MIX CHALLENGE - MC098 June 2024 - Winners announced

[LowlandsWave]

Thanx to the Mix Challenge Staff and the song provider for running another month of this challenge. Very nice song to mix, nice and clean source files.
Balance was the main thing with this song I guess and make it a bit "thicker".

Here is my Mix: LowlandsWave MIX

Drums:
Kick - some SSL 4k sauce with decapitator
Toms - some SSL 4k sauce and a reverb to extend the low-end
Drum Bus - pultec 1p and pultec Meq and some tape saturation


Bass: Bass was split in a low and high bass track
low bass - LA-3a compressed
High Bass - Helix bass sim (woody blue)

Piano and Guitar:
No processing excerpt a send to a shared reverb (seventh heaven)

Lead vocals and BG vocals: De-essing and some Soothe
Vocal bus got some air band from the Maag eq

Bass and Drum send to a bus with a distress
Guitar to a bus with a Fairchild
piano to a bus with a Neve 33609

All reverbs send to a bus with a widener and a vari-mu compressor

Those busses were send to the mix bus with an SSL native bus compressor and some tape saturation

Some fx added, robot echo on "permission to birth" and the last "Robot baby"

[jw_]

Thank you for the tracks and for another round of the mix challenge.
Here's my entry: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zgGGZ4 ... drive_link

The main things to adress for me were stereo image, overall depth and vocal tone (the oft mentioned issues at 2-3khz and the relatively harsh highs and sibilance). I also thought that bass and piano should feel deeper than what I was hearing in the rough; the lowend of the kick sounded a bit disconnected.

And here's what I did:
Drums:
Kick - EQ, compression, distortion, additional early reflections to feel less agressive
Stick/Snare - EQ, compression, parallel distortion+comp to bring out more midrange, early reflections, spring reverb
Hats - EQ, comp, early reflections. I adjusted the pattern in the bridge to half-time because it was a bit too relentless in this particular section, at least to my ears.
Cymbals - 4s bricasti-style verb to make them sit back
Toms - EQ, spring verb
There's an additional room on all the drums, quite low in the mix.

Bass:
Tape Emulation, EQ, comp, subsynth

Guitars:
As per MisterFoxes suggestion (at least, how I read it) I used the guitars as a stereo pair instead of one performance. The orig track got processed with an allpass filter and delayed by 20ms. It obviously does not sound the same as a true double, but I preferred it to what I was getting as opposed to just having the guitar panned against the piano, same as the rough.
Otherwise there's not much going on - tape emulation, cutting mids, some reverb, hard panned delays.

Piano:
panned out left slightly, tape emulation, eq, parallel compression, subsynth so it ties in with the bass. Delay on some parts.

Vocals:
EQ, soothe on 2-3khz, some parallel distortion so the mids match the character of the highs, deessing with clip gain.
Various delays, some stereo some mono. Lexicon plates on the leads, EMT140 on the BGV. Additional Verb on the first BGV hit in the chorusses.

Overall:
Bass, guitars and piano go into a shared room IR. All the elements go into a super long, super dark chamber and another shorter, brighter chamber in different amounts. Piano and Guitars have their widths automated.

[Vanilla Puff]

Feels good to be back on this forum

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lsPdsM ... drive_link
24bit, 44.1 kHz, -16.4 LUFS, -1.7 dBTP

For this track I wanted to do a lively, clean, balanced mix with depth and song provider's considerations in mind.

Drums got a slight treatment with EQ, transient shapers and saturation to poke through, gave extra attention to low end of the kick.
Used a compressor on main vocals for de-essing after saturation.
Doubled bass track to treat low end and high end differently.
Guitars - some saturation, piano EQ.
And that's about it on the automatic/static treatment besides reverbs and delays.
Mostly automation of gain, panning and FX worked wonders for what I wanted to achieve.

[LCM!]

Thanks to the people who make this possible (the provider and MrFox).

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1V_O0Kf ... sp=sharing

Things to consider:
- To get some robotic effect in the voice: I use Tal-Vocoder and ReaTune. In the bridge, the final BGV (just tuning + Argotlunar Granular) and some spots (which the provider pointed out). I hope this tools are within the rules.
- To get rid of the midi feeling on drums: parallel compression.
- To emphasize the importance of the bass: sent to another track with a fattener delay.
- To let the dynamics flow: gentle compression. And automation to achieve a calmer bridge and more cohesion between the lead voice and the BGV.
I hope you enjoy.

