MIX CHALLENGE - MC098 June 2024 - Winners announced

[zed999]

The most difficult thing to judge in headphones is the level of sharp transients but yes for me there was too much highs and boosting low mids rounded off the sound for this instrumentally sparse mix and listening via monitors from the next room at a volume where only the louder elements are heard if the mix is unbalanced (I do that making coffee in the kitchen). Even pros wander around listening.

You can also add some lab-pink-noise to the mixbus and turn down volume. The instrument that is too loud sticks out the same way.

Meanwhile I listened to your mix, just personal opinion,
overall balances are good and reasonable for this music,
guitar and choir vocals sound great, lead vocals very good work but might afford a bit more lows,
piano is a bit soft but not extremely missed here, sound is beautiful anyway,
(I did something similar in preferring the guitar)
drums sound basically great with good reverbs, but for me the stick sound actually might become louder, and the reverbs in some parts have a long tail that creates some impression of loneliness, which may be an artistic choice, I just think that in a sparse mix such a thing quickly can become overweight,
(so I tried not to get caught with effects that are not deliberately front-end and carrying like I did to the outro choir),
and finally a little remark, top end with hihats, cymbals, vocal sibilance etc. is a little bit sharp around 8-10k, and I guess this comes already from the source files. It might be seductive to boost highs, when we attenuate the stick!
So what I did for the top end, just to compare for the readers, I used the 354 3-band comp on the brass samples, multiple but subtle lowpassing at different points, and for the vocals the WARBLE (14.4 hi cut which actually does something quite complex beyond that number) and the dual de-esser.

Thanks for your comments. My excuse for the 8-10KHz is that I'm stone deaf above around 8KHz and don't hear enough from 6KHz so have to rely on visual. I never boost those high frequencies but failed to cut the hi-hats particularly, they slipped through the net. I'll have to get my son to listen in future to ensure I'm not making anyone's ears bleed!

Generally for this kind of instrumentation I aim to make each instrument sound the right size for what it is. daniel dettwiler has some great youtube videos explaining his philosophy on this. I really like his mixes, he's good at that. Don't be fooled by his young looks either - he looks 30 but he's actually 50

[BenjiRage]

Thanks for your comments. My excuse for the 8-10KHz is that I'm stone deaf above around 8KHz and don't hear enough from 6KHz so have to rely on visual. I never boost those high frequencies but failed to cut the hi-hats particularly, they slipped through the net. I'll have to get my son to listen in future to ensure I'm not making anyone's ears bleed!

Wow that's quite a big loss, it's great though that you're able to keep going with mixing and still doing it to a good standard. I'm 39 (almost) and my upper hearing limit has dropped to around 14kHz when listening at a moderate level; partly age related, partly due to not using adequate hearing protection in my teenage years.

[White Punk OD]

to all (except perhaps youth), try the 20 bucks JBL ear plugs from the cell phone drugstore.
they have super even and brilliant sound, with some high boost. still need something different for bass monitoring.
but they have some bass, and you can predict gadget performance, like the tablets.

[zed999]

Thanks for your comments. My excuse for the 8-10KHz is that I'm stone deaf above around 8KHz and don't hear enough from 6KHz so have to rely on visual. I never boost those high frequencies but failed to cut the hi-hats particularly, they slipped through the net. I'll have to get my son to listen in future to ensure I'm not making anyone's ears bleed!

Wow that's quite a big loss, it's great though that you're able to keep going with mixing and still doing it to a good standard. I'm 39 (almost) and my upper hearing limit has dropped to around 14kHz when listening at a moderate level; partly age related, partly due to not using adequate hearing protection in my teenage years.

I'm 64, I have tinnitus, hyperacusis and that loss - that's my good ear! My bad ear can't really hear much above 5KHz and starts tailing off at around 1.5KHz. I'm partly to blame, I ran a one man classic vehicle restoration business for fun 8 years when I was aiming to semi-retire and my hearing protection was inadequate, but the tinnitus and hyperacusis happened overnight. That was so bad to begin with I didn't listen to music for 10 years at all, it hurt! My brain seems to have adjusted somewhat over those years and it no longer hurts but does sound a little distorted which is a problem.

The best thing I did was buy decent headphones. I thought long and hard about that. Would it be a waste of money considering my hearing problems or did I need all the help I could get? My problems are magnified by the Beyerdynamic sound, Sennheisers are more comfortable sounding but in the end Neumann NDH30 were perfect for me. Wonderful headphones, not hyped, plenty bass extension and crystal clear. When I got these I started to actually enjoy mixing again.

I'll never stop, I love music. Gregory from Kush has a good attitude to hearing loss which centres around "I don't like high frequencies anyway, who needs to hear anything above 10KHz, it adds nothing". He has a trusted friend to last minute check he's not sizzling anyone's ears, his mixes are lush.

Other advice that applies to everyone is hit the stop button, we don't get the tape rewind breaks these days - our brains adjust to make what we hear sound like we want it to even when it doesn't. This is HUGE. Thinking about what plugin to use? Hit stop. Thinking about anything, hit stop. The most important thing about mixing is being fresh. If you're mixing for an hour I'd recommend not listening at all for half of that.

