MIX CHALLENGE - MC080 September 2021 - Mix Round 2 in evaluation (staff taking over)

[fcamp]

My take:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_0lJ2A ... sp=sharing

Mixed in Reaper ITB. Wanted an organic sound, and a small to medium soundstage to reflect a bit the feeling of the song. It has been a pleasure to do the mix.
Vocal chain: initially, it felt too middy, corrected mainly with a pultec style eq.
1. Fuse Audio VPre-376: for the colour, which contributes to reduce some nasal mids.
2. Kush Electra DSP: boosting tiny bit of 1,8 kHz , high pass at 100 Hz.
3. Softube Fet compressor: 4:1 ratio, slowest attack, fastest release to catch some peaks
4. LSR VLB902: for deessing
5. Klanghelm MJUC: MkIII, attack at 2, release at 4, no density or istage, used as a leveler, barely reaches 4 db of GR sometimes.
6. Black Rooster VEQ-1P: boost and atten at 4 at 100 Hz, boost at 3 at 10 kHz. To give some air and lows, smoothens the mids.
Some volume automation was used, no pitch correction. The feeling of the song (loneliness) allows for some pitch deviations, feels more vibey.
Vocal FX sends:
Send 1: LSR VLB902 deesser + Black Rooster O-140 plate reverb, to give the vocal some depth. The volume of the reverb is automated during the song.
Send 2: LSR VLB902 deesser + Liquidsonics Seventh Heaven in Studio B close configuration, to give some sensation of occupying a space, but with some intimacy.

Acoustic guitar chain: it felt a bit too boomy or big, wanted a smaller sound but distinct, with presence.
1. Elysia karacter: for some harmonics, richer sound, drive near 2.
2. Kush Electra DSP: HP filter at 162 Hz to make space for the cello. Less boomy with Low shelf at – 1db and LMF at 100 Hz with -1.2 db. HF shelf at -4.2 db at 5.30 kHz to reduce highs and -1,3 db at 1,5Hz approx. to make space for the vocal.
3. Kush AR-1: for some levelling action and colour (more low mids) at the default position.
4. Soundtoys Tremolator: some ¼ note tremolo to add some motion to the guitar sound
Some volume automation, Pan at 20%R.
Acoustic guitar FX sends:
Send 3: Liquidsonics Seventh Heaven in London Plate to give some depth to the guitar.
Send 4: Exponential Audio Nimbus in Large Neutral Hall configuration to integrate the guitar in a space together with the strings.

Piano chain: wanted a wider piano with less mids, more highs. Volume automation was needed.
1. Fuse Audio Vpre-2C: felt bigger, wider, more harmonics.
2. Kush Electra DSP: HP at 90 Hz, some cut at 433 Hz to make space for the guitar, some cut at 1,5 Hz to make space for the vocal, and some air at 8 kHz.
3. Millennia Twincom TCL-2: in JFET, with some compression for the louder parts, felt less middy.
4. SPL Passeq: in MS mode to cut some 1,5 kHz in the Mid to make space for the voice, and some boost at 2,8 kHz in the Side to make it wider.
5. Ozone Imager: a bit wider.
Pan at 21%L.

Cello piz: removed some resonances at 110, 160 and 352 Hz with Brainworx Digital V3 eq. Kush Omega A for some presence. Pan at 11%L.
FX send:
Send 5: Exponential Audio Nimbus in Neutral Hall with shorter reverb than Send 4.

Strings piz: A bit of Brainworx Digital V3 eq for high pass, make space for other instruments at 430 Hz, and some high shelf at 4 kHz. Pan at 9%R
FX send:
Send 4: Exponential Audio Nimbus in Large Neutral Hall configuration to integrate it in a space together with the other strings and other instruments.

