MIX CHALLENGE - MC075 April 2021 - Winners announced

[Photonic]

Hi all,

Here is my mix. The recording is very well and so not much to correct anything before bring everything in balance.
I tried to follow all words from the song provider. Keeping the lead vocal dry and direct, just with a bit of a room feeling. And to open the sound during the stomp parts, here with more room and ambience.

WAV: https://www.dropbox.com/s/e1ywsqjtfdqpd ... c.wav?dl=0

Reaper v5.99

Drum-Bus: Presswerk in Drum-Compressor mode
All single drums tracks only got ReaEQ.
Only the Room track got an additional TLs-1296-LEA and Acon Digital Verberate to enhance the room character
Stomp-Bus: TLs-1296-LEA and Acon Digital Verberate to enhance the room character
All Stomp tracksonly got ReaEQ.
Bass and Juno Bass: Bass Professor II to get an more amped sound
Piano: ReaEQ
E-Piano: ReaEQ and Acon DigitalMultiply for to add more stereo width with the chorus
VS Juno2: ReaEQ and NastyDLA
Strings: ReaEQ
EGuit: ReaEQ, Green Eugen for some satturation, DC1A2 for some compression
ACC Flutter, ACC DEL and ACC Low: ReaEQ, DC1A2
Sweep Synth, Juno CH and ARP-EPiano: ReaEQ
Lead Vox: ReaEQ, PResswerk in Vocal mose, Acon Digital Verbarate to add a little room Ambience and a second Verbarate with a short plate
All choir and Backing Voices: ReaEQ and Presswerk in Vocal mode
Applause: ReaEQ, NastyDLA

Mix-BUS: MQ57, Presswerk in Bus mode, GStereo to narrow the deep bass, SPAN, Youlean Loudness Meter2

[s&f]

hello thank u for letting us mix ur song. I really enjoyed the lyrics and some instrumental hooks.

here's my mix:
WAV
https://www.dropbox.com/s/3ff9r2oeb4u97 ... F.wav?dl=0
Mp3
https://www.dropbox.com/s/g9k4z4cee2059 ... F.mp3?dl=0

I had a lot of trouble mixing this song. it seems there was some edits with some crossfades in some tracks. unfortunately, I was not able to solve some clicks and pops. that said, it might add a "vintage-ish" vibe to the song.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/75yxicfjfmsqu ... M.png?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/a3qf3askv0ucr ... M.png?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/91qmys2lxblom ... M.png?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/9vn2qqwxuycmc ... M.png?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/hc7qk34fec0oq ... M.png?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/4aj8tg78h6ouf ... M.png?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/3s27ist7xd2x9 ... M.png?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/vidx3furywoei ... M.png?dl=0

In general, I thought that there were a lot of phase cancelation due to many tracks and double tracking. so I Monoed a lot of stuff, and put reverb in most of them to make them stereo again. I did not use some acoustic tracks, I think the arrangement worked better without them as it left more space for the vocals (as I really enjoyed the lyric). I mixed the song around the vocals.

Vocals - I used a 1176 clone and an Echolution pedal. some automation. I tried to make it as loud as I could compared to the arrangement.
BV - I took a lot of 2.5-3.2 K in all files to avoid build ups. I used Brauer motion for the megalomaniac part (the world spin around the singer, right?
Bass - I think the track had some trouble. I'm not sure why, but some parts were very off from the file. I quantized and tweaked them.
drums - i monoed the OH and ROOM to leave space in the arrangement.
Drums stomp - L2
Juno - Brauer motion. very nice hook. I loved it. I wanted to put it louder but it clashed against the arrangement.
AC - heavy eq and compression.
Piano and Electric piano - tried to make them smoother, and made them mono.

thank you!

[RichardClarke]

@BOYDE
@Square

Hey Guys, firstly thanks very much for the feedback!

