MIX CHALLENGE - MC094 October 2023 - Winners announced

[rvalle]

Another very good song, lot of fun mixing it. Thanks @BenjiRage (and PrayForHayden).
It was very interesting to work with such clean drum stems, which helped the process a lot

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UGGZV8 ... sp=sharing

Mixed in Reaper, totally ITB. As I always do, I've grouped the elements by category so that I can also treat them together, as well as processing them individually; most of the plugins I use aren't native to Reaper and I'll always mention them in the description. If there's no mention of the plugin, it's because it's the native plugin.

Drums:
- Kick: Slight equalization to clean up 180hz and 1khz; a little bump in the bass (90hz); moderate compression (PSP FETpressor); a Sonible SmartEQ instance working in a group with another instance inserted in the Bass subgroup to improve the frequency relationship (masking).
- Snare: Btm and Top were placed in a subgroup; on Btm I corrected the position and phase relationship with Eventide Precision Time Align; eq with moderate boost around 1khz; Top only eq for resonance control at 270hz, plus subtle gain at 1khz; In the subgroup, eq to control the fundamental and also around 280hz; Oeksound Spiff for a bite in the mid-highs; Lindell 50 for equalization (gain at 2.5 and 3 khz) and compression (I used the FF in the comp for better control of the attack).
- OH Shell: processing only in the subgroup; Precision Time Align for a better phase relationship; Kirchhoff EQ for midrange controls between 300 and 500hz, resonance control at 800hz, 115hz cut only on the sides, and a little gain at 4.1khz; moderate compression with PSP FETpressor (slow attack and fast release).
- Room: again, processing only in the subgroup; Kirchhoff EQ with a notch at 760hz for resonance control and low cut at 60hz; hard compression with Klanghelm MJUCjr.
- OH Cyms: processing only in the subgroup; eq for low cut at 160hz; moderate compression (Purple MC77); Oeksound Soothe 2 for resonance control at high frequencies.
- Floor Tone: eq with cuts at 430hz and 1.6khz, plus accentuated gain at 160hz.
- Mid Tone: eq with 400hz cut and 130hz gain.
- Subgroup: Lindell 50 with a slight glue compression and a little gain in the eq at 50hz and 3khz, plus a soft cut at 15khz; TDR Limiter 6 GE just to saturate a little with the drive of the clipper module; Apogee Soft Limit (soft clipping) to control the sharpest peaks.

Bass:
- Amp: low cut at 100hz and low shelf at 270hz; moderate compression;
- DI: high cut at 10khz, high shelf at 1.2khz and a small cut at 330hz:
- Subgroup: moderate compression with Neold U17; Soundtoys Decapitator for saturation; Soothe 2 for resonances around 2khz; Sonible SmartEQ related to the kick to improve the relationship between the elements.

Guitars:
- Ash 1 and Tom 3: eq only for bass cut around 100hz; they were put in a subgroup for equalization with Kirchhoff with cut only in the mid part at 145hz, low cut at 100hz and high cut at 9.5khz.
- Ash 2: subgroup; Kirchhoff EQ with boost on the side at 140hz, low cut at 60hz and a small gain at 4.2khz.
- Ash 3: subgroup; low cut at 100hz;
- Tone1: subgroup; cut at 170 and 680hz only in the mid part; boost at 1.4khz in the side part.
- Tone2: high cut at 70hz.
- Subgroup: Kirchhoff EQ with gain at 110hz on the side; small cuts at 400 and 700hz; UAD Helyos Type 69 Legacy with a little gain at 2 and 10khz;

Synths:
- Synth 1: subgroup: SoundToys PanMan for a subtle effect on the panorama, giving a bit of movement; NI Raum for ambience and spatiality.
- Synth 2: subgroup; Kirchhoff EQ low cut at 90hz, at 2.6khz, side gain and mid cut; XLN Audio RC-20 for smooth parallel pitch modulation, distortion and tape saturation.
- Subgroup: Unfiltered Audio LO-FI-AF with a little bitrate distortion.

Vocals:
- Vox Ash 1: Smooth series compression (UA 1176SE Legacy and LA-2A Silver); Eventide H949 for a smooth doble effect; NI Raum for ambience; I created a channel for parallel compression for the lead vocal, with the PSP Impressor, the result of which was dosed very smoothly.
- Backings: EQ for low cut only; moderate compression (TDR Molot GE).
- Subgroup: Kirchhoff with low cut at 95hz, cut at 650hz and high shelf at 9.5khz; compression with Neold U17; UAD Trident A-Range for a bit of gain at 3khz; Lindell 50 for a bit more compression; Eventide UltraChannel for de-essing at 8.6khz.

