MIX CHALLENGE - MC092 June 2023 - Winners announced

[jeffssoloband]

Hi gang,

Please find my submission for MC092 here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/vwhw92w8cl0or ... d.wav?dl=0

Mixed ITB. All tracks were used as requested.

First step was to gain stage and create a beat map. Then, for the sake of organization, everything was grouped into one of 8 subfolders (Percussion, Bass, Guitar, Banjo, Fiddle, Accordion, Lead Vocals, or BG Vocals):

Percussion: I used the Stopmbox DI was EQ'd to focus on the low end, and the trigger to focus on the highs. The two were then blended to a summing stack. The Cajun M160 was EQ'd to focus on the lower end, the SM57 on the higher. Nothing special on the trigger. The three were then blended to a summing stack. The OHL was panned 75% left, the OHR was panned 75% right. The two were sent to a summing stack with an imager keeping everything <200 Hz mono.

Bass: The two bass tracks were EQ'd and summed. The sum has a transient shaper to boost the attack a bit and kill the sustain to help reduce some of the bleed. There is also some tube saturation to boost the drive a bit.

Guitar: Tracks were EQ'd and summed. I popped a plugin called Fresh Air on the sum using the "Shiny" preset to brighten it up a bit. The sum is panned a bit to the right and is bussed out to a narrow hall reverb.

Banjo: The two rhythm tracks were EQ'd and summed. The sum is panned a bit to the right and bussed to the same reverb as the guitar. The solo tracks have similar treatment, however their sum is panned center, hit with some tube saturation, and bussed to a separate plate reverb.

Fiddles: Fiddle A is summed and panned a bit to the left. Fiddle B is summed and panned a bit to the right. Both sets have dynamic EQ to tame those resonate harmonics, and bussed to a wide hall reverb.

Accordion: EQ'd with a high-pass at 250 Hz with a 6 dB/octave slope, and a low-pass at 4000 Hz with a 12 dB/octave slope. There is also an exciter present. It is bussed to a plate reverb with some auto-panning on the verb to give a little motion and keep it interesting.

Lead Vocals: All three tracks (Vox Magnus u47, Vox Angel U87, and Vox Marianne 12-251) spent a significant amount of time in RX. I tried to attenuate as much bleed as possible, as well as clean up unnecessary noise/sounds. Magnus' track was automated with Vocal Rider to smooth it out. There is a hard high-pass at 100 Hz, and it is bussed to a 15 ips tape slap, followed by a plate reverb, all panned center. Angel & Marianne are panned left & right, respectively. These two are summed, where there is some dynamic EQ to kill some resonances, hit hit hard with a solid-state style compressor. They are bussed to a wide chamber reverb.

BG Vox: All six BVOX tracks are panned a varying degrees to create a wide spread, and summed together to a stereo track. The sum has some subtractive EQ, so to not interfere with the other vocal tracks. There a series of compressors even it all out and some generic reverb.

There's a compressor on the master buss at 2.0:1 to tame some transient spikes.

I think that about covers it. Feel free to hmu with any specific questions/ comments/ concerns.

Thank you for listening, and for your consideration.

Until the next time,
Jeff (jeffssoloband)

[scottfitz]

Hi all,
Great track as usual and an excellent challenge to be dealing with a live recording. Thanks to Mister Fox for hosting and to Salige Syndere for providing the music.

Here's the link for my mix:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uD5Ato ... sp=sharing

general mix notes
-----------------------

Here I tried for as natural a sound as possible, so although there is saturation on everything (there's a saturator on the mixbus for a start), I have tried to keep this to a minimum. I have used a small amount of reverb on the drums, guitar, banjo and accordion, but again I felt that as soon as you can hear it, the feeling of the live recording is ruined. All the bleed provides you with ambience, so better to use this rather than an 'artificial' reverb perhaps. With regards the bleed, every time I tried to use EQ to take some out, the result seemed to be overall worse and the only way to get a nice full sound is to keep it all, so I went in search of other solutions for if a part sounded out of balance due to the bleed issues.

specific processing notes
--------------------------------

Drums
--------

1) triggered kick - LPF @4k 6db/oct to round off the top end which didn't seem congruous with the music
2) stomp - no processes

1) and 2) grouped and taken to a +3db boost @60Hz

3) the 3 different Cajon mics - only HPF @ 30Hz
4) triggered snare - used downward expansion to shape the dynamics as I found the snare tails a bit too long. Also on this some saturation to get a bit of that sizzle using softube saturation knob on neutral characteristic.