I've had my stuff in storage for a couple of months now and worked on a lot things but purely on headphones. Its going to be really interesting too hear everything I've practiced with on real speakers again, I suspect I will cringe a lot I definitely find when I don't have normal speakers as reference some of my balances get weird and way out of whack. I have sonarworks to balance them out frequency wise but there is something about that little bubble headphones put you in that makes me lose perspective a lot. Usually I use them only as a reference point to hear if things poke out in weird ways, etc.

I'm a bit rubbish at that subtle art of mix buss compression too, I always struggle to do it well. It could be I've overdone my bass end buss and its triggering the SSL a bit hard as that bass end buss had both the bass and the keys going into it that you mentioned. Also as you mentioned the HP filter might be just set too gently set and not removing enough of it. For a long time I used to just have it on doing 0db compression as I just liked the way it shaped things with the default 3db gain boost, it was just like a shaping EQ/Analogue feel, but recently I have tried to do that gluey thing people go on about and add 1db of compression or so, it seems to often feel better but I think it sometimes has negative side effects I miss easily. The bass end buss I find really fun and useful too but I suspect I still have a lot too learn with that too will notice more when I am back on normal speakers. Either way practice makes perfect I guess!

Anyway enough rambling from me Thanks again for the critique, its really appreciated!

[Mister Fox]

So, just to be clear, using the two files in the "Section to replace" folder are optional.

i.e. Using tracks 35 and 36 "as is", and not using tracks 38 and 40 is acceptable.

Please confirm.

Thanks,
Jeff

I just talked to the Song Provider about this - for clarification (for everyone):

!	Bonus Info
	As per given add-on rules, you must replace this section (see post #12). Do not layer the material, as this won't work (phasing issues). Should you miss that fine detail, you will not be heavily penalized. But you will need to fix that in a possible second Mix Round. So please pay attention to detail (as this is a common real-world scenario).

[Gloo]

Hi!

The song is very good, well recorded and it's be pleasure to mix it!

Wav: https://www.dropbox.com/s/5xm6fq9pqaydm ... o.wav?dl=0

FL Studio 20.7

Plug-ins:

EQ and Comp:
Fab filter: Q3, C2 almost all tracks
PTEq-x - Drum Bus and Kick
ML4000 ML4 - Mix Bus

Vox:
Fab Filter: DS
Effect: LXPPlate, Fruity Delay 3

Saturation:
Soundgoodizer
Devil-Loc
Virtual Tape Machines - Mix Bus

Room Reverb:
LXPRoom

Meter:
Youlean loudness meter 2
VUMTdeluxe

[studjo]

Hi Guys - what a challenge!
I had lots of fun with this. I loved the lead vocals. Really great voice and singing!
Since I mixed hybrid as usual it's difficult to list everything I do. I got a pretty elaborate template ITB and OTB.
OTB I'm running 4 main busses: Drums (Chandler TG1 and Pultec Clone, lifting bass and treble), Guitarbus (Urei 1178 and Behringer Edison - mainly doing some widening not much limiting but I love the sound of the 1178 on guitars), Vocalbus: Buzz Audio DBS (shaving off 1 dB or 2) and the Tube bus (Pendulum Quartet - doing just the tube thing - not used on this)

Now to some tracks where I loved the result:
Bass - my main template chain with an EQ and the Avid ProSub (EQ shaves off the stuff below 80Hz which the ProSub ads back in - I kinda dig this sound right now - we'll see for how long. While mixing I had a problem with the parts where the Drumset plays - it just wasn't holding up. So I made a second Basstrack with Waves MaxVol into Soundtoys Little AlterBoy (giving me an Octave down) into an AmpegSVT plug in (PluginAlliance) - and boy it did the trick and I loved it!

El. Guitar: I didn't really know what to do with this until I put a Valhalla Space Modulator on it. Together with the Harrison AVA compressor that track just gave me a nice vibe ...

Acc Piano: I didn't really connect with the recorded sound until I used the PSP Pianoverb (that thing is free and AWESOME). I really like how it took away some of that coldness of the digi piano ...

