MIX CHALLENGE - MC099 August 2024 - Mix Round 2 in evaluation

[wkanegis]

Hi guys! As usual, I had fun working on this one. Thanks to LosTimpanis for providing!

I drew on the bass sound in the demo mix for inspiration on the eq for the bass, making sure to maintain some energy around 800 hz.

As for the acoustic guitar, I did a narrow dip around 1000 hz, which seemed to make space for both the bass's midrange energy and the vocal, with a wider, gentler boost aroun 700 hz and 5.5 khz, which sounded nice to me.

For me one of the challenges on this track was the dynamic range of the drums, with some notes quieter than I would want, and others louds. I used volume automation to handle it in large part.

I really liked the trumpets and I found that by dropping the low mids, using some distortion from blood overdrive, and boosting the high mids and highs a bit t hey sounded brighter, a bit more brilliant, which was more satisfying to me than a murky/midrangy sound.

I did a small amount of slapback delay on the vocal, and it sounded smoother, so I kept it. A bit of compression and multiband compression on it to keep it consistent and present. I applied distortion to the snare and kick, with all pass filters from love philter to fatten the bass of the kick a bit (I can talk about this trick more if anyone is interested). Since the snare was coming through on multiple tracks, half the battle was balancing the elements of it to where it sounded satisfying.

As for reverb, a little bit of 'reflex free reverb' goes a long way.

Hope you like it. Here is my mix: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Qcfx14 ... drive_link

[Mork]

Hey!

Super catchy tune!

We are moving to a new home at the moment, so my setup is torn apart. I really wanted to participate, therefore this was entirely mixed in ( the horrible) Auria Pro on my iPad, monitoring on DT880 through my Fireface. I don’t have any plugins on iOS, so only the onboard PSP Channelstrip and Bus compressor was used. A big problem is the lack of a de-esser in Auria. For that I routed the vocal to a subgroup and used set up the bus compressor as very basic de-esser. It’s not quite enough but helped a little and is all I could came up with.
The rest is balancing, basic eq, compression, saturation (on/off), and a few efx. Verb (which doesn’t even come with pre-delay), delay, chorus, flanger, ping-pong). The „more effected“ vocal is split from the main track and send through flanger and more ping-pong.

Very fun challenge to be so limited. The good recordings helped a lot, of course

The only thing that happened in Reaper was a little loudness adjustment to meet the specs. Brought the mix up with Elevate which is barely tickling some peaks and basically doing nothing. Better safe than sorry

https://icedrive.net/s/t63vvBW6D4Ba9GzyTZBGCx4jaV1B
(Press preview for preview, download for download)



PS: Tried to attach screenshots of the Vocal strip and "de-esser", but couldn't figure out how and don't have time to fiddle around at the moment.

[alavault]

Hello!
Mix: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1I6L-yr ... drive_link
Drums: EQ, comp + parallel compression
Processed the reverb channel to sound like a snare in a room to add width
Bass: EQ, comp, saturation + parallel compression. Chorus to widen it.
Guitar: saturation to bring it forward.
Auxiliary percussion: comp and panning
Piano, trumpet and marimba: mostly compression and saturation. Sent to a longer reverb for space.
Vocal: parallel saturation and compression to bring low-level details. Tried LA2 into 1176 instead of the usual opposite: found it gives a more consistent sound but less in front. Added a vocal throw on the end of phrases during chorus.

Possibly more edits to the description later.

[DimitrisPalantzas]

Hello, here is my version:


https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HSHOKf ... drive_link


Acoustic Guitar: Highs Boost
Bass: EQ to make it much heavier
Kick: Highpass at 49 Hz, boosted highs a lot
Snare: Highs boost, Comp, Amp, Short Reverb
Vocals: Subtle stereo chorus, highs and low mid boost, Comp, Reverb
Marimba (group): Reverb, low pass 2.5K, comp, mono
''Guiro'' is slightly panned left

The rest of the tracks only have volume adjustments.

[cpsmusic]

MC099 Write-up
==============

Hi Everyone,

Here's my entry for Mix Challenge 099.

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

Thanks to the song provider and to the challenge organisers.

As with my previous Mix Challenge notes I thought that rather than describe channel-by-channel the plug-ins I used, it would be more interesting to talk about some general aspects of the mix that others might find useful.

Firstly, in this mix I learned an important lesson about working with stereo files. In the supplied files, the piano and brass are both stereo. To create space in the mix I thought it would be good to pan each one to a different side of the stereo field. To do this I initially used the built-in pan controls in Studio One. One source was panned C-100%L and the other C-100%R. All good, except that after a while I noticed that both sounded a bit "phasey". After a bit of digging I realised that to reduce the width of stereo files, Studio One was sending some of the right channel to the left channel and vice-versa. This works ok for amplitude-based stereo but if there's a time-delay involved then you start to get phase cancellation which will vary according to how narrow the stereo image is made. Usually that's not a good thing! A better way to do this sort of panning is to find a plug-in that allows you to reduce the level of one channel - a free one being Venn Audio's Free Pan. Bouncing the stereo file to mono will also have the same phase problem so an alternative is to use only one channel of the stereo pair. Lesson learned!

