the high end,
For the “ARREGLOS GUIT”’s track I’ve added the CLA-3A compressor. Send to buses with ER, spring reverb and spreader.

Synth
Tube compression and True iron for vintage vibe.

Lead vocals
I applied high (Kramer) and low compression (Squasher) and 73 preamp to reinforce the voice tone. At the end of the chain, I’ve applied a (very subtle) vocal rider. Send to buses with ER, plate reverb and slap delay.

Background/support vocals
Similar treatment as LV. Send to buses with ER, plate and large (Raum) reverbs.

Stems & Master busses
Different instrument groups were sent to 3 stems (“rhythm”, “guitars”, and “vocals”), where I used instances of tape machine emulators. The stems were in turn sent to the master buss, where I applied Arturia’s Bus Force (gentle compression + Pultec-like compression) and Black Box for saturation. I ended the master buss chain with a touch of bx_digital V3 for final low/high end frequency adjustments and wideness (very subtle).

Best wishes,
Pablo

[Promissel]

Hi everyone,
Here's my mix: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1z6dw7_ ... sp=sharing

I decided to go for a slightly different tone of the guitars so I used a plug in to emulate something like amped nylone string acoustic guitars. I copied the tracks and used slightly different presets. I added those copies in the second verse and more in the second chorus so that the song would progress dynamically and would get a bit more dense and exciting towards the end. I did a similar thing with vocals - created an octave up and some harmonies and mixed them in a little bit throughout the song.

I wanted more groove and impact from the low percussion kicks so I sidechained the guitars and other instruments - very slightly but it gave me what I needed. The guitars are also sidechained from the vocals to give it more space (only mid frequencies and sum of the channels).

As for the beeping synth - I stereorized and auto-panned it so that it doesn't give me those cluttered low mids and more sparkle on the sides instead.

Cheers!

[LughSenderson]

Hello

I made a very simple mix. My goal was to create an interesting mood, keeping everything as smooth as possible. I used BX SSL 9000J for equalization and compression on the individual channels, always boosting the treble a lot and eventually attenuating the bass a little. I used Vertigo VSC-2 on the bus. I had two Lx480 reverbs a plate and a hall, plus three delays from Cubase itself. Hope you like it.

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

[Hoek]

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

Hey y'all!

Here's my mix, this is my first time participating here, just found out about Mix-challange. Great initiative this, great song too, can't believe it's not out there !



And here's some of the things I did to get there:

I work within Reaper, some kind of hybrid setup, some HW, mostly plugins.

The big thing to me was getting the guitars to sound less "Piezo-y" I suspect the accoustic was D.i-ed and not miced up. Enter Uad Woodworks.
All guitar tracks got printed through this as first step to emulate a mic-up. Then they all got some eq treatment with uad 88 rs channel strip, HP at 80-90, got rid of some 600-700 hz,
added some high shelf and warmth in 200 hz region. Probably high mids too.
The arpeggio gtr got the saturation treatment from FF Saturn and Soundtoys radiator and some Transient designer
to bring up the string attack.

Guitar bus has a tape emulator, Uad Studer, for tape compression. Some eq dips at 115 and 156 hz
and is then sent to a RNC 1773 in parallel to lift up some plucking, fast to medium attack, short release.
Reverb send is to Uad Ocean way for some additional room, gently.

There's some volume automation, specifically on the arpeggio gtr.
the rythm guitar gets panned wider in the chorus to open up.
I did some very minor timing edits to some of the guitars to tighten things up.

Bass track duplicated.
Di low passed at 192 hz into Rbass for some extra lows
duplicate is hi-passed at 192 and into Softube bassroom then Decapitator for grit.
The two tracks together as a group then gets the Studer tape, Uad Helios 69 for even more lows, Saturn 2 for more saturation and then
via Reainsert to my Warm audio WA2a for compression, about - 7 db at peaks.

Synth got some Bass and highs roll-off and eq (boosted 1k region) from ffProq 3 and then i slapped on the Soundtoys crystalizer for more fairydust.
Synth is heavily volume automated. There's some reverb too.