Cello chain: it’s the bass of the song, wanted to make it present, almost synth like (tiny tiny bit)
1. Kush Omega N: some colour and harmonics reinforcing the lower mids.
2. Kush Electra DSP: HP filter at 25 Hz, low shelf tiny boost, some cut at 500 Hz to make space for other instruments, some cut at 1,7 kHz to make space for the voice, boost at 3,2 kHz with high shelf to give presence.
3. Brainworx Subsynth: no subharmonic synth used, only to clean and give more lower end.
Pan at 6%R
FX send:
Send 4: Exponential Audio Nimbus in Large Neutral Hall configuration to integrate it in a space together with the other strings and other instruments.
Violin 1 and 2 chains: some volume automation to correct some notes that don’t end at the same time. Wanted a mellower sound.
1. PA Lindell 254E: for some levelling and darker colour, mellower.
2. Kush Electra DSP: mostly removing some highs and making space for the voice.
3. Bx digital v3 eq: to remove more 1,5 kHz for mor space for the vocals and a smoother sound.
Violin 1 panned at 20%L, Violin 2 panned at 9%R.
Violin group chain:
TDR Kotelnikov for compressing loudest parts, SPL Passeq in MS mode to make some space in the MID for the vocals, a bit of Black Rooster plate to give some depth and Ozone Imager to widen.
FX sends:
Send 4: Exponential Audio Nimbus in Large Neutral Hall configuration to integrate it in a space together with the other strings and other instruments.

Strings group: All strings were grouped in a bus for some coherence with Pulsar Mu compressor with levelling action and some MID eq from Bx digital v3 eq cutting near 1,5 kHz to make space for the vocals.

Mix bus:
1. Cytomic The Glue: ratio 2:1, attack at 30 ms, release at A, compressing up to maybe 2 dbs at most in louder parts.
2. Maag EQ2: giving 1 db at 40 kHz for some air.
3. Voxengo Elephant: to gain 2db, no limiting happens.

[DrueXMiX]

Hello Mix Challenge!

(judges, please download file completely and playback the downloaded file, google drive player does some crazy artifacts to sound ......)

My mix as followed
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1B4h9Me ... sp=sharing

I went with a natural approach as to not over doing the mix with effects, but I gave it some life with a few different verbs and tucked away delays. I start out by inserting a Softube Console 1 plugin on every track to utilize gain staging and adding harmonics, compression, filtering, and eq. Once the initial balance is achieved I add my stereo Master chain and mix through the master as this is part of my sound. I barely hit the plugins on the master to add harmonics, but never squash the mix.

The vocals are the only track that are inserted into hardware (ssl alpha channel eq). I find the alpha channel helps balance the vocals, just by passing sound through the units insert and adding a nibble of eq for the top and mid.

This was a fun track to mix because it didn't have underlying drums. Almost all songs I mix have drums, but do to this, I zoned into the gtr as the rhythm section complimenting the vocals.

In all the instrument talent skills on this track was stellar and made enjoyable to bring out their harmonics.

Feel free to give me feedback!

Warmest regards,


DrueXMiX



DAW: Pro Tools

Plugins:
Softube: Console 1 (SSL 4000 on all tracks), Zener Limiter, Overstayer, Tape Echoes, Drawmer 1973, Tape
Sound Theory: Gullfoss, Gullfoss Master
SSL: X-EQ2
UAD: LA-2A G, Fairchild 660, Distressor
Oeksound: Soothe2
Plugin Alliance: BetterMaker EQ 232D, Shadow Hills, BlackBox, SPL Vitalizer
TC Electronics: 8210, 1210, DVR 250, 2290, Brickwall HD

Hardware: Apollo8X, SSL Alpha Channel (EQ section on Vocal Subgroup)

[Mister Fox]

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

[jhkennedy5]

Beautiful song. It has been a while since I completed a mix. Here is my submission:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/18kgknk2ujjir ... 5.wav?dl=0

Mostly Slate Digital plug-ins. More level automation than I have ever done before - especially the vocal and acoustic guitar.

[violintch02]

First submission. Thanks for hosting this.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xHgI0f ... sp=sharing

Eavesdrops- Alone
Submitted by violintch02

Editing notes
DAW: Reaper 6.35
BX SSL 4000 E on violins, guitar, cello, piano, and vocals. The channel strip handled most of the compression duties, HPF on guitar, piano, violins and vocals, and a first pass of EQ for each track.
EQ specifics: Added slight boost around 150 for cello to add more bass depth of sound. Guitar and strings saw a reduction around 3k-3.5k to reduce “harsh” sound, particularly on string attacks. Vocals had a bit of a dip at 1.5k and 2.5k to reduce harsh, biting sound. A little bit of “air” was added to the guitar and vocals using the PA Maag EQ4 to help them shine out in the mix.
Additional compression with a fairly fast attack on strings was applied, particularly to soften the initial attack at the opening of the track.
Applied delay and reverb on vocals, and reverb on all other tracks. Cello and cello pizzicato tracks had additional delay and reverb added to attempt to make them sound more “real.”
Applied ReaTune on Vox and Violin tracks, mostly on automatic setting, but manually fixed a couple significant outliers.
Cleaned up some time alignment in strings.
End project level a little low, but within bounds.

