MIX CHALLENGE - MC098 June 2024 - Winners announced

[Arnwyn]

Thanks for the second place And congrats to the other two winners!

I may add a few words I had on my mind while reading your final statement and give back some feedback to you as provider (just in case you consider going through this madness again). First of all I want to say thank you. Providing tracks and spending time on reviewing the mixes keep the mix challenge alive, I cannot honor this enough. But then again why telling us that no mix is good enough for a release (which I highly doubt btw.)? Why not say "thank you" - over and out? Why this lecturing attitude? I even don't want to mention this cringe lengthy (and embarrassing) rant from one of you guys in the first round. I know it's hard work to listen to all this mixes and find good reasons for building a hierarchy. I have gone through this task twice already (and btw.: your comments on my R2 mix don't align well to your comments to the R1 mix, and I almost did not touch it. Consistency in the feedback process is important for the contestants to improve mixing skills). I also honestly think that you're way too much into perfectionism with your track and suspect you may already have lost perspective. That happens to all of us and is also a common issue when artists do mixes of their own music. So why not finish and call it a day and move forward? Just my two cents

Good luck with the release though and thanks again for the efforts!

Peace
- C

Hi,

Thanks for your feedback and for speaking your mind. Apologies if you (or anyone else) found our comments lecturing and/or ranty. It was never our intention to come accross this way. We're not in a big rush to do this again! Although we would be happy to provide tracks for mixing, the judging and feedback was difficult for us. We never usually have any need to discuss our recordings or mixes with anyone else, aside from a few musicians who have joined us on recordings, so we have never had any experience of that side of things and were way out of our comfort zone. When we said we were treating it as a learning experience, we included ourselves in that too. We will take your comments into account, thanks.

I would like to correct one point as we have absolutely not said the mixes are not good enough for release. We didn't participate in the Mix Challenge with a view to getting a mixed track to release, we simply wish to release our own version along with other material we are currently working on.

I agree it is easy to become so wrapped up in your own music that there is never an "end point", as there will always be something to change or improve on. In the end, you just have to finish and live with it, otherwise you would never get anything done.

With regard to consitency of our feedback, the way we did this for the second round was to listen to the first round mixes alongside the second round mixes as we were conscious of keeping our feedback consitent. It was actually good you didn't change much in your particular mix. Adjustments in some mixes in the second round were too pronounced and it changed the feel of the whole track. Our top 3 changed quite significantly from round 1 to round 2.

Something this has highlighted for us is how subjecive this whole process is. There is no good or bad mix, just many different opinions.
Thanks again for your time and your thoughts. Rebecca & Dave.

[O'MIX]

Hello,
Thanks for your feedback, glad to see that my changes have been noticed, some things certainly need to be retouched a little, frankly I thought there would be a 3rd round ... To answer your question about the master bus eq, it can change the balance between instruments a little, the goal here was to improve the portability of the mix on different listening media (mobile to studio monitor, hifi, car, streaming etc ...) Have you changed your mind about the mix because of my changes? Not to mention the balance between instruments what did you think of the overall sound of the whole? I personally listened to it and compared it to other tracks on very good Amphion, Eve Audio and B&W 805 speakers and also in my car ... It sounded very competitive to my ears...
Patrick

[Arnwyn]

Congrats to all competitors that are still in the running for this months challenge! Best of luck to all.

I really wanted to thank @Arnwyn and Dave for their very detailed perspective on how they approached the top 15. You really hit the nail on the head when you said "Normally we would be in the control room with you telling you what we want, so you need to know that we are aware of this."

This challenge is very tough for myself, as I don't play in a rockband or really any instruments for that matter. I mainly was in the rap/hiphop genre's for many many years. In hiphop and with a lot of less experienced artists, I played the role of a recording/mixing/mastering engineer where most artists I worked with really left it up to me to "craft" their sound. I pretty much was playing a pseudo producer role while mixing but having the artist there to provide input was vital to achieve the sound they perceived even if my ideas and methods crafted their vision.

Therfore, with that said, I really appreciate the detail from @Arnwyn and Dave in the "top 15 post" because it really shows me in detail what helped them reach their decisions, the important elements that a musician may notice but someone who doesn't really play instruments may skip over or not pay attention to being outside of the normal genre they prefer. This challenge we don't have much to go off of in terms of artist interaction, so really hearing from the mind of the "judge" of the contest in detail is valuable insight! Thank you! Thank you for your detailed review, and post!!! Many thanks! (I think most of my entries I have a tendency to go for my own vision instead of the artists which I know bites me in the butt a lot).

Also its really cool that even though you provided detailed input to the top 15, you are sharing your listening notes for all submissions. That is incredible!! I haven't seen my notes yet, but I know you have hard work listing critically to all the mix entries and so I definitely wait patiently, but also thankful you are offering notes on our mixes! Many thanks to providing a great song to mix this month and best of luck to all entries!

Hi,
Thanks for this. It is interesting to read about other people's perspectives and experiences. That is very true about bands working with the engineer to record and "craft" the sound. At least, that is what we have done when we have been working with other musicians in the past. We haven't had anyone mix our duo music before, but Dave has recorded with several bands over the years and we have also recorded and mixed other people's music. The bands/musicians have been very much part of the mixing process and it's always been a team effort. Thanks again.