Lead vocal: Uad studer tape, 88rs chanel strip (only hp and some narrow cuts), GAP Comp3a (HW) doing up to 7 db GR. Soothe 2 for some taming of high mids.
Uad Massive passive boosting warmth and highs and some 4k.
Scheps Omni for De-esser only then finally waves vocal rider. There's some manual volume riding aswell.
I only slightly tuned the "Ahhhs" in the intro and in mid-song and the long note at 2:10 using Waves Tune at quite loose settings to maintain the intimate vocal delivery that I
really enjoyed and can't fault.

Vocal is sent to a reverb channel ( uad plate 140) and a delay channel for a 1/16 slap echo effect ( Soundtoys echoboy jr)

All additional vocals are grouped to a "BG vox" channel and treated with Uad Neve 33609 compressor and pro Q 3 eq. Theres radical eq in the intro to achieve the "phone" effect.


Percussion track was split for different treatment of the bass "kick" element and the "snare" There's some UAD pultec bass boost on the "kick" then FF Pro c2 and Decapitator.
Hand claps and shaker gets some eq and comp too plus a limiter.
All percussion is sent in different amounts too a "percussion verb" track sporting a Soundtoys little plate set at about 1.5 s.

I had to move some percussion hits and handclaps, specifically at the end of the song to tighten up the performence slightly.

Then all of it gets a touch of hardware on the way out, the things that pretty much lives on my 2BUs and that i mix into: TKaudio bus compressor does a couple of db GR (4:1 ratio, 10 ms attack, auto release)
Tkaudio Tk-Lizer for a 2 db high shelf lift at 12K and 1 db at, was it 72 hz? Oh, and UAD Ampex tape emulation.

I had tons of fun, spent three evenings on this one!

Wish you all the best!
/Hoek

[aalekso0]

Hi All
Thx Javi Ramallo for this beautiful Song.
Nice Vibes and Positive energy overall, was a pleasure mixing this Song.
Here is the link :
https://www.dropbox.com/s/p4g60j4kwtx5a ... 0.wav?dl=0

Drums:
- Separated "Kick" and "Snare"
- eq compressor noting special.

Bass:
- Doubled and added some distortion.

Guitars:
- eq compressor and dynamic-eq panning
- touch of Hall and tape delay on solo guitar.

Synth:
- in my opinion, It's not necessary for this Song.
- added eq and mixed low.

Lead Vox:
- eq, de essing, 1176, SSL 4000 e, Room,
- Chamber, Hall, Slap-Back Delay, and Saturation.

Support Vox:
- It- Mostly the same as Lead Vox.

Master Bus:
- SSL Style Compressor, Tape Emulation, Limiter.

Mixed in Studio One
- Stock Reverb, Stock eq, For Tape Delay used j37 from Waves.
- IK 1176, F6 Dynamic eq, Lead and Support Vox tuned with Melodyne.

Good Luck all !!!

[acelo]

Hi all, this is my first attempt for a mixing contest. Been mixing for a while for my friends' and personal projects and now want to challenge myself on another level. Had a fun mixing this song, thanks Javi. Here is my rendition:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LJ34Tz ... d5QyC/view
Hope you enjoy!

General aim: to make it sound as light and natural as possible but still give the groove.

All tracks: HPF and LPF to clean up the sound and give focus, volume and pan for separation, then some light compression to create groove.

Claps and shakers: instead of hard panning, I used a plugin that will only pan frequencies ranging around 100hz-1000hz to left and right side.

Bass: Decapitator to color the sound then used parallel compression for sustain and sidechain compression from percussion track to give space.

Percussion: light compression for groove.

Bass and Percussion bus: used multiband compression only for low frequencies to help glue bass and the kick.

Guitars: hard pan left-right and light compression for groove.

Lead Guitar: same treatment as other guitars but with addition of saturation.

Backing Vocals: just light compression to give some groove.

Lead Vocal Support: hard pan left-right, light compression, then using EQ to carve out some 1khz and 3khz only in mid side to allow more clarity on lead vocal.

Droplets and Beep tracks: added delay to set it back in the mix.

Lead Vocal: used serial optical compressions, then tone it using EQ to achieve the clarity.

FX: room reverb for most tracks and plate reverb for vocals.

Automation: some automation to differentiate verses and choruses to automate volume, panning, compression settings and reverb types.