Enjoy, and looking forward to possible feedback.
-Paul

[Clueless]

https://www.dropbox.com/s/26g32belgl8lx ... s.wav?dl=0

I tried to do as little as possible
That didn’t work, so I listened to the tracks that were said to be influences and tried to create a mix based on these
In total I used BX for lo pass, CableGuy shaper for vocals, & verbity
Emergence was used on guitar with wide pan to create a delay effect
Airwindows Tube2 on cello
ReaEq on some elements
I put quite a bit on the main buss except compression

[Frequency Painter]

Hi all,

Ok here we go. I think this challenge was a good exercise in whether or not to use effects. I had a bit of a hard time deciding what to do. There were 2 worlds presented; the demo mix and the spotify playlist with 1 preferred track (Flicker). I went for the latter because I liked it best too. I let the performance speak for itself with all its small imperfections without trying to hide or disguise them with effects. The next step was to decide where to place the instruments in the stereo field. it seemed logical to me to choose a life set-up: the voice in the centre, then from left to right the guitar (almost next to the voice), the piano, and the string trio (behind the voice) in a classical set-up with the cello on the far right. This, together with the low tones of the guitar on the left, provides a nice balance of bass frequencies. The use of effects is minimal, just like in the spotify reference. I used 1 reverb (EMT 250) and the Schoeps upmix to place the instruments and the voice in a virtual space.The voice also got a little bit of slap delay (almost inaudible), some studioD, the Melda autovolume, DS and autotune. The guitar got some support by parallel compression. On the violins I used Soothe. For the rest, here and there EQ (many resonances) and automation to support/emphasise the musicality of the performance. On the mix bus I used a Pultec (boom & fizz), the Arturia Sitral 295 (cut @ 300Hz), parallel compression (1176) and tape saturation. There is some time-based editing on the voice and violins and noise reduction on the guitar.

Good luck to everyone!
Cheers,
FP
https://www.dropbox.com/s/3b7hio4pkelsn ... r.wav?dl=0

[cpsmusic]

Hi Everyone,

Here's my entry for Mix Challenge 080.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YM5tpY ... sp=sharing

Thanks to the song provider and to the contest organisers.

I thought I'd approach this mix in a slightly different way to those I've done previously in that I'd pre-process the raw tracks as much as possible and then do the minimum in terms of mix processing. How successful this was, I'm not sure! One thing I wanted to experiment with was using compression for tonal colouring rather than dynamic control (something I picked up from the John Hanes thread at GearSpace).

Listening to the original mix, I found it to be quite "hard" tonally and lacking in separation. My overall goal was to create a mix with a cohesive sense of space and a warm, intimate tonal feel.

The first part of the pre-processing involved "levelling" all the raw tracks. This was done with either MAutoVolume or when this plug-in produced too many artifacts, manually. The second part of the process involved adding some simulated console/tape warmth. To do this I used the following plug-in chain:

Burnley 73 -> Subtle Mic Saturation -> IK Tape 24 -> Burnley 73 Subtle Line Saturation

The tracks were then organised as follows:

The piano was multed into Chord and Melody tracks.
The guitar was multed into Fingerpicked, Arpeggio and Strumming tracks.

Three global reverbs were used for the instruments - an Ambience (Bricasti Studio B IR), a Plate (Transatlantic Plate) and a long Hall (Bricasti Boston Hall A IR). The vocals had their own spatial treatment (see below).

One thing I did that was slightly different was using a "Glue" bus for the dry signals and a "Space" bus for the reverb returns. This was for two reasons (1) so I could compress the instruments but not compress the spatial effects. It also allowed me to vary the overall width of the spatial effects as the song developed. The Glue bus used a tiny amount of compression (Ebony 473 doing about 1-2dB of GR) and TB EQ 4 which was used for Streaky's "Jump Out of the Speakers" technique. The Space bus had Fiedler's Stage on it doing a small amount of stereo enhancement, and the final bus had Waves' TG12411 on it using the "Clear and Wide" preset.