Acc Git.: I consolidated the acc guitars to 4 tracks. On those I put on some Harrison AVA EQ and a UAD1176 after that the signal goes into the guitarbus and got some H3000 pitchshifting and PCM70 Room

The PCM70 is on an aux on the console and many signals get a touch of it. I really like that thing as a Room sound. The same applies for the Eventide H3000 - when I need some widening/chorusing - that thing is always ready to go. I certainly used a touch of it on the backing vocals ...

And now the thing that might kick me out of the challenge: before the last drum part I took a crash cymbal and reversed it. That reversed sound went into the Valhalla Space Modulator and from there into the UAD Realverb. I used it as lift into that drum part. I couldn't get that transition to my liking and this reverse cymbal just flashed me. I hope you guys can live with it - if not: I had to do it or my mix wouldn't be where I wanted it ...

now I gotta listen to what you guys were doing ...btw if someone wants to know something specific, just hit me up

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

[Hruiz]

Alright alright alright.

Thanks for a shot at mixing this!

First thing's first, these tracks sounded awesome and I wanted to preserve as much as the tone and timbre as I could!

Listen through as you read!!
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1aDr9tt ... sp=sharing

So let's talk work flow.
________________________________________________

Starting with gain staging I brought down what needed to come down so things weren't red lining.
I normally like to start with my tracks peaking around -10db; that assures me I will have more than enough headroom for compression, transient designers, automation, and things of that sort.

After gain staging, I set up busses, and re-asses where those busses are metering, and correct from there.
EVERYTHING was coupled into a buss in some way, maybe except bass and the backing track with clapping.

The drum kit was on a single buss, the acoustics on their own buss etc... the only thing that was bussed differently was vocals, I had the verse vocals on a separate buss than the chorus vocals. Even then, I had sub groups with the leads of those vocals on separate busses, that way, I can treat the leads and automate them differently.

Starting with drums, I began panning, finding where I feel the tracks fit best in the song, and only moving a fader to push or pull if they stood out more than I wanted them. If things poked here and there more than I wanted, that's fine, I took care of that later.
[*]I know I know, some say "but why pan? you should mix in mono", to be honest, I never mix in mono...whoops...I'll reference in mono and on a dinky portable speaker.

Once panning and gain staging is done I get into the fun part of it, getting things to blend the way I like.

Drums - With drums I did a bit of colorful compression, and eq, the tones were already there, I just wanted to fatten up the snare, round out the kick giving it a bit of punch, and tame some of the highs in the. EQ's that were used Neutron Elements, and Soundtoy's Radiator. I added verb on the entire kit, minus the kick drum. The verb was placed on its own buss so it could be blended in and automated.

Bass - I added a bit of harmonics, w/Soundtoy's Radiator, and blended it in, as well as some compression and EQ with Neutron Elements directly on the bass track, I wanted the bass to pick up where the kick left off on the low end.

Piano - Some compression to get it to sit right, and some light EQ. To my ear, there is always a thing somewhere between 4 & 8K that says to me "this is a digital piano" so I tamed that a bit and darkened it some.

Synths - Outside of pulling out frequencies that were eating up headroom, I didn't touch them. They already sounded incredible.

Acoustic guitar - I found this to be the most tricky to me. I often find it's very easy to make an acoustic sound hollow, in an attempt to make it sound brilliant and full. Instead of pulling out mids, I find mids to be my friend and boost them just a little. I often feel like mids bring back body and some character on an acoustic guitar, it also tends to darken it some, which I personally was a fan of for this tune. In an attempt to keep the little plucks audible I put on a transient designer getting the single note parts to poke just right. Neutron Elements is my friend here as well.

[*]Quite honestly Neutron Elements may have been the only EQ I used on this entire tune.

Electric guitar- the tone of this was super cool, I didn't want to do anything to it but take out some of the low end that was eating up headroom.

Vocals - There was a lot of automation, verb was mono, except for the harms. With the harms, I pulled out low end. With the lead I kept low end for a fullbody warmer tone, just tamed it a bit.

On the master buss there was some light compression and EQ done by a tape emulator.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

That's all I've got for you,

I hope you enjoy, if you've got any questions, feel free to reach out.

Thanks again for letting me mix this tune!!

