Drums
Basically a complete overhaul of the drum sound: the kicks were rebalanced to be stronger and punchier; the snare was made more beefy by redoing the procesing and adding a little parallel compression/saturation in the mix; the toms were retouched to make them better fit together with the rest of the mix; the hihat was left mostly alone, though I don't really like the overall sound so I kept it pretty low in the mix; the OH in the outro were automated so that the "forest" of cymbals now sounds mostly like the tail of the first cymbal hit before it, I hope I've done you proud Mr. Bellener
I added a different fake room reverb to the drums this time and added a whole drumkit parallel compression bus to help the drums feel a bit more alive and actually played instead of midi programmed;
Bass volume automation was retouched a little;
The electric guitar was touched up a little by adding more high end and a different delay than in last revision, I don't know why I did it, it just felt appropriate to touch it up a bit when I already had the time to deal with everything hahah
so it's a bit louder this time I think, but I hope it still sounds ok and doesn't ruin the vibes too much;
the solo gtr was automated up a bit;
The acoustic guitars were left untouched, though I did reduce that "wow" and "flutter" FX that I finally could hear when I tried bringing it up and then back to where it originally was, so now it's a lot lower (you were right, Mr. Bellener, you aren't crazy after all
I just didn't know what I did could do such a thing enough to be noticable, since I didn't notice it hahah oops
);
I did the same to the Wurlitzer too and left it otherwise untouched;
The strings were left pretty much untouched except when I reduced the reverb wetness on them to 50% they became a bit sharper, more high end was brought back, so now they cut a bit more in the triplets, maybe too much in my opinion but I left them otherwise untouched, just a little more volume automation to bring them down softly in the transitions between sections;
Trumpets untouched;
Vocals:
I didn't do too much to the main vocal sound, just a little reverb automation to make it a bit less powerful and too in your face at times in the mix;
BG vocals were left pretty much sonically all the same, although I redid my reverb bus routing so that each BG vox got their own dedicated reverb sends to make it all bit more managable, so I managed some of their reverbs
Overall, my Round 2 revision definitely sounds better than my Round 3 revision, and that was obviously not the intent. Let's hope the reckoning sinks in with me so I don't repeat this mistake in the future.
The winners podium consists of: