MIX CHALLENGE - MC087 August 2022 - Winners announced

[White Punk OD]

still about documentation,
many comrades worked hard on the wah guitar because of the printed reverb.
I did not see a problem with this, because I often use GlaceVerb for the guitars, it will bury any weak spring reverb immediately.
this time, it was sufficient to put it on the guitar bus, it will jump forward at the right time, collaborating with the bus glue compressor.
got a little bit of fog from the reverbs in my version 1 mix, but with more automation this will go away.
floodo, thanks for an interesting description!
for a course check about subsonic energy and balance, I am using Noisebud_Evouyn as a meter. when this is in the red, my cheap car stereo speakers will puke, so it has some value.

[mixedbyadn]

Hello everyone.

I really liked this song, thanks to both of you!

This is my mix:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/roxmpj0u41i2t ... N.wav?dl=0

Although listening to the original mix I’ve seen that it has a very high level of quality, I have mixed in my own way and with my sound.

Where I enjoyed the most was with the lead and Arabic vocals, where I applied a creative process of various effects and a vocal synthesizer.

My main focus has been with the Ribab and vocals, as well as keeping a clear groove with the rhythm base and bass.

Most of the time has been spent cleaning and automating the gain of the tracks.

The mix is based on my 4 Brauer group busses that I have been using for a long time.

I have decreased a lot the percussion room, the wah-wah and kept the Ribab room, which I liked.

The tracks are processed with EQ, filters and compression, very simple, and a precise volume balance for each element.

The bass has a dynamic EQ applied to space out the kick drum and the Ampeg SVTVR for a rounder bass.

I hope you like it!

[Christoph Stoll]

Hi everybody!

Here's my interpretation of "The Power Is Out":

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

I used way more reverb and emphasized on the guitars more than Ady. I hope you'll like it anyway!

Best, Christoph

[TheDude]

My Mix https://drive.google.com/file/d/1e2wc4T ... sp=sharing

Hello to everyone and thanks for the opportunity to work on this wonderful song! I made this one all In The Box, 'cause I don't have any analog gear.
I use a lot of volume automation and gain adjustment.
For drums and percussions I clean up all the sounds and I boost the kick of the stereo track, and I add a little bit of compression and saturation.
For the guitars just some spring reverb and parallel saturation and an SSL EVE 2 Plug in for equalize the tracks.
For the horns I just equalize them and add a little bit of room. After that I put a tape emulator for make them saturated and crispy.
For vocal I equalize and compress the tracks, add a soothe 2 and a de esser, a compression with API 2500 and a parallel compression with the 1176. Add a maag EQ4 at the end and stop.

After that I just put an equalizer on the MIX BUS and that's it!

I hope you'll enjoy this, I had a lot of fum mixing this amazing song

[Mac So]

Hello again guys!
It's my second submission here, so still pretty new.

This month's challenge is not really in my "style" but I really love the challenge.
If I'm honest the more I listened to the song I liked in more, usually it is the opposite when mixing heh

My focus was clean vocals as I guess that was the main star of this song.

Another thing was stereo image and enhancement.
With so many tracks and recorded takes I tried to pan them very wide.
So all the percussion as well as wind instruments panned to the sides while vocal occupied the mids.
I also put focus on transient shaping. With so many percussion instruments there was a bit of work with it.

As always I tried to enhance the punchiness of a kick and bass.
I did one creative decision at 3:00, everything is muted except the vocal.
I think it adds a bit of tension.

Anyway here is the link to my mix, I hope you'll like it.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1j00vYp ... nBZpg/view

And I also decided to make a video of my mixing session, here it is.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/11RkKuZ ... iwfXp/view

As always thanks for the opportunity to the song provider and mix challenge staff.
Good luck to everyone

[Mac So]

@Mister Fox
Can I post above video of my mixing session on my Instagram profile?
I will obviously mention everyone and put link to the challenge etc.

[JeroenZuiderwijk]

What a fantastic song, wow! Great perfomance. Great fun to mix.

The energy of the track in my opinion is in the trompets and bass. The kick could have been the prominent drive of the song but I think for this style of music it is actualy the bass.

The trompets lacked some energy in the original recording so I send it through a couple of stages of saturation. Driving just one saturation didn't give the effect I was looking for and cranking up the amount of gain only gave some nasty distortion so for that
reason I used the same plug in in serie with everytime just a little bit of saturation. That did the trick for the sound I was looking for. To make it sound even bigger I used a combination of a pitch/delay path (left right different amounts) and reverb.

For the bassguitar I used a channelstrip micpre with (again) some saturation. I needed to de-es the bass in the end of the chain because of the upper harmonix this created, but after that it gained a lot of energy. I used an optical compressor to level out the volume.

The vocal was (apart from the basic eq-compression) treated with some subtle stereo pitch/delay effect with a very low level distortion on the output. I like the vintage sound of that combination.

the vocals where sometimes a bit overshadowed by the energy of the trompets. So that's where I used a sidechain compression on the trompets triggered by the vocal for gain reduction during the vocal parts. this is easily adjusted if you feel that there is still too much masking. But the way it sounds now is what felt right for me.

I used a platereverb as the main sendreverb to glue it all together.

The guitars just some basic eq, compression and stereo panning. I did used an exciter (subtle) to bring out the high mids a bit more.