[orbital58]

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1aUl-wH ... sp=sharing


This song def gave me some Billy Corgan vibes. I ended up priority mixing the stomp/wall of vocals sections first and then reverse mixed everything else from that.

Mixed with Reaper v6.26
Edit Notes: replaced bar 01 to bar 15 of track 35 (Piano) with tracks 38/40 from the sub-folder "SECTION TO REPLACE"
-18.1 LUFS, -1.0 TP w/ Youlean Loudness Meter 2 Pro


Main Mix Bus- Voxengo TEOTE
>VOX MIX - no processing
>>VOX 1 (Main Vox) - lexicon pcm90 IR
>>BG VOX VERSE - no processing
>>CHOIR - no processing
>>CHORUS VOCAL STACK - TEOTE, pcm90 IR, soundtoys microshift
>DRUM MIX - Elysia Alpha Master (soft clipper)
>>ABBY DRUMS - Klanghelm SDRR2, Black Rooster VLA-FET, TEOTE, pcm90 IR
>>>SNARE - Acme Optimcom XLA-3, bxLimiter
>>>all other abby drums - no processing
>>STOMP SECTION - TEOTE
>>APPLAUSE - pcm90 IR
>BASS MIX - bxSubsynth
>>BASS GTR - no processing
>>JUNO - no processing
>>3OSC BASS - no processing
>>3OSC BASS HI - no processing
>GTR MIX - no processing
>>VS GTR - no processing
>>ACC GTR (Strum, flutter, delicious, Acc3) - no processing
>>ACC Pick - no processing
>SYNTH/PIANO MIX - TEOTE
>>ELE Piano - no processing
>>JUNO - no processing
>>STRINGS - reacomp
>>STRINGS HIGH - no processing
>>PIANO - pcm90 IR
>>>MAIN PIANO - Black Rooster VLA-2A
>>>SUPPLEMENT PIANO - VLA-2A

[RodA]

Here is the link to my Full Mix:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/21br8lcs8i1j9 ... _.wav?dl=0

Kind of epic to mix this.
screenshot https://www.dropbox.com/s/yu66zo0zg28y9 ... t.jpg?dl=0

Starting with the
BASS
wav https://www.dropbox.com/s/w3quk6kj52gnaw3/Bass.wav?dl=0
screenshot https://www.dropbox.com/s/m8qm0rz035lf3 ... 1.png?dl=0
. 1.Logic bass amp to add a bit of mid-range distortion. 2.Eq doing nothing. 3.Logic vintage FET compressor just touching transients 4. Toneboosters FIX4 which is a dynamic EQ compressing about 5dbs only below 100hz. 5.Waves LoAir adding sub harmonics. The second EQ is also doing nothing I should remove it. SENDS. RE.1 is the main project reverb. CH is logic’s chorus effect

KICK
wav https://www.dropbox.com/s/qsv1dqbml43zr ... p.wav?dl=0
screenshot https://www.dropbox.com/s/m8qm0rz035lf3 ... 1.png?dl=0
1.logic classic VCA comp. 30:1 ratio distortion set to Hard. About 8db of gain reduction 2. EQ 4db peak at 116 hz 3. Logic Vintage Tube EQ (Pultec emulation). broad boost at 7 kHz. I’ve also used the low end Pultec eq trick where the low end is boosted and attenuated at the same time to give it punch. The GKick track is the pitched (G) kick sound I’ve boosted its transient with StillwellsTransient Monster.

GUITARS
wav https://www.dropbox.com/s/z09s3g09wcs4j ... s.wav?dl=0
screenshot https://www.dropbox.com/s/kmgscujmadzvd ... 2.png?dl=0
Some broad high end boosts with the vintage tube EQ and light compression. The send DE.1 is the main project stereo delay. SUM 10 is the Low plucked guitar part. The LoAIr is adding sub bass only when the other bass parts aren’t playing. The three EQs are there to control the stereo image in the low end. Because this picking part is doubled and I have them panned hard left right but I didn’t want the added subbass frequencies to be wide. So the first EQ is a low cut but only acting on the sides signal. The second is a low boost only on the mid signal. This dramatically narrows the stereo width of the low end. The third EQ is acting only on the right side signal and is a shelf taking out some top end above 2khz because it sounded lopsided. the TB FIX4 is compressing only highs above 2khz and lows below 100hz this keeps the mids dynamic and fills out the top and bottom. The SEND TD1 is logic overdrive plugin to add grit and presence followed by eq taking out some low end.

