MIX CHALLENGE - MC093 August 2023 - Winners announced

[jeffssoloband]

Cool.

I want to be respectful of the game. Hopefully, my next track post is actually for round 2.

Pretty impressive for an iPad mix

Thanks for your feedback. That little beast is quite powerful these days.
I had a listen back to it yesterday and thought it grabs the emotional impact I was looking for.

I liked your mix. I noticed you mentioned the piano - It’s the near piano track that’s a little whacky. But, the phase thing actually makes the piano sound nicer in stereo. It presented an interesting challenge.

Did you find yourself riding the drum levels much during the course of the song? If the compression level is right it seems to stick, but there are some large dynamic differences especially when you get into the angels part.

The backing vocals to me are the challenging part of this mix. Getting them to sound nice, strong and special throughout.

Hey, thanks for listening, and for the feedback.

Yeah the piano gave me stress. I 100% agree that it sounds nice in stereo, but I'm old and strive for mono compatibility .

No, I did not do any riding on the drums, but not that you mention it, I wish I did. Oh well.

I also struggled with the backing vocals. I had a hard time getting them to sit right throughout the song.

But anyway, I've been looking for an excuse to buy a new iPad, so maybe now's the time! I imagine the GUI is probably a bit cumbersome to get used to at first. But I'm sure with enough practice it gets easier.

[scottfitz]

Hey Jeffsoloband!
I just listened to your mix and you've done a lot of things well, a few areas I think my own mix struggled on was tackled very well by yours. However, I think your lead vocal level is doing a few strange things, it seems to come and go when I'm not expecting. I wonder if you can take a look at your compressor type and settings and tell me what you have there?
Cheers

[1ktone]

Cool.

I want to be respectful of the game. Hopefully, my next track post is actually for round 2.

Pretty impressive for an iPad mix

Thanks for your feedback. That little beast is quite powerful these days.
I had a listen back to it yesterday and thought it grabs the emotional impact I was looking for.

I liked your mix. I noticed you mentioned the piano - It’s the near piano track that’s a little whacky. But, the phase thing actually makes the piano sound nicer in stereo. It presented an interesting challenge.

Did you find yourself riding the drum levels much during the course of the song? If the compression level is right it seems to stick, but there are some large dynamic differences especially when you get into the angels part.

The backing vocals to me are the challenging part of this mix. Getting them to sound nice, strong and special throughout.

Hey, thanks for listening, and for the feedback.

Yeah the piano gave me stress. I 100% agree that it sounds nice in stereo, but I'm old and strive for mono compatibility .

No, I did not do any riding on the drums, but not that you mention it, I wish I did. Oh well.

I also struggled with the backing vocals. I had a hard time getting them to sit right throughout the song.

But anyway, I've been looking for an excuse to buy a new iPad, so maybe now's the time! I imagine the GUI is probably a bit cumbersome to get used to at first. But I'm sure with enough practice it gets easier.

Logic is like a shrunk version of the desktop so it can feel a little squishy when you have a lot of tracks. For me, it’s been learning where everything in Logic is hiding. There is a lot of the desktop version included in the iPad version and it’s kind of set up in a similar way. I’ve been searching the manual a lot to find things in the beginning, but now it’s a lot easier. Ideally to mix in this environment it would be handy to be connected to an external audio interface that has good metering on it. To see the master levels when making adjustments would be handy. There are a lot of great apps on the iPad that have found ways to make the smaller display work well. Logic is a bit of a late arrival to the party and with the later model iPads there is seriously enough power to go nuts in there.

[jeffssoloband]

Hey Jeffsoloband!
I just listened to your mix and you've done a lot of things well, a few areas I think my own mix struggled on was tackled very well by yours. However, I think your lead vocal level is doing a few strange things, it seems to come and go when I'm not expecting. I wonder if you can take a look at your compressor type and settings and tell me what you have there?
Cheers

Hi there @scottfitz,

Thanks for listening! For the lead vocal I was lazy and used RVox (Waves). So, basically a super-fast attack with a fairly slow release. It looks like I'm hovering around 3 dB of reduction (too much?). That was bounced, and then I used Vocal Rider (Waves) to even it out. I drew some automation of the volume on the channel to give a boost in some spots, and a dip in other spots. Is there any spot in particular that you feel like you are losing it?

Where did you struggle the most on you mix? Just curious.

Best regards,
Jeff

[scottfitz]

Hey Jeffsoloband!
I just listened to your mix and you've done a lot of things well, a few areas I think my own mix struggled on was tackled very well by yours. However, I think your lead vocal level is doing a few strange things, it seems to come and go when I'm not expecting. I wonder if you can take a look at your compressor type and settings and tell me what you have there?
Cheers

Hi there @scottfitz,

Thanks for listening! For the lead vocal I was lazy and used RVox (Waves). So, basically a super-fast attack with a fairly slow release. It looks like I'm hovering around 3 dB of reduction (too much?). That was bounced, and then I used Vocal Rider (Waves) to even it out. I drew some automation of the volume on the channel to give a boost in some spots, and a dip in other spots. Is there any spot in particular that you feel like you are losing it?