The intro was a challange, I used an 'old radio eq' setting to push the introvocal to the background as a sort of texture as part of the whole sound. I was aiming for a dreamy vibe. With lots of reverb.

On the masterbus there is only some highshelf eq because I had the feeling that because of all the saturation I needed to tame
the high end a bit.

That's it for the technical details and choices I made. Here's is my mix:

https://1drv.ms/u/s!Ahp8xH6KRIfbgQX2aSK ... _?e=iKxdEb

[Arthur Labus]

Hello everybody !
Very thankful for the oppurtunity to mix another Ady contribution and here is what i've done:

Specs:
Tracks set to 0 VU. Izotope Neutrino and NLS Channel (Neve) on every instrument bus.

DRUMS acoustic:
Drum Bus - Thrillseeker VBL (light compression + trafo processing), Toneboosters Sibilance (harshness de-essing), Overloud GEM EQ550 (smile)

Desert Roses Beat - CLA Drums with focus on kick, u-he Protoverb (wide room)
Cajon - Thrillseeker VBL (light compression + trafo processing), Waves CLA Drums, Energy Panner for some panning action
Cymbals - Waves CLA Drums as for Overheads, stock EQ for clearing low end under 150 Hz
Cala - Waves CLA Drums as for toms
Karbaka - only room track with stereo fx

BASS:
Bass DI: Plugin Alliance Ampeg SVTR (jamming bass), Overloud Gem EQ550, Focusrite Red 3 compressor, Waves Scheps 73 (clean bass, HP 80 Hz)
Bass amped: Waves CLA Bass (with distortion), Focusrite Red 3 compressor

LEAD GUITARS
GTR mic1 (intro + choruses) - bx_greenscreamer, Waves CLA Guitars / in "solo" parts additional Slick HDR compressor for clarity and Voxengo Stereo Touch
GTR mic2 (verses) - bx_bluechorus, Waves CLA Guitars
GTR_DSTRN_2 - Cyprest TT-15 amp clean
all tracks send to Voxengo OldSkoolVerb with reversed stereo image

SOLO GUITARs
GTR_DIST_MLDY - SEND -> VREV-666 plate reverb, stock EQ to clear low end build
Wah_Wah_sm57 - Voxengo Stereo Touch
GTR_SOLO_2_AT - bx_bluechorus, energy Panner - SEND -> VREV-666 plate reverb, stock EQ to clear low end build

BRASS
all tracks panned differently and with Klevgrand DAW Casette for some Lower Fi feel
BUS: Waves TG12345 console, Thrillseeker VBL, Overloud GEM Dopamine exciter, VREV-666 plate reverb ,Acustica Audio Celestial console for saturation

RIBAB - only panning done here

VOCALS - TB Sibilance de-esser
Fiona_Vox - two different instances for verses and choruses of Waves CLA Vocals (EQ, reverb, stereo fx), Waves CLA-3A compressor / SEND to Waves Morphoder as whisper track
LALA_TAMAR_VOX - Waves CLA Vocals, Waves Brauer Motion/ SEND to Waves Morphoder as whisper track

All busses except bass send to track with Acustica Silver with big hall for glue reverb

Overall a lot of volume automation

Master Bus:
NLS Bus (Neve) analog summing, Acustica CoralEQ (pulling down 350 Hz a bit), Density MkIII compressor (glueing), Toneboosters ReelBus tape sim, BaxterEQ for overall tone shaping, Toneboosters Sibilance, Charly Limited analog gain
as metering: Toneboosters TB_Barricade, Youlean Loudness Meter

WAV: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1maPf0z ... sp=sharing

WAV 24bit/44kHz, round 2,4 dB headroom / loudness -16,5 LUFS

Good succes everybody !

[inye]

Hello everyone,

This is my first submission here. Thanks for the great opportunity to mix such an exciting song!

This one is not easy for me since the production is quite complex. So, most of the time I was trying to clear up the space for each instrument. I didn't use any fancy skills and wanted to keep it simple and groovy.

I panned the horns to the sides and left the guitar riff in the middle. The percussion was the main focus of my mix and the vocals were not very forward. "Balkan Beat Box" was my main reference and I really liked the sound they managed to present.

The main plugins I used were the Virtual Mix Rack, the Fabfilter Bundle, and Echoboy.

Hope you guys like it and good luck!

Here's the link to my mix:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-OpNab ... sp=sharing

Cheers,
Inye

[MrFlat]

I enjoyed mixing this song...great vocal performance

Mix bus: Slate VCC, Fabfliter Pro-MB, Gullfoss, Ozone

Drum_Bass Bus: SSL Compressor, Fabfilter Pro-L and Pro-Q
Instrument Bus: Pro L
Vocal Bus: Pro-L and Pro-MB

Drum Loop: Pro-Q, Clipper, and Parallel compression with Slate VBC
Cymbals: Waves L1 and Pro-Q
Percussions: Clipper and Pro-Q
Drum submix: Pro-Q, SSL compressor, Pro-L
Bass: Pro-Q, Waves CLA-3A
All the guitar tracks were processed using a combination of SSL Channel strip, Pro-Q, Waves L1
Ribab: Gullfoss, CLA-2A
Brass: Pro-Q, CLA-76, Gullfoss
Vocal: CLA-76, Pro-MB, Pro-Q, Waves RVox,Waves De-esser

Here is my mix:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/pdfyofv5djyvu ... t.wav?dl=0