MIX CHALLENGE - MC092 June 2023 - Winners announced

[Pingafuego]

Mister Fox, just for curiosity, what plugins do you use to mix in your rig? Thanks

[Mister Fox]

Depends on the task at hand.

But I'd say, the tools I always come back to, are from Steinberg Cubase's stock EQ "Frequency", Klanghelm, Melda Production (selective), Tokyo Dawn Labs (compressor and dynamic EQ), Kilohearts, Slate Digital (most notably VMR with minimal custom setups, or VTM as tape machine), Plugin Alliance (selective), Soundtoys, Relab Development (Reverbs). Guitar wise, I often reach for Line6 Helix Native, unless I do my own setups (IK Multimedia, AXP/Softamp, Ignite Amps, Two Notes, endless amounts of free/budget guitar pedals). I also build my own FX setups in MuTools MUX (now called Mulab Plugin). And if it comes to signal analysis, Klanghelm, Youlean, Nugen Audio.

So yes, some of those tools are heavy hitters in terms of CPU usage, if this is what you were asking for.

[zed999]

I have an i5-10600K CPU @ 4.10GHz and agree with Pingafuego, I find there's a bigger difference in CPU between 41 and 48 than I thought there should be, enough that I've given up on 48 for my own projects.

[kombainera]

There are more factors i gess i am with i5 16 gb ram uad volt card- in reaper i can do songs with 100 and more tracks with 4-5 plugins on a track at 32 samples buffer with no problems at all.I can do the same in pro tools and cubase too just with minimum 256-512 samples buffer.So its not just the power of the machine how the buffer is made to work and setup is a key factor too.And i am on win 10 too.

[kombainera]

With what I said above, I want to touch on another topic.From the 3 DAWs I listed above at least for me from cubase ist hardest to take good resolts.I'm not saying a program is better or worse- its personal for me but i am never truly happy with my work there and i dont know why.I start to work years ago on cubase sx 3 so i gess that i I know the program well but my sound there is kinda sterile and unpleasant to the ear.Maybe my workflow is wrong i dont know but if its a mixing only in the box i am trying to stay away from this program.

[zed999]

There are more factors i gess i am with i5 16 gb ram uad volt card- in reaper i can do songs with 100 and more tracks with 4-5 plugins on a track at 32 samples buffer with no problems at all.I can do the same in pro tools and cubase too just with minimum 256-512 samples buffer. So its not just the power of the machine how the buffer is made to work and setup is a key factor too. And i am on win 10 too.

Reaper is famed for being CPU friendly, I've read over and over from folks who use heavy plugins.
Other programs like Studio One... not so good. The more you use buses and the more tracks sent to a single bus the worse it gets and the mix bus tops the lot. Audio processing must be serial for obvious reasons and it's all too easy to build a long chain that MUST be processed on a single core. Reaper somehow handles this better than any other. I suspect Studio one is particularly bad at this, it will top out one core while the rest are almost asleep, but it's so user friendly I can't stomach making the change to reaper myself. It's why I put my CPU budget (small!) into non-accelerated base speed rather than number of cores.

The get around for most people is to use lighter plugins and like yourself I can also pile on the tracks and processing if I pay attention to the plugins I use and just use the heavier ones where there is nothing I can find as good. I love Taipei (London Acoustics using Acustica Audio platform) but it's killer on the CPU. There are others. The best thing I ever did for my setup was abandon Acustica Audio - much as I like some of their products and I'm not knocking them in any way, since then I make music instead of tearing my hair out.

We live in an amazing time for in the box music production don't we?

[kombainera]

There are more factors i gess i am with i5 16 gb ram uad volt card- in reaper i can do songs with 100 and more tracks with 4-5 plugins on a track at 32 samples buffer with no problems at all.I can do the same in pro tools and cubase too just with minimum 256-512 samples buffer. So its not just the power of the machine how the buffer is made to work and setup is a key factor too. And i am on win 10 too.

Reaper is famed for being CPU friendly, I've read over and over from folks who use heavy plugins.
Other programs like Studio One... not so good. The more you use buses and the more tracks sent to a single bus the worse it gets and the mix bus tops the lot. Audio processing must be serial for obvious reasons and it's all too easy to build a long chain that MUST be processed on a single core. Reaper somehow handles this better than any other. I suspect Studio one is particularly bad at this, it will top out one core while the rest are almost asleep, but it's so user friendly I can't stomach making the change to reaper myself. It's why I put my CPU budget (small!) into non-accelerated base speed rather than number of cores.

The get around for most people is to use lighter plugins and like yourself I can also pile on the tracks and processing if I pay attention to the plugins I use and just use the heavier ones where there is nothing I can find as good. I love Taipei (London Acoustics using Acustica Audio platform) but it's killer on the CPU. There are others. The best thing I ever did for my setup was abandon Acustica Audio - much as I like some of their products and I'm not knocking them in any way, since then I make music instead of tearing my hair out.

We live in an amazing time for in the box music production don't we?

Yes this days everything is possible more or less in the box for good or bad I dont find studio one to be a lot more heavy then reaper just a tiny bit maybe as far for the plugins i never watch what i use resource wise if i got a problem i just rise a buffer little bit and thats all.If i track guitars with amp sims then i care Even sometimes i am using standalone versions for monitoring cose there are even lower latency then a daw and its overal faster when u are trying to capture idea or something.

[Mastemoth]

I have an i5-10600K CPU @ 4.10GHz and agree with Pingafuego, I find there's a bigger difference in CPU between 41 and 48 than I thought there should be, enough that I've given up on 48 for my own projects.