Mix bus: very light compression with slow attack and fast release with aim of ~1db of gain reduction to glue all tracks and FX.

[Dodgingrain]

Hey, great track.
Here is my mix: https://1drv.ms/u/s!AqpB-RLndYJrkZMNHpe ... A?e=DFN1eS

I actually didn't do very much on this one. There is a little bit of nudging on some of the timing but nothing drastic.

Drums:
Compression and eq, some sidechain compression via dbx-160. Mixed the kick low as it didn't feel like the kick was the best for the track and I was going for a lighter/softer mix of the song.

Bass: has some distortion and compression, also the pultec trick at 30hz.

Guitars:
These have a few fixes done to reduce squeeks via RX. Otherwise just panning, compression, and eq.

Synth Part:
This was mixed low with soothe pulling down some of the harmonics

Vocals:
The vocals were pitch corrected and high passed, standard eq and compression. All vocals are going to a parallel compressor that is being hit hard and mixed back into the vocals low. The vocals also have a bit of delay.

reverb is an lexicon 480 emulation.

[satchboogie]

Hi !

I just switched to Logic from Cubase. I could only use the stock plugins to do my mix. It was a nice learning curve. I made several mixes in the process and always tried to simplify things in terms of results achieved. Thank you for the opportunity and for Javi Ramallo for the song.

Concept: Keep the natural vibe of acoustic instruments. I wanted to achieve some intimacy in the verse and some opening in the chorus. The chorus should be a part that makes one dance.

My mix: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1iHjUJP ... sp=sharing

Struggles: I spent most of my time eq-ing. The tonal character of mid-ranged instruments (esp. guitars) can easily be pushed to higher or lower registers without altering the balance too much. But it sits differently in the mix. Also there are a lot of elements that contribute to the rhythm of the song and give a vibe to it. There were quite a few trials. Not mentioning the new daw and effects.

Vocals-male: I was playing with pan a lot here. Didn't know if i should go for a rather stacked or hard-panned support vocal setup. Since i could eq the support to add up to thicken the vocal or just boosting some freqs for spice. I chose the lead to stand out a bit and hard-panned the support after listening the reference mix. In the verse i used minumum reverb and an echo effect in the 2nd parts of the verses. In the chorus i used another reverb and automated high-shelving to open up. EQ settings

Vocals-female: Tried to make it smooth, but also impactful. Very saturated tracks with a lot of transients. I made huge eq cuts but changing the focus frequency gave a totally different tone. They did sit the best if they were just slightly panned. At the end i did some automation in volume and panning. EQ settings & bus comp

Guitars: In the first mix i did high-cut them to maintain balance with the high freqs but later i realised that there was no "drive" without their bassy low. I divided the guitars into 2 groups: GTR1 for the verse (more bassy, and low oriented) GTR2 for the chorus (less bassy, mid-high oriented). Minimal compression in several steps to pull them together a bit but to maintain the acoustic transient). Reverb send automated in the 2nd part of the first chorus to bring them more in the face and let it looser in the 2nd chorus. Arpeggio guitar laid back. Was thinking to make it stand out more, but it was too distracting. EQ settings

Bass: Lot of struggles with the note slides, until i figured out that there was a resonant freq at 120 Hz. After pulling it of it got much better overall. Paralell comp.

Percussion: I sliced up the percussion track for conga and low. Applied different compression to them. If i high-passed the conga it just didn't work so i left it unfiltered in the lows. Had a hard time matching it with the clap. Clap gives nice drive.

Synth: Adds a lot to the song in the background. A damped mostly the 300, and 4k tonal freqs with high-pass and bell to let the sweep fx intact and added reverb. There is another tiny sweep in the 1st part of the verses that i noticed only after several eq attempts.

Fx: I used ping-pong delay 1/8 dotted, and automated pitch-down

Drop fx: 1/8 dotted echo

Summing: Slight compression on buses. All instruments (except bass and fx tracks) bussed to paralell processing (compression+saturation). reverb sends: 1 all purpose (room), 1 for chorus vocals (hall), 1 for synth (hall). Master bus: -2db of compression. Bus compressor settings

cheers,
satch