MIX CHALLENGE - MC094 October 2023 - Winners announced

[SDB_12]

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/1lwl5i3y ... sfqok&dl=0

Hey!

Thanks for the awesome track! I had a ton of fun mixing and playing with this throughout the month.

Earlier in the month, I mixed this on my console using lots of outboard, then recently decided to do an ITB mix. The ITB mix won! So I’m posting it To be fair, I spent more time on the ITB mix, where as the analog mix was done really quickly.

Since Salt recently came out from Acustica Audio, I wanted to play with it on this mix a bit. The biggest challenge was getting the drums to sit and not be so piercing (snare was a bit sharp/spikey).

Drums:
API Vision Channel, SPL Transient Designer, Occasional L1 or Fire the clip for transient control, AMS verb, Acustica Salt (Kick, Sn Top)

Bass:
Waves F6, L1, El Rey, 1176, Acustica Salt, Dim D

Guitars:
Lots of Mod Delay (Avid) to help widen and make room for it all to fit and sound cohesive. Then Salt into CLA 3A’s

Synths:
BB Kit N73, Mod Delay, Metric Halo CS3

LV:
Vocal Rider, Soothe, SSL X-EQ (then into analog chain). I printed it through a Heritage Audio 1081 clone EQ/Pre, Audioscape Bluestripe 1176, Neve 542, and Audio Scape Pultec. Back in Pro Tools, put on the McDSP 404 and Salt, with McDSP deEsser.

BV’s:
Bx 4000 Channel strip into the new Plugin Alliance Vac Attack (this thing is awesome!) Then some lofi and deEssing.

Effects:
I used some Echo boy, Dimension D/Microshift, some EP34 echo, and a Capital Chamber verb.

This all goes into a multibus system I have setup that emulates summing using some IR packs I have, then into the mixbus:

Mixbus:
Neve 33609 (UAD).

Thanks all!

[dstra]

Hi everyone,

Thanks a lot to BenjiRage for providing the song. I enjoyed mixing it. Here you can find the result:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1bP4nkt ... sp=sharing

Tracks
lead vocals: eq, dynamic eq (tame some low mids), compressor, dynamic eq (used as desser), reverb
backing vocals: -
guitars: eq
synths: eq, stereo widener (only synth 2), reverb
bass: eq, compressor
kick: eq, multiband compressor, single band compressor, widener, reverb
snare: polarity inverter, eq, compressor
toms: eq, compressor, widener
OHs cyms: eq, compressor, reverb
OHs shells: eq
room shells: eq, delay

Buses
backing vocals bus: eq, compressor, reverb
guitars bus: compressor, reverb
bass bus: multiband compressor, reverb, sidechained dynamic eq (controlled by kick --> ducking low frequencies)
main bus: compressor ("glue")

Tools
DAW: Ardour (Linux)
plugin bundles: Calf, LSP, Zam and others

Hope you enjoy it!

[IbanezoO]

Hi all,

once again thanks for providing such a great track!

It's the first mix I've done in my new basement "studio" so I'm still getting used to the room, to the speakers and how this all translates.

file: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1a37M5X ... sp=sharing

Drums: nothing special. Added lows and highs for the kick and removed low-mids. SSL type compression. Controlling the snare was a bit more tricky. I removed some resonance frequencies and caught some peaks with a clipper. Added some body and highs with Slate FG-S and controlled dynamics with FG-Dynamics. Toms were processed similar to the kick. I busses the OH tracks, cymbals became a bit harsh so I used a de-esser to tame that. The room tracks got additional reverb and were compressed heavily + high- and lowpass filters. Drum bus got TDR Kotelnikov with just around 1,5db GR + a parallel bus that got smashed and blended in.

Bass: Bass amp track got Distortion on it, DI just EQ. Bussed them together and compressed the transients with an 1176 black face and a LA2A to get consistent levels.

Guitars: Everything is panned hard L/R. Just tried to get a good balance between all the stereo pairs. Bussed them together and added some top end with an SSL high shelf EQ into an LA2A.

Synths: I don't really think this track was neccessary so I just tried to find a good balance and added some presence and top end just to get a little sizzle out of it in the mix.

Lead Vox: Used SSL Vocal Strip for De-Plosing as the track got several hard Ps. De-essed it, saturated it by using a Neve 1073 preamp and added a little top end and a high pass filter. For the pre-chorus I added a radio effect. Compressions through 1176 black face + LA2A.

Background Vox: Tried to get a good balance and treated them similar as the lead vox on a BVox bus.

FX: 1/8th stereo delay + 1/4th mono delay + plate reverb for vocals, plate reverb for snare top only.

Mixbus: little EQ moves to remove some 200 and 400hz. SSL bus compressor with 2,5db GR into a limiter that is actually doing nothing.