Before I changed computers I had a souped up Mac from 2011. It's worked well during years and I bought a Mac M1 2 years ago. With the 2011 for me there was no real difference between 44.1 and 48. The main pain in the ass was that more and more plugins were having oversampling by default and that was why it was crapping out at times. I had to skip oversampling or bounce in place to be able to mix. This is mainly why I bought a new computer. You come to a point when something is just TOO big of a pain in the ass even you've worked around it for years.

[zed999]

I have an i5-10600K CPU @ 4.10GHz and agree with Pingafuego, I find there's a bigger difference in CPU between 41 and 48 than I thought there should be, enough that I've given up on 48 for my own projects.

Before I changed computers I had a souped up Mac from 2011. It's worked well during years and I bought a Mac M1 2 years ago. With the 2011 for me there was no real difference between 44.1 and 48. The main pain in the ass was that more and more plugins were having oversampling by default and that was why it was crapping out at times. I had to skip oversampling or bounce in place to be able to mix. This is mainly why I bought a new computer. You come to a point when something is just TOO big of a pain in the ass even you've worked around it for years.

Before I changed computers I had a Celeron 2-core 1.8GHz laptop. lol
To be honest the i5 is surprisingly good (as long as I don't use Acustica Audio plugins). At 44.1 I never have a problem with CPU. As I only have their free ones it's not a problem and I don't gel with AA plugins anyway. My only heavy plugin is Taipei... which is based on AA tech but I love that so much I would bounce if I needed to use it on tracks, or mix then use it to master. 48 pushes my normal useage over the edge though but I didn't have any problem mixing this one as it was so well recorded in the first place it didn't want much processing (I thought - others obviously disagreed).

[PistolPete]

Cubase 10.5 user... always have used Steinberg products, previously Nuendo and since back when I started (used Acid pro 2.0 and the original fruity loops...Yea I will admit it) LOL

I use an extremely old PC currently for mixing, custom built AMD based phenom x6 from around 2011-12. I custom built it at that time, and it was top of its class (within my budget) but now a cheap laptop or even today's smartphones probably are much more powerful. (Definitely overdo for an upgrade, but now that mixing is just a hobby trying to justify the cost).

In my older ways of mixing, each and every channel I would throw plugins on... eqs, compressors, the kitchen sink I would throw at them, really sometimes more out of habit than necessity. My CPU would be screaming bloody mercy far before I really could get a mix to sit where I wanted, and then I would find myself cutting corners or cutting a project short... a few things really changed this..

I now use a combination of parallel FX sends instead of blasting every channel with its own effects... now I will create the following base FX sends
-compressor
- saturation (usually abbey road waves saturation, decapitator but sometimes others)
-tape
-global reverb
-global delay
-high's/air band (extreme high pass filter with other FX to enhance the "air" bands)

---Using FX sends from each instrument channel to the above FX send channels (in varying amounts) and returns to the master bus really helps with CPU load, but also Imy mixes are much more open, wide and wide than over processing each channel separately. I usually will use a light high pass filter on some of the FX channels to keep the mix from getting overly muddy on the low end usually cutting out below 40hz and sometimes around 200hz depending on where I really need the effect.

---Some key channels I may treat individually such as a vocal, a kick or a bass which require different treatments, but I find I still manage to use the above FX channels which really limits my individual fx to a special compressor, eq, or reverb.

---I've also found that using stock FX such as hi pass, low pass filters really helps a lot with CPU load instead of using separate plugins.

---If a lot of treatment is needed on a particular track, instead of using separate eq, compressors, gates, limiters..etc, I now find myself using channel strip plugins instead like Shepps Omnichannel, or some of the SSL or NEVE channel strips available from plugin alliance or waves.

---Instead of using Group channels I now use VCA channels to control a group of instruments volumes and gain staging as it makes for much easier control of the group when using FX sends, and seems to keep the sound from getting to closed in and more open. Also prevents me from using "group" processing and focusing on the FX sends more.

---I used to pull out my "big guns plugins on the mix bus channel (waves multiband limiters, huge tape saturation, big cpu useage EQ's. etc) to help craft the final "sound" I was looking for which always added additional overprocessing and made for a less open sound. Now I more focus on "fixing it in the mix" and really making sure that my mix bus is pretty naked when it comes to plugin use, other than sometimes a general limiter to prevent overs and maybe a final single compressor to give it that compressed glue.

---proper gain staging in the very beginning of a mix. I generally use a pink noise generator set at -16db and individually channel by channel use the gain pot, not the fader to dial in the volume of each channel where I can just barely hear the sound over the pink noise. I do this track by track until every track you can barely hear (when solo'd) with the pink noise. This really gives me a great amount of headroom to start my mix that I have quite a bit of room to work. Many times proper gain staging helps me from using other plugs like compressors to do the work of the gain staging that I used to lazily use in the past, chewing up CPU. Now once I'm done with the initial pink noise balance (and panning with pink noise) I cut the pink noise and the mix usually sounds perfectly balanced where very little is needed other than individual channel eq, and some "flavor and spice"

Hopefully these tips are helpful to others that have old PCs... these things really help me squeeze out every drop of cpu at the same time have helped my mixes get better.

Some of the CPU friendly plugins I frequently use are:
Valhalla supermassive
Almost all of Soundtoys plugins are CPU friendly (decapitator, echoboy, panman, little plate and devil-loc I use a lot)
Plugin Alliance Blackbox,
Plugin alliance, AMEK 9098, Focusrite, and Brainworks SSL channelstrips
Waves Rvox or MNV, CLA76 compressors on vocals
Waves Rbass or Maxxbass for lows
Waves Ominchannel channel strips
Waves SSL bus compressor
Waves Hdelay
Lindell 50 EQ
Waves L1 limiter