While I'm on a roll - volume. Mix quietly 95% of the time (99% really but I'm sure you readers won't believe or want to do that). I can chat without raising my voice at all and remember I'm so deaf I gave up going out years ago because I couldn't hear what anyone was saying. Loudness fools you into thinking your balance is ok. Check loud for sure but mix quiet. The NDH30 are fantastic for that.

[elements]

Bummer about the hearing. I spent my twenties in very loud band rooms and fortunately made it out reasonably unscathed. My ears do get tired though and I need to be mindful about volumes. It can take a few days to recover if I’ve been hitting them hard. I always wear protection when working with loud motors.

I was thinking about the rim shot volume question a little more and I wonder if it would have made any difference to anyone’s perspective about how it should sound if it was called something different?

[Mellow Browne]

Anyone care to comment on dealing with the stick hit?
On many, perhaps the majority of the uploads I've listened to, it sounds very, very separate not just to the kit but to the entire track, like someone is in the room with me tapping on something.

It is simply too loud in the majority of the mixes.
You want to mix it lower than the snare, because otherwise there's no volume difference between a stick it and a snare hit, which is weird.
Stick hits are background sounds, not main sounds.

Who said that a stick hit cannot be the main element in a groove? Of course you can play the cross stick louder than the snare hit. You can play with high dynamics and change the whole perspective of a groove if you bring certain elements to the front and others to the back.
I hear the snare hits more as ghost notes and therefore they are softer, including the tom hits. Listen to jazz or Bossa nova, you can hear this happens very often. In jazz music the kick drum is often more "tapped" and really shy compared to the rest of the kit, sometimes it is even hard to hear the kick.

Some grooves really only come to life IF you have good a loudness balance between each element. Hip Hop grooves on a drum kit often "need" a lower volume of the hihat because you "want" to emphasise more the kick and snare/rimshot/cross stick. Rock or metal e.g. often have a loud (open) hihat. As a beginner, I struggle myself a lot with this and I need more practice in order to be able to change the perspective of a groove. Playing a hard snare hit and a soft cymbal hit at the same time is pretty tough.

The loudness balance of a drum kit depends pretty much of the groove and the genre.

I hope this helps to get another perspective to the topic.

[zed999]

Bummer about the hearing. I spent my twenties in very loud band rooms and fortunately made it out reasonably unscathed. My ears do get tired though and I need to be mindful about volumes. It can take a few days to recover if I’ve been hitting them hard. I always wear protection when working with loud motors.

I was thinking about the rim shot volume question a little more and I wonder if it would have made any difference to anyone’s perspective about how it should sound if it was called something different?

Grinding and hammering for me rather than motors - panel work. Hammering steel is bad, you need very good ear protection for that.
Ref you needing days to recover from loud mixing I'm quite shocked you would do that to your ears. How loud are you mixing? Do you have a dB meter?

The stick (as it was labelled) or rimshot. I don't think it's naming made any difference, it was what it was - a very short sharp sound without much body. I'm surprised to read how many folk boosted it's highs, I thought it had too much already, I wanted something a little more earthy if that makes sense. My energies went into taming it, stopping it cutting through the mix so much.

[zed999]

I often wonder why so little chat on this forum. Are we worried we'll bring unwanted attention to our mixes before the judging?
The way I see it is we're here to learn and without discussion how will we do that? Maybe most are too busy with your lives to give it much time?
This period of judging seems ideal and it's always been encouraged by Mister Fox. I have faith that the song providers are not swayed at all by this discussion, they have a LOT of mixes to assess without being so side-tracked by this discussion. If it was me I wouldn't even look on here, way to busy listening to all the mixes.

Next post - resonances.

[zed999]

Resonances:

This particular mix challenge would seem a good time to discuss this as the song providers highlighted this problem they have with the vocals. I think it's the mic but that's for another day.

What approaches are available?

Hunt with a steep narrow eq band and cut?

Do the same with a dynamic eq like Nova?

Use an automatic thing like Soothe?

The first two options IMO you really need to hear it before you start looking for it.
The auto thing I personally do not like so much for such a strong resonance because in order to deal with one resonance "enough" they also hack into a lot of frequencies that I'd prefer to leave untouched.

Recently a new plugin was released by WA Productions - Deres. This a manual resonance hunter, it's cheap, it's excellent IMO.
So, here's a challenge for anyone interested:
Get the demo, loop your entire mix on a long "Baby" as highlighted by the song provider, Deres last plug on your mixbus for this challenge, look for a strong resonance close to 2.5KHz (mind your ears). Bypass the plugin and you'll still hear it now that your brain has been focussed on it. More than just hearing it, it will be impossible not to. If you don't you got it by whatever means you employed but be ready to be surprised. I have no affiliation or otherwise, I just think this plugin is so good I bought it in about 2 minutes. It's as if the plugin added the resonance, once heard you can't unhear it, but it's bypassed so that can't be.
Here's a link to encourage you to try this challenge. It's on sale for the next 16 days so no massive rush - $9.90, bargain of the year IMO.
https://www.waproduction.com/plugins/view/deres

Happy hunting.

[BenjiRage]

The loudness balance of a drum kit depends pretty much of the groove and the genre.

This!