I hope you like it!

[FromAtoZMix]

Hi there,

Link - https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WRmFeN ... share_link

Quick description what has been done. I like drums to make prominent, so I did it that way. Nothing special with GTR, panning EQ, and freq match thru entire mix, little automation as well. I did not want to change tonality of anything within the mix, just a little rebalance frequency and match to the Vocal. Mix is very dense I focus mainly on finding space for each instrument, EQ, Panning and HAAS FX in some cases. Classic SSL on the 2bus plus a little limiting to catch the peaks, that is it. Cheers.

[Piranha]

All eq tasks are done with the Lindell 20 channel strip for broad strokes (after compression) and MDynamicEq, mostly before compression

DRUMS
Kick: the usual low-mids cleaning, a bit of compression with the Neve emulation in the Melda MTurbCompressor
Snare: high-passing the snare bottom to leave the top mike low peak around 200hz. Some resonances cleaning in the low-mids area. Compressed with an MC77 emulation and saturated with Acustica Fire Neve emulation. Some plate reverb too.
Toms: the usual low-mids thing and Neve comp in punch setting.
Cymbals: some eq cleanings and Smooth Operator to smoothen the high frequencies.
Overheads with drums and room mikes where mostly compressed.
Two parallel busses, one with Waves dbx-160 and one with Devil-loc, get sends from kick, snare and toms.
Compression, tape saturation and clipping on drum bus

BASS
DI where used to get a fat low end, compressed with Reaper's 1175. Amp mixed to taste

GUITARS
Mostly eq to get the right balance. The direct guitars where processed with a cab IR.

KEYS
Big lows and highs filtering

VOCALS
Two stages compression for both lead and backing vocals. Delay and reverb to taste.

My mix

[trackerjack]

Hi all,

massive thanks to the Song Provider, Ben, the band, as well as Mister Fox for this opportunity.

Link: https://drive.proton.me/urls/S9NB5HM77G#015Fy9tnFQs6

This has been a lot of fun, I hope that comes across in my attempt.
I should really correct my earlier statement, this isn't a good song. It's a fantastic song.
And that's from somebody who isn't a massive Punk Rock fan. Kudos.

I'd go as far as to say that between all the references you mentioned, this song is actually my favourite, by a long shot. You've really got something here, imo. Great performance by all, the recordings are very very good.

I will add some documentation very soon, too, tried to make the old deadline despite the extension though.
Enough with the procrastination.

Have a nice day / evening / night, and good luck everyone!


Edit: sorry for the late addition... this week has been pretty crazy. Here's the documentation:


A decent amount of time was spent on prep work like sorting, grouping, trimming, clip-gaining, tapering, etc. in a separate session, before digging in to the creative side.

Dealing with the guitars has been the most challenging aspect for me.
I tried EQ, positioning and a bit of modulation at times to try and make sense of it all.
All guitars are bussed into a Waves SSL with up to 4dB reduction at 4:1, .1 attack, .1 release, into a TDR Nova.

Lead vocals went through MJUC (mk1) in Limiter mode, fastest timing and a reasonable amount of drive.
Into Pro-Q3, rolling off some of the low lows, little dip at 114 Hz, slight upward compression in the mid and high ranges. A short delay mixed in using ReaDelay. A longer vocal delay with modulation in spots that felt like having some.

Backing vocals are each grouped separately, getting their own variant of ReaEQ or Pro-Q3, and MJUC treatment.

Bass guitar, the amp low end is rolled off, the DI is untreated. A little slap back using ReaDelay on the amp track. They're bussed into a Pro-Q3 in a pseudo-multiband setup, followed by the JS 1175 compressor in parallel, into a Pro-C2 for level control.

Drums are bussed into MJUC (mk3) in parallel (60% wet). Slow attack, fast recovery.
Cymbal Overheads going through SDRR2, L1 Limiter to catch the wildest peaks, and J37.
Kick Drum: SSL E-Channel (EQ>DYN), side-chained Pro-C2, into Pro-Q3 for final shaping.
Snare Drum: Top and bottom EQ'd separately using ReaEQ, bussed into E-Channel, followed by Pro-C2.
Valhalla VintageVerb 80's plate as a Snare Verb.
Toms: ReaEQ on each, bussed into Klanghelm DC1A.
Room is blended in unprocessed.

Synth 1 is high-passed, dipped around 1.2k, boosted at 6.3k, via Valhalla Space Modulator, into an Auto-Pan.
Synth 2 has similar EQing as well as an instance of MondoMod.

Moderate amounts of automation to round things off and help the transitions.

Mixed in Reaper 6.


Cheers,
Tom

[gonzacarmele]

Hi guys!