5) OH - this was a very tricky track to deal with, having such a lot of Cajon in there and also a lot of the high end coming from the stomp. In the end I tried multiband upward expansion using FabFilter MB using a crossover @300Hz, the idea was to try to get plenty of the cymbal when it's hit, but to leave the quieter hits more in the background.

drum bus - firstly cut 3db @500Hz then softube bus processor on 2:1 ratio, 30ms attack, 200ms release. then into Maag adding 4db @20kHz air band. finally into Zener Limiter for saturation on THD setting.

drum reverb - small amount of ambience tiled room (0.62s decay) from Valhalla.

Acoustic Guitar
-------------------

both mics panned 35 degrees to the left.

U87 - HPF 55Hz 18db/oct
AKG - HPF 43Hz 12db/oct, then into -2.5db notch around 220Hz where I could hear a resonance

both mics then into Maag EQ adding 3db @20kHz air band

then into FabFilter MB split @460Hz, the lower band is designed to reduce the Cajon bleed and so uses the sidechain to the Cajon track to trigger some downward expansion. The higher band has no sidechain and simply applies an upward expansion to the guitar track which seemed a little flat otherwise.

then finally into LA-3A to smooth it all out a little.

It is sent to the same ambience tiled room as the drum track.


Thanks all and good luck. I can provide any extra notes that you'd like to hear if anyone is interested but for now, I'll spare you all the usual essay that I write.

[VasDim]

Hi all,
this is my attempt to mix:

https://1drv.ms/u/s!AlnxH7wdHQB2gS4Wrxq ... z?e=UuNTFw

For all track are used:
- Waves Q10;
- Waves C4;
- Db ProComp.

AUX Effect;
- Waves TrueVerb;
- Waves SuperTap;

Good luck to all.
VasDim

[zajus]

Hello,

After a short brake I'm glad to be back to Mix Challange. Thanks for the opportunity to try to mix this song!

Here is my mix: MC092__Salige_Syndere__Lord__Zajus.wav

Generally I would say this mix to be definitely more fun than a battle and I did not find the bleed to be a significant issue. In fact it made the instruments very easy to place in the mix, and there wasn't a need for a ton of reverb/delay trickery. I only had to edit some tracks with significant bleed (like Magnus' vocal bleeding in between words on Marianne's and Angel's tracks.)

Here's a breakdown of my mix. I generally combine all related tracks into one channel and work on that channel only.
Stomp box: Around 3dB of compression, followed by a small boost in low end thumb using Analog Obsessions LOVEND, EQ to significantly reduce mids and a touch of Transpire transient shaper.
Cajun: Around 4.5dB of compression (very gentle slope) and EQ to reduce some resonance around 1.5kHz and remove anything below 50Hz.
OH: 1dB of gentle compression, EQ to remove all up to around 700Hz
Percussion bus: VintageEQ from FatChannel (Studio One stock plugin) to shape the overall sound, mainly 3dB reduction around 360Hz. A touch of Cymatics Diablo Lite to make it a little punchier.

Bass: Around 8dB of compression, followed by a limiter to shave of the top 2-3dB, followed by an EQ with HP at 40Hz, small cut around 80Hz (to make space for stomp box) and mainly tight cut at 3kHz to reduce resonance shimmer coming from the cymbals. NastyVCS compressor/EQ to apply a little saturation and bring up the top end of the bass. There is a very silent Distortion parallel FX channel where I also send the bass.
Accordion: A few dB of compression, followed by EQ mainly to reduce some mid range frequencies (make space for vocal) and apply HP around 150Hz ansubmixd LP around 5kHz to reduce the bleed from other instruments. NastyVCS for a little compression but mainly as an EQ to extend top-end.
Fiddle A: Same NastyVCS settings as Acordion, 1/8 delay applied directly to track and FatChannel FETComp for ~7dB of fast compression and VintageEQ to 16dB low shelf reduction at 220Hz and 6dB increase at 7kHz.
Fiddle B: Same as Fiddle A, except without the delay, instead this is sent to Room FX channel.
Guitar: Significant HP at 200Hz, TripleDrive for soft saturation on anything above 2.5kHz, Fat Channel's FETComp for 5dB of fairly aggressive compression.
Banjo: Almost identical treatment as Guitar, only with a different type of saturation.
Banjo Solo: Identical to Banjo