[scottfitz]

Hi all,
Happy 10th Anniversary to the Mix Challenge, it's unbelievable that it's been going for that long! Thanks for this month's competition to Arnwyn and to Mister Fox for hosting, it's been a lot of fun. Here's the link for my entry:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dLIDK5 ... sp=sharing

Listening to everyone's mixes and the demo mix, I found myself thinking that the demo mix had something that was being lost a lot of the time. It's to do with this airy vocal take which I think is very nice indeed. I don't really agree that it's got a problem with it, the only question is how to get the track to work with it when all three instruments are coming together in quite a muddy narrow range, not offering it much support. So i've tried to get the bass a bit lower, the piano is given some EQ to get it to reach out towards the vocal, the acoustic is made fairly thin and used as a back up instrument. Hopefully the artist will like the middle section

Specific notes on the treatment of the fretless bass.

Acon digital denoise 2
Eden Hybrid Bass Amp - set to add some lows and get away from the somewhat thin DI sound
SSL 9000J - just for the tone
Smart EQ4 - acts to cut a lot of 400Hz
hpf @30Hz
Cenozoix compressor, vintage tube type, attack 12ms, release 160ms, doing around 4dB GR max
LA-2A Silver doing another 2dB max
FabFilter MB to sidechain the kick

Cheers all and enjoy your mixing!
As usual I can give more info on the specifics of my mix if anyone wishes to know

[VasDim]

Hi all,
this is my attempt to mix:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/19xu0I_ ... p=drivesdk

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

AUX Effect;
- Waves TrueVerb;
- Waves SuperTap;

Good luck to all.
VasDim

[jakeh83]

Here's my submission, i really liked this track, i redid the drums with superior drummer, very little processing apart from the vocals, struggled a bit with the sibilant and vocal harshness but think i got a decent balance, i added so fx on parts of vocals described in the notes albeit subtly, https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/zrrjmsh3 ... yliaj&dl=0

[Eclipse]

Hi all!

Here is my entry:
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/mcag4w7k ... x8hio&dl=0

Basically, all of the tracks contain the Lindell Neve 80 channel strip from Plugin Alliance. Toms and crashes are grouped together. Most of the EQing, saturation, and slight compression are from this plugin.

The vocal additionally has UAD Fairchild simulation, some additional EQing, and de-essing. The main vocal also has an additional clean compressor which is triggered when additional vocals are singing to lower the volume.

The bass guitar has an additional, slightly faster compressor and some harmonics enhancer around 48 Hz.

Toms have a fast comp on the bus to make them more percussive, and a limiter to avoid high spikes.

All of the tracks are sent to the first impulse reverb. This is for a combined room, breath, space, etc.
All of the tracks, except vocals, are sent to a second impulse reverb. This one is for more artistic purposes. The vocals have their own impulse reverb, nearly identical to the second reverb, but slightly longer.

The piano and guitar have some dissonances around 1 kHz, so it was taken out by narrow EQing.

There is also additional EQ on the group of percussion and piano instruments, mostly for the vocals to be more upfront.

Good luck

[Necaster]

Hi all.
Many thanks for giving another chance to be a part of a great challenge! Hope, this time I put my feet into the right shoes and did not make a name format/bitrate/loudness error.
Here’s my entry: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gj-jpP ... share_link
Did not try to make the song sound robotic or something though it’s naturally tempting.
Drums: just regular compression/EQ/pan. The latter is kind of reversed – panned from the listener point, not the player point. Extra multi-band compression for toms to get rid of boxiness. Reverb to taste (my taste, of course, YMMV).
Bass: again, compression and EQ, nothing fancy.
Guitars: some compression/EQ and reverb. Tried to make them airy and expressive. Some volume automation.
Lead vocal: usual EQ, slight compression, de-essing, room and very gentle delay.
Back vocal group 1: same as lead vox, different EQ.
Back vocal group 2: same settings as Group 1 plus phaser/modulation. This is the only part that sounds more robotic than human.
Applied some track automation here and there (volume, FX depth etc.). Very gentle compression (TheGlue in this case) and tape emulation on the main bus.

[maxovrdrive]

Thank you to our song provider, @Arnwyn, for providing us with the opportunity to mix the track. Thank you, @Mister Fox, for keeping things together. Much appreciated.

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

VOX
- each vocal type was grouped and processed there, except for the Lead Vocals which were eq'd for sibilance and clarity
- each vocal group had compression, eq, and soothe2 to control harshness
- lead vocals had a 480 verb while backups had a room

PIANO and GUITAR
- piano and guitar were grouped and had LA-3A for glue, practically no compression
- both had identical processing: eq, compression, saturation; chamber for the piano, spring for the guitar

BASS
- eq, compression, and sub-harmonic synthesizer

DRUMS
- these were grouped and processed: compressor, room, eq
- drums also had a parallel compression channel where individual tracks were sent
- individual elements had eq for either hi-pass or cleaning up resonances
- toms were grouped and compressed
- overheads were grouped and processed

MASTER
- eq, compression, saturation, limiting