Ambience:
- Room: Acon Digital Verberate 2 (preset Short Drum Room - Bright), which received the drums;
- Plate: Melda MConvolutionEZ (Plate preset - Small 01), receiving all the subgroups;
- Delay: Soundtoys EchoBoy (preset Classic Tape Slap 30ips), receiving the vocals.

NY Compression:
- Soundtoys Devil Lock compressing aggressively; it received all the subgroups and the result was subtly added to the main signal.

2Bus:
— PSP VintageWarmer2 e IKMultimedia Tape Machine 80 para coloração e cola.

In a new project, I put in the printed mix to finalize it and get the signal level right. There, I used the Kirchhoff EQ to control the 400hz region, which jumped at certain moments in the song when both the voices and the instruments played the same note; I used the dynamic function of the equalizer; PSP NobleQ for a small gain in the bass region (Pultec trick) and a small cut in the 2khz region; SPL Iron for mid/side compression because I wanted the side to be more controlled and evident; UAD UA-610b and UAD Oxide Tape for coloration and volume adjustment.

Thanks for the opportunity and good luck to everyone!

[Ronson79]

Drums:
Eqing and compressing everything to taste.
parallel comp for kick and snare
changed some mics with Aucstica Audio LAVA
Spectre and Spiff on the drum bus

Bass:
split the bass for lows and mids/highs
and processed accordingly

Guitars:
little bit 1176 style compression
eq to taste
Spectre and Spiff on the GTR bus

Synths:
little bit of eq and StageOne for some depth and width

Vocals:
eq, comp, saturation, enhancing
changing mics with LAVA

mixbus:
Spectre and an FF L2 to catch peaks

Link:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1q3xqDM ... sp=sharing

[SDB_12]

Since Salt recently came out from Acustica Audio, I wanted to play with it on this mix a bit.

This thing is freaking amazing

@Christoph_K I totally agree! One of the best sounding plugins I’ve used in a long time

[jw_]

Thanks @BenjiRage for the tracks, learnt a lot about my ineptitude at modern pop punk from mixing it.

And here's my mix.

Don't have too much time to talk about my approach but I'll try as best I can. Because the demo was quite good already and I did not feel I could do something substantially better at what "it was doing", I decided to commit the cardinal sin of ignoring the demo levels. Well, kinda sorta. I decided pretty early on that I wanted to do a "guitars up" style mix which would definitely come at the cost of drums and synths, which are pretty high up in the demo. The second area that I wanted to change relative to the demo was the vocal tone, I thought it could be a little bit more readable (not necessarily higher up in level). And because we're not allowed to use samples on the kit (tough challenge for this kind of music!) I thought the drums may needed to take a back seat on this one. Or I'd need to smash em with tons of compression. Overall, I tried leaning on the refs provided to guide me (to the extent of my punk abilities).

Workflow is mostly the same as MC93, multibuss template yadayadayada, read all about it here. But I decided to not put any vocals into the mix bus compression and treat them separately. Did that because I wanted to reserve myself the option of compressing the instrumental more heavily than I'd normally do to get closer to the "smashed" feeling of the refs and the demo.

Quick overview of the Main Stuff:

Instrumental 2 bus:
Trackcomp SSL G Bus 4:1, 55hz SC HPF, 30ms attack 130ms release, around 4db GR on the chorus, 87% wet
smiley face eq (Pulsar 8200 and ProQ3)

Vocal 2 Bus:
same SSL settings as above, 75% wet, sidechained to the drum shell parallel (see drums section) to get rid of the "karaoke" feel of vocals being uneffected by the instrumental, ~2db GR
Pulsar MU for general compression, relatively fast, 75% wet, ~1.5db GR in the chorus
smiley face eq and some presence around 2,5khz

Guitars:
differing amounts of EQ (mostly presence around 3khz and beef around 550hz), some filtering on transitions
light gating on the palm muting in the verse to make it unnaturally tight
some distortion on Ash1, some light saturation on Tom3 and Ash2
8th delays on the chorus arpeggio guitars and Tom1 (also only in choruses)
late reflections, very short room from Liquidsonics seventh heaven
Overloud LA3A across the guitar group
LTL Silver Bullet

Synths:
mostly eq
some drive on the pad
Pulsar MU and Silver Bullet on the group

Basses:
EQ into serial comp (Trackcomp 76D -> LA2A) on the amp
same thing on the DI but with a Sansamp in there for more mid range
amp goes into the guitar room verb

Drums:
Multiple stages of saturation on most things
EQ into compression (mostly 76Ds, 12:1 slow attack fast release, pretty heavy handed to get closer to a "sampled" feel)
reduced some of the extra length on the close mikes I got from the 76Ds with transient designers
soft clipping on Kick, Snare and Toms
extra short room on OH shells and cymbals
DBX160A parallel compression on all shells, this is what does the movement on the vocal 2 bus (see above)
G Bus 2:1 30ms attack, autorelease, 50% wet on the whole kit for length
Devilloc on the whole kit (5% wet)

