MIX CHALLENGE - MC100 October 2024 - Mix Round 1 in evaluation

[Michael_K]

Hey everyone!!!
Wow! What a song! Great energy!

I tried to preserve and bring out as much energy as possible, sometimes possibly at the expense of clarity!
I worked with subgroups. Each subgroup is individually pushing through a a chain of saturation and compression.
I used FF Saturn for tape saturation and C2 for compression.
Groups:
Drums and Bass
Guitars 1: bridge guitars, solo, FX, Synth
Guitars 2: All other guitars
Vocals 2 and 3
Vocals 1
On the mix bus there are 2 compressors in series , C2 in Bus mode medium ratio (4) short attack, C2 Mastering mode low ratio (1.5) long attack
First I tried to get a good balance pushing into the compression.
After that and within each group each track is treated with a little bit of corrective eq.
I created a parallel Bass track with with a slightly distorted high passed mid range sound to add through automation in certain parts where the bass is more exposed, notably the intro.
As far as effects there is a short slap back with small hall, 8 note delay, 4 not delay, all on aux sends and used very slightly on each track, especially the vocals and solo and FX guitars.

Here is my mix:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1j_jwOp ... Q8_7q/view

Good luck to everyone!

[Martial.Levesque]

Hi Everyone,

Here is my mix version : https://ln5.sync.com/dl/4dfc7b8f0#8ijhr ... 8-fsrzkj5e

For this rock song, in my opinion, the overall energy comes from the performance and the rhythm section. So I tried to keep and emphasize the power of the drums and guitars.

I worked a lot on the snare sound and also on the bass to find a distortion sound that blends well into the mix without taking up too much space.

To start, I have micro adjusted the drum tracks and guitar tracks so that the phases are well aligned.

Here’s the processing I did on each track:

Kick: I used a gate to reduce the bleed, mainly from the snare. I EQ'd several frequencies to reduce the muddiness and give the kick some air. I used a limiter to even out the power of the kicks.

Snare: I tried to eliminate the gate effect that was already integrated with a lot of EQ. I also used a clipper to drastically change the sound, and that’s how I managed to reshape the sound to my liking. I added a bit of plate reverb. Bx_clipper, Valhalla vintage verb.

Overheads (OH): I found there were some annoying frequencies, so I cut them with an EQ and a very high Q. I added compression to control dynamics and for coloration. Fairchild 670.

Room: A bit of EQ, compression for coloration, and a bit of saturation. 1176, Softube.

Toms: EQ + limiter.

Bass: I split the bass into 2 tracks, one for low bass (<200hz) and one for high bass (>200hz).

Low bass: Ampeg SVTVR + EQ + limiter
High bass: Ampeg SVTVR + EQ + Darkglass + Trash for distortion.

Guitars: I used all the guitar tracks. I grouped together those that could be panned in stereo. I did a lot of automation to play with the volumes throughout the song. I mainly used EQ to reduce muddiness and balance the guitars in the mix. A bit of compression only on the clean guitars.

Vocals: De-esser for each track, EQ, compression (1176, LA-2A). I also added a bit of delay instead of reverb because there was already some.

Synth: EQ + a bit of saturation.

On the master bus, I used an SSL Bus Compressor to make everything more cohesive.

Thank you, it was fun to mix that song!

[CMSound]

Hey!! First time here, and very pleased to submit on the 100th competition!

A bit of background on me and my career, i'm 32 and live in Scotland UK, I've been part of the live audio sector for some time. Starting out when i was around 15. Since then I have working from small pubs and clubs to big outdoor festivals for thousands. Having been in this sector for some time, and with a young family I have recently decided to take the skills from FOH at a live gig, into the box and offer mixing services online. Since having released my services on Fiverr, and approaching some other engineers to critique my current portfolio. I feel I have been developing nicely but some kindly advice and guidance on the progression would be hugely appreciated. At the moment I am running a DX3 Pro + on Presonus Studio One. At the moment I am only using headphones (beyerdynamic 990 DT). However i am at the moment planning to build a studio space and get some additional headphones and monitors, but that's further down the line as I have just reached the Isolation and acoustic treatment planning stage, which is going to take some time. Look forward to seeing your feedback and having a listen to what everyone else has done with this.