Secondly, I've recently been digging in to EDM mixing and found that there are some different approaches used for the various electronic genres. One in particular that caught my eye is Baphometrix's "Clip To Zero" method. This is described in great detail online and is definitely worth a read. For this mix I wanted to see whether this approach would work for something outside EDM. The method basically involves using clipping for transient sources at multiple points in the processing chain (individual channels, buses, master, returns) as opposed to trying to do it all on the mix or master bus. The actual method uses 0dB as the maximum upper limit to which "foundation" tracks are set. Without going into too much detail, I found that this works pretty well for transient sources (drums, percussion) and that the "0dB" upper limit doesn't need to be adhered to - my mix was more like a "Clip To -6". One downside of this method though is that if you still want to have some dynamic changes in the mix (e.g. via automation) then the downstream clipping level on buses has to be taken into consideration, especially when levels are being increased as this means the clipping level will be lower relative to the input, and at some point it will start to sound too distorted. There's a lot more to the CTZ method than I've mentioned here - I'd highly recommend checking it out even if you're not mixing EDM as it's interesting to see such a different approach.

Mixbus was as follows:
TB Barricade - 0.5dB hard clipping, 1.0dB limiting
Shadow Hills Mastering Compressor Class A - 1.0dB GR, Discrete section only
SlickEQ M - General cuts and boosts
Nova GE - One band removing sibilance at 9.5kHz
Metric Halo Character - SoftSat algorithm
Mixhead - Serban setting (what else!)
A1 StereoControl - 120% Width


Specs:

24-bit/44.1 kHz
-16.1 LUFS (int.)
-7.0 dBTP
03:02 Duration

Good luck to all participants and once again thanks to everyone involved in the challenge.

Cheers!

[mj247]

Hi Thought I would have a go at this one

link to mix https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MPBgLu ... sp=sharing

all tracks fabfilter pq3 and pro c 2
vocal also had a 1176release just off the slowest attack just off the fastest at 4/1 also a cl1b at 2/1 in fixed setting just tapping the vocal
reverb lx 480 random hall small stage preset and another in large hall setting ,parallel compression with a fairchild emu also parallel delay dent to reverb a n another bus with ozone imager
bass parallel comp as vox and parallel bus with decapittor
kick also had a dbx160 2/1 just tapping it ,parallel comp as above reverb lx480 modern saturated hall setting
Guitar same as above with its own reverb waves h verb
Piano same as above with waves r verb
saturation from the black box
horns no pc just a plate reverb
mix bus at103 ans the townhouse comp
exported from the studio one project page a -16

[sthauge]

Hi

First, thanks to @Isa for letting us use the song and the needed multi tracks.

So, READ this BEFORE LISTENING: The aim with this mix is to make a soundscape that has life, god depth, air/space and separation. To achieve this there is no use of reverb or compressors to ''glue'' the mix. ''Gluing'' will destroy what I'm aiming to achieve. Because of this the mix will maybe sound a bit different that whats most common today so you might need to listen a bit to adapt to the soundscape.
---------------
It's mixed with the sound of the 70' and 80' in mind and to some extent the song providers preferences. So there's no drums ''in your face'' ;-), but they are moderate sounding in the mix. As a mainly FOH guy I place the instruments as I would do if the band was on the stage.
----------------
I'm not going to use time on whatever plugin I've used, but I'm will go through one thing that's important with the instruments used in this recording. I will use the piano as an example:

I've have done a lot of recordings of pianos and grand pianos during a lifetime. I, and most others, use two microphones to record these instruments. Simple put, one mic for the lows and lower middle tones and one mic for the upper middle tones and the highs. The consequence of this is that you need both tracks sound equally to get the full sound of the instrument.

If you receive a stereo track recording of the piano/grand piano you have to be careful. If you pan the track, depending on what side you pan it and to some degree, influenced by the panning rules implemented in your DAW, you will loose either the highs or the lows of the instrument. The practical solution to this is to pan the left and right channel in the stereo track independently. If your DAW have individual panning for the left and right channel you good to go. Else, this can be done by splitting the stereo track into two mono channels or use a panning plugin that can pan the left and right channel independently.

With this in place, you will now be able to ''move'', as I call it, the piano to the right/left side and still retain the full sound of the instrument. I pan the two piano tracks slightly apart so it still represent a complete stereo image and a full freq register, but panned. Hope this is understandable and it's useful for those not knowing this.
_____________

The guitar plays during the whole song and I have placed it to the left. The piano is 'moved' to the right together with the Marimba. These two instruments is changing playing through the song.

Good luck to everyone participating in the competition.

