MIX CHALLENGE - MC089 December 2022 - Winners announced

[onecake2]

Hello,
here it is my attempt to mix https://1drv.ms/u/s!AgzJUlYVc9qtgY09bG5 ... A?e=Zftgaf

I have done a classic mix: eq ff2 and comp 1176ik on every channel.
Reverb and delay on the vocals
And a touch of distortion on the whole drums.

Thanks to mr-fox and the song provider for this opportunity

[Alex Van mixland]

Hello,
Here is my mix:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1l37r2W ... share_link

Drums: I didn't changed intro durms. I just leaved as it was. I added eq to kick and snare.
Kick - I added lows to get heared kick on small speakers
Snare - I added highs
OH - I added highs
Bass - I used DI and amp from original. A added compression and cut 370hz
Guitars - i used another amp sound
Vocals- Compression ,reverb eq to get ride of lows.

Cheers!

[scottfitz]

Inferno - Hooker and a Handgun

Great song, I was a heavy metal fan back in the day so really loved this, thanks for submitting it Ron and thanks to Mr Fox for hosting.

Thanks to Christoph_K for recommending the Brauer approach, I decided to give it a go.

here’s the link
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Tokivj ... share_link

notes for the mix

Drums
I felt they were great but so polite for a track with screaming so I made them a fair bit more aggressive.

Snare
Opticom XLA-3, “snare popper” preset tweaked to get more of a tail. Added a gated reverb from ValhallaVintageVerb, “Gated Snare” which is a 0.3s decay. Snare also has lots of saturation from Softube Saturation knob set on neutral.

Kick
Added a bit of low transients using SplitEQ. Saturation added from Softube Saturation knob set on low

Fill/tom
both got the Waves Kramer Pie for a bit of extra aggression.

OH
Opticom XLA-3 on “OH Room Zazz” preset tweaked.

Room
Softube Overstayer “Drum Room” preset tweaked.

Drum Bus
Soundtoys Decapitator “DrumFattener 1” preset


Bass
MaxxBass used to add some bass tones a bit higher and reduce the original bass, as I was finding the fundamental bass tone very strong and hard to control. LA-2A Gray used to smooth a little

Then Bass+Drums head to “buss B” which has the EL9 (distressor copy).


Guitars
Rhythm
yes very tricky indeed. In the end I did what Mr Fox said and used two models of amp sim, Gojira from Neural DSP and Amp Room by Softube. The Gojira side goes into an EL9 and the Amp Room side goes into a Germanium compressor and then checking the phase on Ozone Imager confirmed that they do indeed now have some stereo width. C4 to control the lows

Octaves
used Gojira again then softube saturation knob and a C4 to control the lows

Chorus Lead
Used Softube Amp Room on both sides, panned 48 degress left and right. Both go into waves RAxx doing quite a bit of compression and then again into another RAxx on the buss. They go to a delay channel.

The first 2 guitars go to “buss C” which has Acustica Audio Ultramarine (Fairchild copy) and the lead ones I treated as a keyboard and sent to “buss A” which has Arturia COMP DIODE-609.


Vox
Scream
MDMX Screamer by Waves, adding some distortion to the scream at about 33% wet on full temperature. Took out some 500Hz using a pultec. Into waves Rvox and LA-2A then finally MaagEQ4 adding 4dB at 20kHz (wide band)

Verse second voice
Added plenty of softube saturator, -1.5dB at 375Hz, then into Rvox and LA-2A and MaagEQ4
gets a delay and reverb

Chorus vox
chain is same as verse second voice, but sent to more effects
ValhallaVintageVerb “Huge Synth Hall” at 5.26s decay
Altiverb “Fat Plate” w/ 30ms predelay
ValhallaDelay “BBDuck-Wide Vocal Delay”

These 3 lead vocals then get sent to 5 different compressors to colour the sound only getting around 1dB GR on each. The 5 used are EL9, Softube FET (british mode), VCL-864U Tube limiter, Arturia COMP TUBE and the Ultramarine. Then together with an uncompressend send these 6 channels form the Vocal Buss.