Where did you struggle the most on you mix? Just curious.

Best regards,
Jeff

Hi,
A couple of parts that I went wrong on were the intro, I think I was simply lazy and didn't instinctively know how this should be and it ended up sounding a bit weak. Later in the song the solo section, I was struggling to make it all sound cohesive. To be fair to myself I was running out of time by this point, but generally whenever the music got busy on this track I started to get a bit swamped by the complexity.

Aha I see why your vocals sound the way they do now. Truly there is nothing 'wrong' with any plugin, however I do have a problem with a company or even users claiming that a plugin is 'easy to use' because it only has one or two knobs etc. I would say all plugins are hard to use because the skill of listening to what they are doing and getting that right is a difficult skill to master. So if it has 1 control, still difficult to hear exactly what it's doing and 10 controls still difficult to hear exactly what it's doing. The plugins with one control are even harder to use in my opinion because when they aren't working, there is no way out. You basically need to get lucky in order to have one of these 'easy to use plugins' actually work for you.

There's a few big problems in learning audio that I've spent years screwing around with and one of them is that the forums are full of people who don't know what they are talking about. So if you google RVox and find loads of people saying it's great and easy to use, remember that 1) the first and strongest wave of this information has been caused by payments from the company to get people to say the message and 2) the secondary wave of info is a lot of people who have heard that wave of information and been sucked in by it and 3) a lot of the people on forums honestly have no idea what they are talking about but yet sound just as confident as others.

Specifically on the waves plugin RVox I would say avoid this while you are learning. The reason is that it has fixed attack and release, but not only that, some pretty extreme values fixed in. The 1176 has an attack range of 0.000020 -> 0.000800 seconds (20 to 800 microseconds) so the slowest attack it does is around 1ms. Each section of audio that you want to treat with an 1176 will respond differently to the attack setting and I am mostly finding with the 1176 that for vocals I am choosing attack settings in the slower half of the range and mostly close to the slowest. Similarly for the bass I think 800 microseconds is as fast as you need most of the time and actually too fast a lot of the time as well. Now coming back to the RVox, the issue is as you've pointed out it has effectively INSTANT attack and no knob to adjust. In my opinion you will normally do better with a slower attack than instant because the nature of audio is that you have interesting transient information at the very start of the sounds which the compressor can preserve. On the 1176, the release time is 50ms to 1100ms which is a pretty standard range. RVox using 350ms as a fixed timing is not a bad choice for it to be but I'd say that's on the slow side as soon as the performance becomes lively. I've seen people saying that it's 'good for rap' but my main concern is that if the words are coming quite fast, this compressor is never going to recover. So it has ultra fast at one end and fairly slow at the other end and honestly it's not going to sound great a lot of the time. A good rule to follow when setting vocal compression is to try 3 (or 5) different compressors and listen if any one of them seems to deal with the nature of the audio better than the others. If you try a FET like 1176, an Optical like LA-2A, then a Tube like Fairchild and listen to which seems to deal with the vocal in a more pleasing way. Make a choice based on how the compressor naturally seems to handle the audio and then start to tweak it. Always be prepared to backtrack and choose another compressor as soon as it's shown itself to be failing.

On the Vocal Rider, I would avoid this at all costs unless you are going to take it's output as a starting point only and then adjust it all manually afterwards. It's a great idea for a plugin, but it practically fails nearly every time. It's just not sophisticated enough to deal with vocal dynamics in my opinion. It's trying to make the vocals more even, but do we even want this? the only way to find out is to listen and decide and when I listen to the vocal rider I find it does a lot of very unnatural little tweaks. Possibly you can become good at using this plugin in very specific situations and with a certain restricted use of it's settings. Again I think they market this as something that's 'easy to use' but I repeat, no plugins are easy to use. They are all hard to use and if the vocal needs riding I don't think there is any easy fix for this. You need to go through phrase by phrase and move them all manually. The annoying thing from a user point of view is to have these big seemingly respectable companies lie to you to get your money. Also I think certain large YouTubers eg Warren Huart - who is a lovely man, well they don't have all your best interests at heart either. He'll sit there and wax lyrical about RVox and in doing so make a really nice pretty penny effectively from his 738k admirers/subscribers. What he won't do is tell you what's wrong with RVox BECAUSE THERE'S NO-ONE PAYING HIM TO DO THAT PART.

Anyway, I hope that helps and good luck all

[PistolPete]

I've listened to my mix a ton of times already since I entered it... for some reason this song really sticks to me and each time I listen to it I think of more little "tweaks" and special fx I wish I would have added....

2 things I hate about my mix I noticed after listening on different devices (car, BT headphones, studio cans, studio monitors..etc). And will fix if I make it to round 2.

1. On one of the radio samples in the beginning and during a quieter part later in the song... I think one of my plugins, or automation must be triggering a huge gain swing where I can hear a background static build up, almost like a compressor is overpushing the gain of background noise. In the beginning of the track, it almost works as it kind of sounds like the radio static, but also is very noticible. Definitely wish I would have caught this before I entered my mix.