Even after the initial preprocessing I still wasn't happy with the tone of the vocal track. I tried several different parallel chains to get the vocal sounding smoother and warmer but none worked as I'd hoped. So I decided to do another round of preprocessing using my analog tracking gear, running the signal through one channel of my WA273-EQ (HPF@160, into one channel of a DBX162SL for peak reduction (3:1 Ratio, Fast Attack, Fast Release, 1-2dB GR) then into the other channel of the DBX for levelling (2:1 Ratio, Medium Attack, Slow Release, 3dB GR) and finally back through the WA273-EQ. Even then, I still wasn't happy with the vocal tone. After trying a lot of different combinations, I settled on a processing chain of Softube's Tape, El Rey and Fuse's VPRE-2C.

The vocal had its own effects - a doubler (Quadravox), a mono delay (Dubstation 2), ambience (960L Small and Bright IR) and finally the main reverb (480L Small Church IR). These effects were used fairly subtley (or least that was my intention!). The delay and main reverb were ducked by the vocal signal with TB's Compressor 4. Waves Tune Real-Time was used (default settings, so very subtle) to tighten up any pitchy notes.

The cello and cello pizzicato tracks were bussed together, as were the two violin tracks. The string pizzicato ended up on its own track. As the arrangement doesn't have a bass instrument I used R-Bass on the cellos to add more low end creating a pseudo-bass.

TB's EQ 4 was used as the main EQ across the project although I also used Overtone's EQ 4000 (the best ITB SSL EQ I've come across) and Black Rooster's Pultecs. As I mentioned above, I wanted to try to reduce the amount of compression that I used for dynamics control however I still used several LA-2A/3As (Black Rooster) as well as a couple of MC77s which were used for guitar parallels. These were doing very minimal gain reduction.

A small amount of limiting was done on the two "transienty" guitar tracks and Flux's Pure Limiter was used on the vocal. The limiting was done for density rather than dynamic control and was only producing 1-2dB of GR.

All instruments had individual delay added which was used either for depth or for stereo spread. The delays used were Fuse's Bucket-500 and Unfiltered Audio's Instant Delay.

Specs
=====

-18.8 LUFS (Int.)
-4.0 TP
48 kHz/24-Bit

Cheers, and good luck to everyone!

[ManuC]

hi,

Here is my contribution, made with logic pro x, mixed with headphones (no choice from the hospital)

Nothing exceptional, I tried to give more space and grandeur than in the original mix, trying to keep the interpretation and the emotion of each track.

Eq and comp on each track, very light, just to make room for everyone.

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

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wu5FHi ... sp=sharing

Audio:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/6idunvx0r0vg1 ... C.wav?dl=0

Good listening, and good mix to all

[odistdan]

Thanks For providing this song.


It was really interesting to mix a singer songwriter genre.

I usually Mix on Protools but i’ve experimented with reaper th1is time.

Guitars, after gating, I used 3 saturn instances of tape and tube to clean overall spectrum and enhance low end of guitar. Followed by Eq and SSL comp and MJUCjr on slow setting and Eq to dip around 300Hz by 2 db.


Cello piz also have saturations as first plugin followed by eq. No compression.

Cello has two instances of tape and tube saturation followed by eq and Reacomp compressor.

Violins have gate, saturation knob by softtube and eq with automation and are going to plate reverb bus.

Piano has eq followed by some saturation and wider.

Vocals needed bit of tuning so i ran it from melodyne followed by Pro q3 >DC1A2>pro q3> Rdesser> Readelay for some width> pro q 3 for its dynamic band to control vocal dynamics with minimal color and lastly saturn with clean tube and tone changes to make vocal smoother and bigger.

MixBus: Pro Q 3 single band dynamic enabled with subtle saturation to glue the mix.

FX:
I made buses of Vocal Reverb, Guitar Reverb, Piano Reverb with plate reverb and 4 delay of 1/8, 1/4 and 1/2. 

Please refer to the screenshots for Sends.

Please ask me questions it’ll help me learn and pretty please leave your feedback.




Thank You so much. 



Screenshots:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing

Song:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eoHN4q ... sp=sharing