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

Fun song to mix, great production. There were a couple of noises, some clipping in a few places and also some popping going on in the vocals. I took care of that, as I were preparing everything to mix. The bass was challenging, I've inverted polarity. On drums I've aligned everything manually.

I've heard bunch of other mixes that are posted, they are all very good!

On thing that I've done very much in this mix is dynamics processing, I've used plenty of C4 compressor in order to add bright but control the energy in the high frequency range.

On the mix bus I've used the Waves SSL compressor. On the individual buses UAD API 2500 for the drums, guitars are filtered and heavily compressed, plus I've used a Sansamp driver to get harmonics out.

Hope you like it! Thanks in advance for the great opportunity to mix this great song.

Best!

[jinjer93]

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

I barely made the deadline, but it was a blast!

Here's a rundown of what I did:

Mixbus from the start:
Slate VMR Buss 4kE mode at 10 and 2, into the FG-Red

I gain stage to where the mix bus is doing 2-3db GR from the get go, so my peak is around -6db to -1db usually.

Drums:
SSL Channel and Overloud Gem TAPEDESK. Used the Tele LA-2A on snare samples, and a Puig on overhead buss.

Bass:
Only used the 1176 into the Tele LA-2A and used Studio One's Redlight distortion to filter out the mids, distort and mixed at about 9%. Awesome bass tones.

Guitars:
A looooot. Tapedesk on everything, a lot of SSL Channel, and some Mixhub for M/S EQ, and a bluey 76 on a couple of the peaky ones. The solo had CLA Epic on it, but mangled them with some Ampire from Studio One just to get bigger tones.

Vocals:
Saturn, Baby Audio's smooth operator and Taip, 1176 on all of them and SSL Channel and bussed them together through a PuigChild with 1db GR unlinked stereo. Did a double slap with repeater and had it pretty highly mixed, did the yells the same, and left the harmony cleanish with the main.

Keys: SSL Channel at stun on the high end and slammed with the Tele LA-2A

Used a lot of the tape as compression, it was mostly samples, distorted guitar so I didn't wanna shrink the sound much.
Also added my own samples to blend with the OG and added a tambourine and a few reverse effects for impacts.

[Christoph_K]

Since Salt recently came out from Acustica Audio, I wanted to play with it on this mix a bit.

This thing is freaking amazing

[m_tree]

This was fun to mix! Thanks to the songprovider and Mister Fox for making this possible.
I downloaded the package a few days ago and kept in mind to not overthink my mix.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/j3h8ev1x ... xhofc&dl=0

Drums
- volume automation of the cymbals (I'm missing some hi-hat here due to the lack of an hi-hat mic and lack of hi-hat spill on the snare top. Recording the drums and cymbals separately is an interesting approach and fits the goal here anyway.)
- tamed the sharpness of the cymbals with EQ and transient designer
- glued the shell and cymbal OHs together on a bus with tape emulation ... cymbals are panned only 50%
- distorted the room heavily
- just some EQ and gate adjustments on the drumtracks ... no transient designer used
- added parallel compression tracks with different attack times and EQ for the kick, snare and toms
- added different plate reverbs for the kick, snare, toms and cymbals ... made the snare little bit wider with parallel delayed tracks
- drumbus: softclipping -> EQ -> compression -> EQ
- volume automation of the drumbus to enhance some fills and parts

Bass
- used the Amp track only [my fault - didn't read the description properly due to a little hurry ... I'll mix the DI in for a possible R2 mix]
- splitted with linear-phase EQ at the lower mids to control the presence with a limiter
- added some lowend with Waves LoAir (without the actual LowAir)
- compressed together on a bustrack
- volume automation

Guitars
- all guitars are panned hard left or right (to leave some space for the vocals) and organized on several busses ... there's no interaction between left and right in terms of compression
- all in all they're fairly dry ... just added EQed slap delays on the 2nd guitars (Ash and Tom)
- volume automation to create space for the additional guitartracks and built the 'drama' of the song

Vocals
- all vocal tracks are initially limited (just the highest peaks)
- lead vocal FX-chain: blue 1176 compression, slight de-essing, slight LA2A compression, EQ (SSL 4000-E) ... just added an EQed slap delay (which is further sent to a haas delay, panned in different directions)
- the backing vocals (panned 25, 50 and 75%) are treated on three folders just with SSL 4000-E EQ (very high HP on Jonnys vocals due to the pops) and (post-EQ) compression followed by de-essing ... the busses are sent with different volumes to a long plate reverb

Synths
- just compression, some volume and EQ adjustments there

Masterbus
- my usual compression, mastertape and EQ (subtle adjustments)
- slight volume automation


Greetings from a fellow drummer