[Arnwyn]

Hello,
Thanks for your feedback, glad to see that my changes have been noticed, some things certainly need to be retouched a little, frankly I thought there would be a 3rd round ... To answer your question about the master bus eq, it can change the balance between instruments a little, the goal here was to improve the portability of the mix on different listening media (mobile to studio monitor, hifi, car, streaming etc ...) Have you changed your mind about the mix because of my changes? Not to mention the balance between instruments what did you think of the overall sound of the whole? I personally listened to it and compared it to other tracks on very good Amphion, Eve Audio and B&W 805 speakers and also in my car ... It sounded very competitive to my ears...
Patrick

Hi Patrick,
Thanks for answering our question about the master bus EQ and for explaining about the portability. We really do like your mix and think the sound on the whole is a good one. We thought the vocals in the humming section especially were very well done and had a great balance and sound. We felt the second mix had lost the "warmth" of the first one and the guitar sounded noticeably thinner. Somehow, having that guitar sounding more present lifted the whole mix in round 1. Your mixes were in the top 5 mixes to our ears (throughout the whole of round 1 and 2) and it really was so close between all the mixes, it was almost an impossible task to choose the top 3. Thank you again for taking the time to mix it.
Dave & Rebecca

[Michael_K]

Wow!! I Ks the Ks did quite well!!

Thank you @Arnwyn for choosing my mix!
Congrats to @Christoph_K and @WrightAudio and all fellow mixers!
Great challenge and great discussion!
My 2c : I think the way the drums and percussion were recorded made it tough to make them sound as an ensemble, instead of separate individual instruments, and glue with the rest of the track. The bass line is great and recorded very well, and so is the rest of the instrumentation. I am guessing the intent of the provider was more of a purist audiophile approach that would be appreciated in quality listening environments with top notch audio systems, as opposed to a more universal approach that will translate well to many systems, even bad or small ones, laptops, phones, etc. I think both approaches have their plusses and minuses. Off course I could be wrong, it would not be the first time!
For the award I choose the IK multimedia license.

Cheers and congrats to everyone!

[Christoph_K]

I‘ll take the MH Channelstrip.

- C

[scottfitz]

Well done all and thanks again to the song providers, I don't want to appear ungrateful for all the hard work that you've done to create this opportunity for us to learn.

But...... (Sorry)

I wanted to say one last thing which concerned me because I know a lot of people are trying hard to learn here myself included. We can all have different approaches and sworn methods but in reality, objectively and truthfully there is nothing inherently wrong with a de-esser. They can very often be used badly and I'm certain that I'm guilty of this, but also I am bad at EQ I am bad at compression, I am bad at saturation and none of this means I should stop those processes either. A de-esser is a multiband compressor set to a high band. We can also use other more modern programs such as soothe, bloom or indeed gullfoss to perform actions akin to a de-esser. We also can use a dynamic EQ, anything you want to try to treat frequencies which come and go at too high a level. But the main point is that we should not use static EQ to treat time dependent features because then our EQ will be acting upon areas which do not want that treatment. A Static EQ curve needs to be used if we have an ever present issue such as a nasty ringing to a snare. Anyway we can debate why things don't work for us or why we prefer to use x,y or z plugins, but there is virtually no plugin which absolutely shouldn't be used and certainly do not stop using a de-esser. Cheers all

[White Punk OD]

But...... (Sorry)

I thought about that but it's not a college that is directly teaching stuff.

I wouldn't agree in theory, but sure there is so much abuse and controversy about de-essing that the client's wish is very legit to leave it out.
If I get a gig, naturally I do what the client wishes for.
Almost every de-esser to me seemed in a way to have an audible footprint.
So what we can do is manual gain automation for the sibilants.

Anecdotally, Phil Tan told the story when he mixed songs for Gwen Stefani, for one song the producer said that no compressors at all must be used throughout the whole production. So he had a lot of ideas to work around that, and the song had an idiosyncratic vibe and became a hit.

[White Punk OD]

...
Great challenge and great discussion!
My 2c : I think the way the drums and percussion were recorded made it tough to make them sound as an ensemble, instead of separate individual instruments, and glue with the rest of the track.

... will translate well to many systems, even bad or small ones, laptops, phones, etc. ...

Yeah, you have to cheat a little bit, ambiences, Haas delays, room simulations, divert attention, and not too much volume.
Like a cat playing "not guilty" after breaking the porcelain. (if familiar with cats hehe)

BTW I thought you got a few snare hits sticking out a bit, eg. when the song switches to the finale harmony vocals.
I'd like to say your mix is one of those I most agree with, though I preferred less effect on the vocals.

I opted for more of a "Pop" sound but with a strong color, and I hope it works on tablets etc.

In my opinion, the "client" did a great job and communicated well.
I would not demand that the feedback must be super consistent when there is a hundred mixes, as in reality, many artists are not very consistent in their opinions of details, while some are at 100 percent like Mozart, every note and sound fully stored in their heads, for instance, Prince and Frank Zappa were said to be like this. At the end of the day, it is a matter of instinct, and when it is released and becomes a hit, then it was alright, no matter what.

[scottfitz]

But...... (Sorry)

I thought about that but it's not a college that is directly teaching stuff.

I wouldn't agree in theory, but sure there is so much abuse and controversy about de-essing that the client's wish is very legit to leave it out.
If I get a gig, naturally I do what the client wishes for.
Almost every de-esser to me seemed in a way to have an audible footprint.
So what we can do is manual gain automation for the sibilants.

Anecdotally, Phil Tan told the story when he mixed songs for Gwen Stefani, for one song the producer said that no compressors at all must be used throughout the whole production. So he had a lot of ideas to work around that, and the song had an idiosyncratic vibe and became a hit.

After a few years it does become a little testing to go around in circles. Are headphones ok to use? do we need a headphone amp? can we use a de-esser? are stock plugins ok or do we need to spend £10,000 on ones which say SSL on them? Should we mix loud or soft, what proportion of the time can we mix loud? Can we put loads on the mixbus or should we have hardly anything on the mixbus? If we do not have decent answers for all the questions then we are totally lost.