Drums and Bass get compressed together with an 1178 and run through another Silver Bullet

Leads and BGVs:
ProQ3
76A slowish attack fastish release, sometimes into an additional LA2A
deesser
some distortion on the leads
some limiting on the leads

Microshift in different configurations and intensities on nearly everything
various short delays in the middle and some on the sides (mainly BGVs), some feed into Valhalla VintageVerb
1/4th delay on leads, some occasional delay throws
Seventh Heaven with different lengths and Early/Late reflection settings on everything, some of it chorussing, some of it ducking
different Silver Bullet settings on BGV, Leads and Vocal FX

[Ojo]

Is it referenced from Chris lord alge technichs for recording? So nice!

This is my mixing!
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/aqrus1i9 ... hiaxm&dl=0

Thank you and have a fun!

[Valter Zape]

Let's go! Here's a link to my mix!

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

For all channels I used in this order, Reaper's native equalizer, Reaper's native compressor and Waves gate.

I used the equalizer to filter some frequencies, attenuating some and increasing others.

The compressor, on the drums, I used slow attack to highlight the transients with the exception of room, which I used fast attack and strong compression to give that fill and make the drums big. The other channels were compressed with a quick attack to hold the peaks.

I made a compression side chaim on the bass with the kick drum to decouple the kick drum with the bass.

I used a short reverb on the snare channels, guitars, synths, vocals and backing vocals.

I used a Waves over drive plugin on the bass to enhance the mids, give it that pop.

I used a delay on the main voice to open up the center voice a little.

That's it! Thanks!

[UHLS]

Hello guys, thanks for the opportunity to mix this song.

With so many tracks, I opted for bus mixing, with very little editing on individual tracks, with the aim of preserving the liveness of tracks.
So I used mh channel strip 3 on all bus channels.
I only equipped the kick, snare and tom tracks with waves smack attack on individual tracks.
The vocals are all processed with waves Rvox and waves deEsser.
on the 2bus I had DDMF deatheye and NEED 533 eq.

Download:
https://workupload.com/file/xDMdYMghdWG

[FallenAngel]

Finally got it, here's my mix: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xPai8p ... sp=sharing
I hope you all like it

This one was a struggle the amount of guitars was too much for me but i got a mix where they are more than just noise.

Drums
Kick: Eqed, parallel compression
Snare: Slight pan on the two mics -> bussed -> eqed & parallel compression
Toms: EQed
OHs: EQed
Cymbals: EQed
Brum Bus: EQ, Distortion, Reverb

Synths
EQed, Reverb

Vox
All EQed and compressed individually and all have distortion
Ash: Delay with bypass filter, slap back & room reverb
Backing: Slapback & Plate reverb

Gtrs & Bass
Bass: two inputs slightly panned in opposite directions, compressed, distorted, room reverb
Ash 3_0.1: EQed
Tom 1_01: Preamp, compressor, EQ
Tom 2_01: Eq, compressor, Preamp, delay
Gtr slide at beginning: EQ, preamp, Distortion, plate reverb
Ash 1_01: EQ, delay
Ash 2_01: Eq, delay
All gtrs and bass had plate reverb

Main
Slight EQ at 1.3dB AT 125Hz
Slight Compressor to reduce peaks

[Manii]

Here is my mix entry :

https://drive.google.com/file/d/146VA9B ... sp=sharing

I grouped all left and right tracks into stereo files. Then all guitars into one bus, all drums, all background vocals, and all synths.

I started working with bass and drums, then lead vocal and at the end the background vocals. I left the synths tracks as they were in the package!

Drums:
JJP Drums on the kick and the floors. A little bit of phase correction and then compression on the drum bus. I also have a snare plate reverb.

Guitars:
I mainly use different versions of brainworx SSL channel strips, and some limiting on the guitar bus. I also have a parallel bus where I apply some more heavy distortion.

Main Vocal:
Some volume automation, heavy compression with Kiive Distressor (in 20:1 mode) and EQ corrections at the end. I also have delays and reverb using CLA Epic.

Background vocals:
Lindell API channel strip on the Bus, RX-Deplosive, delays.

Master Bus:
Plugin Alliance THE OVEN, Black Box, Silver Bullet and Townhouse compressor.

Edit: Can someone confirm my link works? For a strange reason, I cannot play the file on google drive directly, but the download seems to work fine.

[rijavia]

https://soundcloud.com/rijavia-1/dont-panic just first try tomorrow I 'll finish it .hope before end If I get up early !!!