Vocals: I have a very similar treatment for all vocals. In general this is: EQ with HP around 120Hz, Analog Obsessions's FETISH compressor for around 10dB of compression, TubeComp for Fat Channel for additional 2-3dB of slow compression, HeadCrusher VST for some saturation (minimum drive as this VST can go crazy when cranked way up) and Analog Obsession's LOADES to de-ess. On Magnus' vocals I'm using also ThrilseekerXTC for a bit more of top-end saturation. I'm using TeleVox in some moments for effect.
Lastly I have several delay and reverb channels set-up I use in different amounts across all of the vocals:
1/4 Dual Mono delay using NastyDLA with slight offset between left and right channels
AnalogObsession's Room041 Plate reverb with 1.3 second decay, followed by an EQ to reduce top end with mono output for lead vocal only
The same plate with stereo output for backing vocals and some other instruments

On my submix channel I'm using several things: TDR Kotelnikov compressor for a ~ 2dB of compression of the full mix, followed by FerricTDS tape emulation which adds nice warmth to the mix, TesslaSE MKII mainly for a little more saturation and to make the top-end sparkle a little bit and Voxengo Overtone GEQ to finally shape the sound. Lastly I run this through bx_masterdesk to ensure I'm within the limits.

That was probably way more detail than anyone asked for, but maybe it could be useful to someone who likes my mix

Cheers
Stepan

[LCM!]

Hi, thanks to the people who make this place and this month's contest possible.
I will comment some details related with my goals at mixing this song, not going further about these dBs or those Hzs; I think there is no point on elaborate so deeply, honestly.
Live approach: this goal took me not to use long reverbs or hard panning; I hope this limits have worked in that direction.
Energy: given that the whole song is pure energy I tried to underline those spots where it would benefit from the mix. To do so I automated the threshold of the master's compressor, the level of the guitar and the BGV.
Lead voice: slapback delay, to reinforce its role, mainly in the verse.
In some drum tracks I reversed the phase: DI Stompbox Triggered, Cajun triggerd snare wire and OHR Miktek c5. Maybe I was right.
I hope you enjoy.
Done with Reaper stock plugins.
Greetings.

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

[PistolPete]

Loudness_Value;-16.02 LUFS
Loudness_Range;3.70 LU
Max_True_Peak_Level;-3.12 dBTP
Sample Rate;48.000 kHz
Average RMS (AES-17) Left;-16.01 dB
Average RMS (AES-17) Right;-15.82 dB
Max. RMS;-14.09 dB
Peak Amplitude Left;-3.61 dB
Peak Amplitude Right;-3.12 dB
True Peak Left;-3.56 dB
True Peak Right;-3.12 dB
DC Offset Left;-oo dB
DC Offset Right;-oo dB
Bit Depth Left;24 bit
Bit Depth Right;24 bit

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

PC built in 2012, Cubase 10.5, Fostex Pm5 monitors, Senn 280HD cans. Home studio.
Plugins: mentioned below

This is the first song of this genre that I’ve attempted mixing, so I had a lot of fun really immersing myself into this mix and I hope I did this song justice. I wanted to mix it in that essence where it sounded like a live stage performance without too much processing or effects and had a more grassroots small venue live show type sound.

The Process:
Created a Mixbus Track and routed all channels it. Mixbus ran to stereo out.

Cut out all “dead air” on tracks, cleaned up dead air on vocals and slightly enveloped breaths to cut down on the sibilance and create a silence instead of general noise that floods the low end out. I used HP and LP filters on some of the tracks to remove unwanted noise and to help each track focus in on the instrument and not the room noise.

gain staging, panning I did watch the video for this song and kind of imagined mimicking their room placement in the mix as well as positioning each instrument where the frequencies didn’t clash much. I had a lot of fun with this mixing the banjo especially.