2. I first mixed the song, then listened to it for about a week and then went back to the mix to fix things I wanted to change. When he was talking about the guns firing, I wanted to tweak the snare to have a very sharp and loud snap, almost like gun shots and then tone it down back for the rest of the mix.. I achieved the snap of the snare I was looking for, but I forgot to automate the sound for just that part and so the snare is overly loud and snappy through the track.Some parts it blends well and isn't noticeable, but others it definitely is sharper and louder than it should be. This would definitely be something I would fix in round 2.

and editing this post because I found 2 more things I wish I did better....

3. I wish I would have positioned the HH and crashes with more wideness and reverb in the stereo field as they need to be slightly more present I think in the mix.

4. I wish I would have added a little more "doubling" to a FX send on the main Vox and automated it to impact parts of the vocals that were more intense.

If anyone would like to listen to my mix and provide feedback. I definitely always appreciate another's trained ears.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/16HB6CY ... drive_link

I've also been curious, what is everyones studio environment they are working in? specifically your monitoring/room situation. I can definitely hear that some people must really have their rooms dialed in as month after month they deliver very consistent sounds. Always have been curious.

I currently have a small bedroom studio, use a 12 year old PC with cubase 10.5 pro, 2 PM5 Fostex monitors that I bought about 20 something years ago and use some Sennheiser HD280 cans to monitor. Cheap Steinberg UR22 interface and Presonus Central station for monitor control. I do have broad spectrum audio "blankets" hung on each wall to minimize some direct interference (and not piss off my neighbors). Just curious what others are working with....

[PistolPete]

[/quote]

On the Vocal Rider, I would avoid this at all costs unless you are going to take it's output as a starting point only and then adjust it all manually afterwards. It's a great idea for a plugin, but it practically fails nearly every time. It's just not sophisticated enough to deal with vocal dynamics in my opinion. It's trying to make the vocals more even, but do we even want this? the only way to find out is to listen and decide and when I listen to the vocal rider I find it does a lot of very unnatural little tweaks. Possibly you can become good at using this plugin in very specific situations and with a certain restricted use of it's settings. Again I think they market this as something that's 'easy to use' but I repeat, no plugins are easy to use. They are all hard to use and if the vocal needs riding I don't think there is any easy fix for this. You need to go through phrase by phrase and move them all manually.
[/quote]

I have a personal love/hate relationship with VocalRider (and Bassrider). I find that it sometimes plays nice and add subtle "movement" to a vocal just enough to help liven it a bit vs a static volume, and adds liveness. Other times I find that it causes complete and unnatural leveling and jumps in gain and causes a lot of headaches on how it reacts with other plugins like analog modeled compressors.

I do find it actually works well though on other instruments such as pianos, picked strings like guitars and basses and similar and instruments with sharp attacks as it helps provide an almost natural pumping effect if set right, and the side chain feature actually is nice too for ducking other like instruments that share the same frequency spectrum.

The Hate part of it, with its erratic behavior, has me really looking into buying a nice control surface so I can get away from mouse based automation and use my ears instead of eyes to ride the audio.... but so far my research into these seems like its mostly personal preference and software based reviews so I may have to just pick one and try it out... definitely would be a huge upgrade to my mixing if I had a fader and some Pots.

Vocal rider I have found actually is quite nice if you do a lot of parallel processing with fx like delays, chorus's, reverbs and even saturation where it can create a subtle movement if placed on the end of the FX chain on a parallel.

I agree that on Main vox it seems to be more detrimental than beneficial most times I use it. I did use it on this months mix on GAZ's main's and not sure if I really like how it acted on the intense vocals at the end of the song.. seemed to almost "top out" and make the vox a bit flat.

[jeffssoloband]

Aha I see why your vocals sound the way they do now.

Haha yeah, I fully admitted my laziness. If it makes you feel better, I got RVox for free as a holiday freebie. And I got Vocal Rider in one of Waves “one time only” sales for pretty cheap.

I fully agree that these plugins are gimmicks. And I also agree that my use of them did not suit my mix.

I really do appreciate, however, your willingness to listen to my attempt at this challenge, and to provide such detailed feedback.

Thanks again!

[Dodgingrain]

I've listened to my mix a ton of times already since I entered it... for some reason this song really sticks to me and each time I listen to it I think of more little "tweaks" and special fx I wish I would have added....

The best way to handle that is to mix fast. If you can mix fast then you have enough time to let the mix sit for a day or a few days between sessions and you'll have more time to hear all those little issues and adjust for them before the mix is due.

[kombainera]

I agree 100% that there is a lot of misinformation on the internet. It's hard to tell when people want to say something useful or just want to sell you something. In my opinion, the right way to do vocals is with automations from the beginning. But not with automations of the feider but with automations of gain. First on larger phrases then tone by tone if necessary. Then automation of the ends of phrases and only then compressor / limiter. Of cource in theory its easy to say it but not so easy to do and its time consuming.