PIANOS
wav https://www.dropbox.com/s/1d93pok16ij4v ... s.wav?dl=0
screenshot https://www.dropbox.com/s/2p26k4bkv7b6o ... 3.png?dl=0
Logic’s exciter plugins are adding harmonics from 2khz and up. EQ boosting Low-Mids and highs. TB FIX4 boosting and compressing above about 1 kHz. Tube EQ broad high boost at 12Khz. I’ve got the overdrive SEND effect on this. The piano is multed over several tracks with different levels. PS22 is stereo spread widening. the TDR Kotelnikov compressor is a very transparent compressor. It does big gain reduction without sounding weird. It’s doing about 7dbs of reduction with fairly high ratio.

VOCALS
wav https://www.dropbox.com/s/v1zj7ias7yz19 ... s.wav?dl=0
screenshot https://www.dropbox.com/s/2p26k4bkv7b6o ... 3.png?dl=0
Love this performance and vocal. Nice change it tone between the softer and more aggressive strident tone.Just a little inconsistency between takes, maybe the mic was moved between takes or the singing angle into the mic changed slightly.Very hard to avoid this kind of thing when you’re doing it all. I’ve been there many times. I think some compression is already on some parts also. Anyway my initial approach was to play this up and make the vocal sound very different from section to section. This didn’t work so I flattened the the music put it in another project, brought the verse vocal in processed it there and then brought it back. So where you see the pink vox track with no plugs that because I processed it elsewhere. So here is my Verse vocal from the other project which I then imported.
screenshot https://www.dropbox.com/s/92fobpypaxbjy ... 1.png?dl=0
1. low cut Eq. 2. FIX 4 is acting as a two band compressor the low band on fundamental frequencies, the high on upper harmonics and sibilants. About 4-5 db reduction. 3. Another EQ doing nothing. 4. Another compressor max. 2 db of gain reduction. The second FIX4 compressing just a bit at 2 to 4 kHz The most important part is the SENDS. TD2 is an exciter adding harmonics from 10khz up and being compressed about 4db to really add air. TD3 is to really help the vocal cut through especially when some of those frequencies seem to go missing.
screenshot https://www.dropbox.com/s/k9j9zbzgxksc9 ... 2.png?dl=0
I’ve severely EQed so all that’s left is between 1.2khz to 8 kHz. (Of course all this is acting as a parallel process) I really wanted to make sure this region always cut through without being ear bleeding loud and the best way to do that is make it dense. So the FIX4 ( I love this plugin) is compressing about 5db at 4 kHz and the exciter is adding above 1khz. All in that EQed region.

A lot of other stuff went on in this mix including the backwards reverb on the plucked guitar part leading into a louder section. And a lot of fader riding to bring out bits and pieces. Also sidechaining the delay and reverb to different elements so they get wetter or dryer in loud and soft sections. Just a note these stems won’t match exactly my mix because of the different side chained elements that are interacting across the mix when everything plays together

Anyway this was a fun mix. Thanks very much to Endicott Dread for sharing it with us in this way.

[Mister Fox]

I think this is the most thorough documentation we had to date.

Also - quite interesting how you decided to treat the kick/snare/percussion section as one, and the rest of the Drum Kit as an individual section.

Also interesting how you "strip-silenced" the parts, and some parts look nudged (could be Logic's "project view" window with the strip-silenced clips).

And just out of pure interest... which Logic Bass Amp did you use? One of the Ampeg ones, or the Fender Bassman 300 type? (I really like this plugin suite in Logic - which is why I stocked up on my Amplitube 4 collection to get similar/the same amps).