I created VCA groups to help volume balance and keep send ratios same for: Bass, VOX (all), Strings (Banjo, guitar, Violin), and Percussion. I focused on each group separately really getting the panning and volumes to compliment nicely.

align I decided to run autoalign 1 and synced everything to the overhead R which seemed to clean up the mix even more.

I mostly used Global FX Sends to create the tone, soundstage and sound I wanted. All Sends went to the Mixbus. The FX sends were:
FX Tape Decapitator, DC offset filter
FX Plate, Abbey Road Chambers
FX Voc COMP. MV2
FX – Saturation 2 (Decapitator, Vocal Rider)
FX Saturation: Abbey Road Saturator, vocal rider, DC offset filter


Fiddles: Panned LEFT. Sends (tape, plate)
FB-A Brainworks SSL channel
FB -B – bass rider to give a live feel to sound
FR nothing,
FR nothing

Guitars: panned center and slight left
U8 Brainworks SSL console, Bass Rider (for liveness realism)
Guitar AKG – Smack Attack (transients) Scheps Omnichannel *saturation, compression, top end eq,

Banjo’s Panned hard right. Sends (plate, Tape, Saturation)
BB vocal rider set to duck the vocals
B AKG eq to bring up mids mid high and cut bass slightly and highs slightly.,

Accordion: no FX, just sends and an autopanner.

Bass:Autoaligned to OHR and to each other. (no sends, just direct FX)
Royer: SSL Channel to shape to liking and bring out realism but cut background noise, Bass Rider, CAL Bass with delay, compression and EQ
U47 AMEX 9099 strip, CLA-2A, Bass Rider

Percussion: no effects and all sends (saturation, Plate Verb)



Vocals:
I had a very hard time with Magnus’s vocals sitting right with me. I mixed down multiple version, each with a completely different Insert signal chain on the channel and finally found one I liked. I did a lot of manual volume automation to level out the vocals but also give emphasis where I thought it was needed. To add thickness and warmth I created a FX send and went nuts with situations, EQ and verb to add a thick “fuzz” to the backs of his vocals and set this to an autofader to give movement on the backs.
I created a FX VOX send that had a compressor test to a nice fast attack and slow release

Magnus Vox:
De-esser, SSL console, Decapitator, J37 tape, Smack Attack (transients), vocal rider for nice vox riding.
Magnus FX send: Blackbox, Valhalla Supermassive, Abby Road Saturation, C1 gate, Vocal Rider

Angel and Maria. No insert FX were used, Angel Panned Left, Maria Panned Right. Magnus backs panned Right.
Sends (Tape, Plate, FX VOX)


Mixbus:
Black Box
Basslane
LinMB – multiband compressor

Stereo Out:
L1 Limiter -.6 -1.2

Well I had a lot of fun mixing this one and I hope I did it justice with my mix. Thank you to the song provider for allowing us to mix your work.

[juhu]

Hi,

1) Enjoy my mixdown of “Lord” by Salige Syndere:
http://tinkerstate.com/mix-challenge/MC ... __juhu.wav

2) Documentation:

► Show Spoiler

The biggest challenge for me was managing the microphone bleed while setting up my stereo imaging, but I feel I was able to make it work in the end. The bleed was not an issue for me from any other standpoint, just the stereo imaging part. I would even say that the bleed was helpful in terms of cohesive blending of instruments while I was working on my center channel aka. mono mix.

I shall now document the highlights from my mixing session:

1) Getting a consistent foundation to build on - using Serial Compression on the Bass

Ended up using 3 serially connected instances of FET-style compression, all with mostly similar settings at 4:1 ratio and about 4 dB of gain reduction. The only remarkable difference between instances is that I used different release time settings for each instance as that tended to sound more interesting compared to having all 3 set to the same release time.

I also ended up creating some stereo width on the bass by simply panning the two microphones in opposite directions. This made the stereo mix retain a similar tonal balance compared to when listening in mono, and also reinforced the realism of having a big double bass in the band that fills the room with juicy low end. I even ended up enhancing this width effect with a side signal boost at around 80 Hz on the Bass stereo sub-mix.