Then all the FX channels are sent to “buss D” which has a waves Vcomp limiter on it.

There’s an 1176 bus which has the drums sent to it for some parallel compression, the unit is also in British mode (all buttons in)


Summary
A buss - lead guitars on chorus
B buss - drums + bass
C buss - rhythm guitars plus guitar octaves
D buss - all the reverbs, delays and backing vocals.
1176 buss - drums only
Vox buss - collects up all the lead vox.


these then go to
Mixbus
EQ
HPF 27Hz
-0.8dB bell 100Hz
+0.4dB shelf @3kHz
+0.5db shelf @8kHz

Germanium compressor
Shadow Hills mastering compressor

both compressors doing less than 1dB GR each

Cheers all.

[pabloAT]

Hello,
Many thanks to the song provider and to Mr Fox for providing such an interesting track to mix.
After listening the reference mix, the main issues that I’ve identified were: (i) the drum, buried in the mix; (ii) the unevenness of the different vocal’s parts; (iii) the tone of the guitars. After intensive cleaning, separation, gain staging and balancing I’ve proceeded as follows. For drums, I applied different instances of saturation and compression for the tracks. I also applied parallel compression and one instance of plate reverb for the full kit. All drum tracks were wrapped and sent to a stem with a tape machine and subtle EQing+compression. For guitars, I changed the tonality with intensive EQing, complemented with an exciter and one instance of LA-3A compression. Guitar tracks benefited from subtle chorus and spring reverb instances. For vocals, I’ve used several stages of compression to uniformize, but in the end it was the upward compression (MV2) that gave me the vibe I was looking for. Vocals benefited also from spring and plate reverbs, and delays. A tape machine put the final touch to the vocal tracks. In the mixbuss I included subtle saturation, compression and limiting, finishing with an instance of 2 channels’ tape machine.
Best wishes,
Pablo

Dropbox Link to MC089

[hjchjc]

MC089__Hooker_and_a_Handgun__INFERNO__hjchjc.wav


This was a challenging song to mix but I also had a lot of fun! LOTS of stuff used here. Went for an early-2000s rock sound and took some appropriately big swings here. Maybe I made the guitars a little too loud?

Just made it under the wire at -16.1 LUFS

All tracks use the Scheps Omni Channel for basic EQ and compression unless otherwise noted.


Bass:
Ampeg SVTVR Classic, Omni, Scheps 73,

Kick:
Scheps 73,
EQ high cut at 2700

Snare:
Omni with RS124 insert, Pro-q 3 in dynamic mode taking out resonance at 541 hz, Softube Transient Shaper, then 1989Verb on "moderate shiny" and Protoverb with a short decay

Tom: 1989verb

Drum buss: L1+Ultramaximizer and J37, sent to parallel compression with Xtressor

Guitars: Scheps 73, octaves have DevilSpring on them
Chorus guitars bus: Maag EQ, Trackspacer, Gem EQ
Chorus guitars also sent to a bus with GEM EQ, Chorus Jun-6, and ClipSoftly

Instrumental bus has Vertigo VSM-3 and PuigTec EQ taking away 2db of 8k

Intro drums: Sent to Digitalis, dualReverseDelay, Space Designer, Distressor, then some EQ


-Vox:
Verse vox:
Scheps omni
De-Esser
Decapitator
Black Box
EQ boosting at 3k

Harmonies:
New BPB plugin called Dirty LA

Bus:
-Pro-DS
-Spectral Shaper
-
Sends:
1. Doubleday, 2. ValhallaVintageVerb, 3. (Second pre-chorus spins) EchoBoy, Valhalla vintage verb, RX950, EQ with slow rolloff at 585hz 4. The very Linkin Park-inspired vocal spins in the post-chorus and outro - listen to "Crawling" for an example - are EchoBoy > ValhallaVintage > Spring Box > Space Designer > Ozone Imager > Kickstart > EQ cut at 374


2Bus:
After LOTS of experimentation of trying to get the effects of an intense compressed mix without actually going overboard with compression I settled on:

Maag EQ4 with low end and 2.5 boosted
C6 aggressively pushing down 4k
TDR Kotelnikov GE taking away 2db of compression with slow attack, believe Yin and Yang are both enabled as well as the Frequency Dependent Ratio feature.
PuigTec taking away 6db of 10K because otherwise the mix would be unlistenable lol

This seems like a lot but it's very deliberate to boost things and press them down and it resulted in what I think is one of the best mixes I've done for these yet. Enjoy!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dbl1mA ... sp=sharing

[kovachev72]

Thanks ! I will check.