This was a fairly layered track, The tracks were well recorded, however i was missing a Kick In and Out mic for this, as well as a separate snare top bottom. I also would have liked a stereo room mic, and maybe a Bass DI and Mic. However! I feel the result still delivered.

I think the guitars were so varied, yet all had a purpose. The tones were nice, and it was good to be able to confidently throw them around the stereo field. Vocals were deliberately thin I feel, so kept that within the mix I feel but brought back the backing as felt they were not leading the song forward. I approached this mix coming from a punk stand point; a bit edgy, slapping kit and a driving bass line.

Kick: the gate was quiet heavy for this track, so i reached for the expander, just to soften up the opening of the gat, then a small amount of stock EQ to lift the fundamental, remove the boxy tone of the shall, and a bit of attack. Then an SSL style compressor to push the kick a bit and control its sustain. I used a clipper track just to clean up the peak. I sent a portion of this to an Aux and used some sub harmonic distortion over the sub end, from around 70Hz down. The Kick sends and original were blended into a buss together in Mono with bit of additional EQ and a blended litter. Kick was also sent to a smasher bus, using a soft tube VCA compressor with some saturation over the output.

Snare: For this I used the normal stock EQ with some Dynamic EQ settings in place for the mid range, just to hold the pong down. This EQ was just clearing up resonances and anything corrective. The next in the chain was the SSL Channel strip, using all of its elements to tame the snare, I wanted punch but a bit of snap and glitter on the top end. This much like the kick went to a smasher bus with the kick to hold the main beat section together. For a reverb, I used a simple plate.

Toms: These didn't need a huge amount of work, so just used the SSL Channel strip for both. These were sent with the kick and snare and associated busses to the Kit Buss. The Toms also got sent to the same verb as the snare.

Overheads: I didn't feel these were very well placed, as they didn't capture the full kit as I would like them. However some EQ and a stock compressor of these was all that was needed. I didn't bother with any analog emulations here, as I didn't feel the tone would offer anything additional. I did however add on a dynamic EQ band over around 8K to push the top end up, to give me some sparkle over the overheads. These did not make it into the Kit buss, but went direct to Main.

Room: This just needed some corrective EQ and tonal shaping, and then a 1176 using the ALL button and crafting the room into the Main buss.

The Overall kit had some additional reverb, I used a SPX90 emulator for this to put the kit in the same room, and rolled off the low end sharply, but let the high end ring out.

The Kit buss was treated a final bit of EQ an OPTO compressor, and a saturator.

Bass: The bass needed a fair amount of tonal shaping, I used the Schepps Omni channel for this, it offers a lot of power in one plugin - First time I have used in on Bass to be honest though. I used the de-esser in the low mids to pull out the honk. boosted some rumble, added some saturation and used VCA compressor to finish up tuning the peaks, then an Opto to control the whole channel blended in. I took a send off the channel to the BB magma distortion, then into the Schepps Channel with the drive mode engaged. I slapped a High pass up to 300Hz then reversed the phase. I have used this technique in live situations with a lot of success between Mic and Di feeds. Finally all the bass feeds were sent to their own buss, I kept the core bass channel in mono but the distortion in stereo, so the buss was kept in Stereo.

Guitars: I used all of the channels but split them up into separate stereo busses, to then finish up in Guitar master buss. The guitar channels were treated with either a UAD Century channel strip, this game me some very basic EQ and compression and some saturation. If this was not used, i used a cool plugin from Analog Obsession - A Tone - which is in the same vein as the UAD one, but the saturation is more varied by the use of the unit, over a dial, or preamp emulation.