Screenshot - Serial Compression on the Bass and Microphone Panning:


A noteworthy challenge was getting the Bass to work with the Stomp-Kick as by default both instruments dominated the 60 Hz range and clashed, so I resolved that by boosting the weaker 120 Hz range by a LOT while cutting the exaggerated 60 Hz range by a LOT on the Bass. I then did the opposite on the Stomp-Kick, albeit to a much lesser degree. Somehow managed to get the instruments agree with each other in the end.

2) Creating stereo width from non-bass instruments

The Guitar seems to be in a supportive role, so I tried simply panning it heavily. However, that did not work well because the bleed also got jarringly sharply localised and gave me a lopsided mix, so instead of panning the entire Guitar sub-mix I created stereo width by panning the two Guitar microphones in opposite directions. Now, because one of the microphones produced a much brighter Guitar signal than the other, I also got a nice localisation effect for the Guitar in addition to stereo width, whereas the bleed component was no longer jarringly sharply localised.

Screenshot - Guitar Microphone Panning:


The Accordion also seems to be in a supportive role, but simply panning it heavily gave me an even more jarringly localised bleed and lopsided mix, so I had to somehow create stereo width for it as well; however, the Accordion was recorded with a single microphone, and therefore I couldn’t use the “pan 2 microphones in opposite directions” method that I had successfully used on the Guitar earlier. I had to come up with a different trick: the good old “delay one channel only by a few milliseconds” trick. Granted, some slight mid-side EQ work was required on the Accordion stereo sub-mix after having applied the delay trick in order to make it blend in again with the rest of the mix.

Screenshot - Accordion Left Channel Delay:


The Backing Vocals were recorded with 2 microphones for each person, so that group was easy to spread out.

3) Compressing and de-essing the Lead Vocals

In order to fight excessive sibilance, I started out by using pre-emphasis of sibilance range before the Compressor, followed by de-emphasis after the Compressor. Still, some excessive sibilance remained, so I did have to strap on a De-Esser as well. The Compressor is set to use a high-pass filter in its side-chain. Ratio is set to fairly aggressive 7:1 and gets me around 5 to 12 dB of gain reduction, depending on the passage. The reason it sounds OK regardless of aggressive reduction is the soft knee and fairly slow release time, and of course the high-pass in the side-chain. As for EQ, there’s a low shelf cut to reduce rumble, slight high shelf air boost, and some micro-adjustments in the “money range”. With acoustic music, I generally prefer to use low shelf cuts instead of high-pass filters to control rumble, as shelves sound more natural for that purpose to my ear, and acoustic music benefits from sounding natural rather than sounding overly processed IMO.

Screenshot - Lead Vocal Effect Chain:


4) Getting a convincing dialogue going between Lead Vocals and the Fiddle - by using Automation

Although there is some occasional Automation on other parts as well, the Fiddle is the most obvious one where frequent Volume Automation was necessary to bring the Fiddle in front occasionally while it was filling in the breaks between Lead Vocal phrases. Great attention had to be paid to make sure the effect wasn’t too weak nor too strong.

Screenshot - Fiddle Volume Automation:


That concludes my list of highlights for this session.

[PianoPung]

This was fun!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1g19zfv ... sp=sharing

I had two goals :
1. Preserve, or even enhance, the wonderful live energy in this track.
2. I wanted to make all instruments heard. At least in parts of the song. It should be possible to list all the instruments used after listening to the track. Hopefully this goal would help me create a mix that sounded remotely close to having the band live in front of you. As your eyes wander, it should be possible to hear the instruments you’re looking at, so to speak. I have no better way to explain this "visual" approach.

Some notes about the prosess:
-There were some phase issues, but it was impossible to fix it completely at the start where the band joins in. Otherwise, the bleed was more of a benefit than a problem to increase the feeling of a live performance.
- The bass was a bit of a struggle, but turned out OK with heavy use of compression. The timing was not perfect, but adds nicely to the live feeling.
- Paning, compression and reverb was tool used trying to create space and depth.
- A bit of echo was used on the main vocal in order to make it stand out somehow. There was always a danger of losing him in the mix. Heavy automation
- The drums was in my ears a bit static, so I made the drums less prominent, and kind of blended them with the acoustic guitar.
- A litle bit of pitch correction was used on some of the backing vocals


Gear:
Software: Fabfilter EQ and saturation. UAD Studer tapesim, Pultec, 1176 and LA-2A. Soundtoys Echo. Relab Development LX480. Kush Clariphonic. Waves tune
Hardware: Drawmer 1978 (drumbus) and Tegler Audio Creme

[PistolPete]

My first time participating in these challenges and really enjoyed the source.


https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pZYmDC ... drive_link

Hey Barry, I just tried listening to your mix and Google gave me an error saying "user authentication failed". You might want to make sure you have your link set to public "any one with link can view" .