MC099__LosTimpanis__Falling__sthauge

File format: 44.1 kHz/24 bit
LUFS: -16.1
dBTP: -2.8
Duration: 3:01

[ggibson1988]

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1y7kbd7 ... share_link

100% in the box (ProTools) Heat Enabled with slight drive.

Top Down Mixing applied.

My Template:

Mix Bus
Drum and Bass Bus
Instrument Bus
Drum Level
Bass Level
Guitar Level
Keys Level
Vocals Level
FX Level (Reverb / Delay)

Recently started using routing folders vs. Aux busses for groups (Drums, Kick, Snare, Guitars, Vocals, etc.)

Mix Bus:
SSL 4K E Channel Strip on Mix Bus, Compressor off, Slight EQ.
SSL G Buss Compressor, Slow attack, medium release, .6db of GR.
UAD EQP-1A (Pultec) Boost and attenuation at 60Hz. Boost at 10k
UAD Ampex ATR-102 with Preset of Clean Type 900 master. (Slight Tweaks on EQ and Bias)

DRUMS:
Drum Folder:
UAD Ampex ATR-102 with Preset of Clean Type 900 master. (Slight Tweaks on EQ and Bias)
UAD EQP-1A (Pultec) Boost and attenuation at 30Hz. Boost at 4k
FabFilter ProQ3 notch cut at 3.6k
BSA Clipper (Applied after mixing all drums)
Send to Parallel Processing Aux Channel With Distressor Compression

Kick:
Stock PT Compressor, Fast attack / medium release, just to control peaks.

Neutron Transient processor with slight boost on attack.
File committed.
BSA Clipper,
UAD EQP-1A (Pultec) Boost and attenuation at 60Hz. Heavy boost at 4k
ProQ3

Snare Folder:
BSA Clipper
Neve 1073 for gentle EQ
ProQ3 - High Shelf at 3k.
Send to Reverb Aux

Snare and Snare plate:
Izotope Neutron Transient processor with slight boost on attack.

OH’s:
Stock PT Compressor
BSA Clipper
SSL 4K E Channel Strip

HH
SSL 4K E Channel Strip - Compression and EQ

Rooms:
ProQ3 EQ
Ozone stereo imager for width

Shaker Folder:
UAD Oxide Tape Machine for saturation
SSL 4k E channel strip - EQ and Compression
Send to Reverb Aux

Individual Shaker tracks:
SSL 4k E channel strip - EQ and Compression

Guiro - No processing

Bass Folder:
UAD Ampex ATR-102 with Preset of Clean Type 900 master. (Slight Tweaks on EQ and Bias)
Neve 1073 PreAmp set at +5, Heavy boost at 35Hz
SSL 4k E channel strip - EQ and Compression
Izotope Ozone Classic Limiter
ProQ3

Guitar Folder:
UAD Ampex ATR-102 with Preset of Clean Type 900 master. (Slight Tweaks on EQ and Bias)
SSL 4k E channel strip - EQ and Compression
ProQ3
Ozone stereo imager for width

Acoustic Guitar:
Stock PT Compressor
ProQ3 EQ

Piano, For Telephone effect as described:
ProQ3 Band pass at 1.1K, 0.6Q, 72 dB / oct slope.
UAD Oxide Tape Machine for saturation

Trumpets:
Ozone stereo imager for width

Marimba Folder:
ProQ3
Stock PT Compressor
Ozone stereo imager for width

Vox Folder:
UAD Ampex ATR-102 with Preset of Clean Type 900 master. (Slight Tweaks on EQ and Bias)
SSL 4k E channel strip - EQ and Compression

LV Folder:
UAD Ampex ATR-102 with Preset of Clean Type 900 master. (Slight Tweaks on EQ and Bias)
SSL 4k E channel strip - EQ and Compression
ProQ3
Stock ProTools De-esser

Main Vocals:
Stock ProTools De-esser
Izotope Nectar De-esser
Sent to 2 slap delays - L & R with slight pitch adjustment and Lofi saturation.
All sent to parallel Aux With Distressor Compression.
Send to Reverb


Per Youlean Loudness Meter:

-16.8dB LUFS Integrated
-3.1dB True Peak Max

[SzlufarskiKamil]

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cOIUUG ... drive_link

Hi everyone, here's my entry for this month's mix challange:

All instruments individually: Eq, peak compression (strong), Rms compression (just a touch)

Return 1: Eqed long plate on bass and kick + bass in mono under 120 hrz
Return 2: Eqed medium plate on snare, guitar, piano, trumpets and vocals
Return 3: Eqed short plate on Hihat, marimba, guashak and guiro
Return 4: Ping pong 20 ms delay for haas effect + bass in mono under 120 hrz

Master: Limiter (normalized at -18 lufs short term at chorus) and eq for balancing headphones output (inactive during exportation)

Thank you for listening and wish you a good day

[Isa]

Hi All,

Access is denied