[jordibakes]

Hello everyone,

Here's my mix:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1aVUy86 ... share_link

Thanks,
Have a great day.

[LCM!]

Thanks to the song provider and Mister Fox for giving us this opportunity. Very enjoyable. This is my mix:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BLOhSF ... share_link

I didn't try to make huge changes, I had an eye on the reference (Alexis on fire) and hope I stay close to that.
Some notes:
Drums. Parallel comp and some touch in the introduction.
Bass. Doubled lows/highs to use the latter for reaching a tad of atack.
Guitars. I used all the tracks; I think the DI tracks add some attack. In two cases (octaves DI and lead 2 DI) reamped to get a sligthly different tone, mainly in the chorus.
Vox. Different treatment and parallel comp for Screams and the rest. The screams have less highs and reverbs.

I hope you enjoy.

[UHLS]

hello, thanks for the opportunity to mix this song.
first I reworked the OHS and ROOM drum tracks with sonible freiraum to have a different reverb (free IRs from bricasti M7).
i just used one di guitar, processed with positive grid FX2 (mesa boogie sim). I then sent this signal to a mono delay and panned left and right.
I sent DI octave guitar also to positive grid FX2 (marshall sim).
i used solo guitar original sound and the sent all guitars on a bus with UA pultec, clariphonic and compressor and gate.
for DI bass I used one TH-U bass preset, nothing fancy.
I created submixes for vocals and edited them with waves Rvox and UA LA2A.
then i added a couple of delay busses, wrote a bit of automation and the mix was done.
i hope the band like the mix.
good luck to all participants.

my mix:
https://workupload.com/file/u9q2N5ymkwG

[bluesation]

First of all I must say, that this by far the challenge I hat the most fun. All is well done, arrangement and recordings fit very well together. So no wonder, that I had the instrument mix ready after half an hour. The challenging thing were the vocals. What track is what playing and when and what is it meant to be. But quickly I got it in an order I could good work with. After that, working with the tracks was very inspiring act.

First step of my mixing process is to normalize all tracks to -21 RMS. I tried a lot of parameters, -12, -21, -23 LUFS, RMS, integrated, M and S. but -21 RMS works best for me. After that normalization are send through a brit console emulation. So prepared the tracks are placed into the DAW.

Nothing special with the drums. A bit Eqing, set the levels up, compress the Drum buss.

I used the DI and processed tracks of bass and guitars. All guitar tracks are hi-passed. There was a lot of mud at the low end. And the bass guitar is that kind of stable and thick, there was no need of other instruments in the low end. Di and processed track were grouped into a subgroup. So it was easy to adjust level and panning for the entire instrument. The guitar track go through a common reverb channel just for a bit room.

The vocals were divided in a group of the dirty vox and a group of the clean vox. Just for better leveling and more important - automation. Long time I worked with a parallel “air ” track for the vox. It was setup with compressor (-10 dB GR) and a High Bell in combination with a low cut at 2.5k. This made the vox airy but not shrill or harsh. Now I use Slate Fresh Air for this task. It works better. For FX, I worked with Reverb and Delay.

At the end, I automated the guitars with level setting and the vox with level and panning. On the Master buss is placed a G-compressor followed by a limiter. The limiter is not really needed in this case. No peaks go -3 db. and the loudness is setup via track levels. This is possible, cause the arrangement and the recording are well done. So no trickery for any purpose needed.


Here is the link: https://my.hidrive.com/lnk/kwyzWtlK