Best regards.

[rvalle]

Nice song and really fun to mix. Thanks @Naturecord and Salige Syndere for this one.

Here's my edit: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1B9OGL8 ... sp=sharing

And here's my notes:

DRUMS:
-Stompbox: eq on both tracks to improve the fit. On the DI, complementary equalization to clean up the mid-high range, plus the use of bx_subfilter for low end boost. On the group track, compression with AIRCompressor and further eq with SplitEQ to control transients at the 500 hz and 2.3 Khz regions.
-Overs: processing only on the group track, with EQ to clean up the bass and transient control with Spiff.
-Cajon: the challenge here was to control the bite; in all cajon tracks I used transient designers (Spiff and Transient Master) to decrease the initial transient, softening the attack, which I thought was too aggressive. On the cajon triggered track I also used Soothe for resonance control at the high end. On the group track, compression and eq with Lindell 80; I also applied a good amount of saturation with the excellent and free GSatPlus, from TBProAudio.
-Drumbus: another softening with Soothe2; compression and eq with Lindell 80; PSPNobleQ for bass boost (Pultec trick); more compression and character with UAD Fatso; finally, some soft clipping just to control the very high peaks, with Apogee SoftLimit.

BASS:
I wanted to keep the mid-range region of the Royer recording, while in the U47 recording I favored the bass. In the bus, I used the Lindell MBC to compress only below 380hz; some character with the BBE Mach3 Bass and some chorus with the free and very good Acon Multiply. I used the group function of the smart:EQ3 to balance bass and stompbox.

INSTRUMENTS:
-Guitar: eq for cleaning on the individual tracks; on the group track, resonance control with the Soothe between 2 and 8 khz; Lindell 80 for compression.
-Banjo: eq for cleaning on the individual tracks; on the group track, compression with Lindell 80 and harmonic saturation with Vertigo VSM3.
-Solo banjo: eq for cleaning on the tracks; on the Brauner recording track, I used the UAD Cooper Time Cube to give a highlight over the base banjo.
-Fiddle: only eq for cleaning on the solo tracks; on the group track, LIndell 80 for character, compression and a slight boost at 4.8 khz.
-Accordion: eq for cleaning and a little chorus with the UAD Studio D.

VOCALS:
-Vox Magnus: clip gain; eq for cleaning; moderate compression with UAD 1176SE; UAD Trident giving a small boost at 500 hz and a small decrease at 12 khz; de-esser with the Neutron3 compressor; some ambience with the Acon Verberate 2 (preset Percussion Room); a little more compression with the Acustica Audio Cream 2 comp module.
-Vox Angel and Vox Marianne had no processing and were put on a group track where I used eq for cleanup and moderate compression with UAD 1176SE Legacy.
-Backing Vocals: no processing on the individual tracks; on the group track, eq for clean and ambience effect with the Eventide H3000 (preset Phantom Double).

AMBIENCE (send effects):
-Short Room: Eventide Tverb (preset Small Room Bus) which received all buses except bass.
-Medium Room: Acon Digital Convolve (IR M7 Ambiences 09 Small & Bright) which received only the drum bus.
-Room 3: Eventide UltraRevereb (Small Room preset) which got all buses except bass.
-Delay: Soundtoys Echoboy (Memory Man preset) which get Vox Magnus, a bit of the instruments and a bit of the backing vocals.

Then I printed out an L/R file and put it into a new project for fine tuning, including lowdness. To do so, I used Kazrog True Iron (O-12 algorithm) and UAD Oxide. Finally, a small correction in the low end on the sides, which was a little too much, and in the high frequencies as well.