The Guitar busses were all treated with some stock EQ and: Supercharger compressor with 'Dirt' dialled in. The 2nd set i used the Burier - which offers some really high end distortion and saturation, which needed filtered as it was too much. the Bridge guitars has no processing before it hit the final guitar master. The guitar FX and Solo buss was treated with a tube style EQ and Compressor, just to control the peaks a bit better, and shape the tone against the vocal and bass. The guitar master I used a TDR compressor that's really transparent, so it's just just a final control unit, and an API EQ to shape the final tone. I also automated a send to a buss that I muted the Mid and left the sides, I used an API eq to smooth out the tone of the guitar sides, and then brought that in and out for another dimension in certain sections.

Synth part I left alone, just a small amount of EQ and an LA2A to prop it up.

All the band elements and their FX were sent to a band premix buss, Where I pulled the gain back but 6db and used a multi band compressor to get everything to sit around the vocal.

Vocals: So all the vocals were run through Vocal shaper (Still learning this one) and a touch of stock EQ. I sent all the vocals to a Parallel buss as well as a Parallel tape saturation buss. These were all summed in one stereo buss together, were a blended LA2A and a bit EQ were placed to control the final balance and tone. FX Wise I used a small room in centre image, a room in wide stereo and an automated Delay for in dotted 8ths for a bit of slap.

All the vocals and their busses (Not FX) were finalised with a bit of EQ and another LA2A taking around 1.5db of peaks off.

On the Master buss I used the CLA Mixdown plugin, I don't use this very often, but this worked well for the tone I felt the track wanted. This wasn't doing a huge amount, just a couple of db of RMS focused compression, and a slight tilt towards the high end then a small amount of drive.

I printed this to do the car test, and small speaker test - Important to note that I use an EQ correction for my headphones and then a Harman curve applied over that. The only other inserts were a spectrum meter and a level meter.
Once I pulled the file out into a mastering session, i used a M/S processor to give me some lift in the mix sides, a high and low tilting dynamic processor that has some EQ in there, In this i used some HF compression and LF expansion to get the low pumping and high sparkling. I coupled this with the L1 Limiter to catch any stray peaks, then finally a M/S EQ to weave them more cohesively. The last bits were an RMS compressor looking for 1 or 1.5db, and a last pass limiter to get everything to sit at the correct level as set by the project parameters. I feel I would have looked at -14/-12 LUFS for this as i would have wanted it to be a bit louder. A good mix though, and a decent challenge for the portfolio.

Cheers all!!

[ggibson1988]

Really enjoyed this one.



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


Mixed in the box with ProTools

Activated Heat with slight drive and darker tone

Mix Bus:
Mixed into below:
SSL X Saturator for Color
API 2500 Bus Compressor - Mix Glue 1 preset and adjusted threshold to get approx 1-2 db of GR. Adjusted mix knob to about 80% wet. (this was adjusted throughout the mixing process)

Added Pro-Q3 after mixing tracks (mostly Mid-Side EQ), less than 1 db of boost or cut on all moves.

Drums:
Routed to drum folder.
Ampex ATR 102 Tape emlulator
Brainwork bx_console N channel strip (neve style). only used EQ.

Kick :
Brainwork bx_console N channel strip (neve style)
Applied Gate, and EQ
Used SSL Compressor trick (Threshold At minimum, Ratio at 1:1, then adjust ratio unit 4db GR.)
HPF at 40Hz
Neutron 4 Transient shaper with slight increase in attack.
Pro-Q3 for further frequency shaping.


Snare:
Studer A800 Tape emulator for saturation.
BF-76 compressor to get a little more length.
Neutron 4 Transient shaper with slight increase in sustain.
Pro-Q3 for further frequency shaping.


Toms:
Brainwork bx_console N channel strip (neve style)
Applied Gate, EQ and Compression

Kick, snare and toms routed to stock PT reverb (2.6 sec plate)

OHS:
Pro-Q3

Room:
Brainwork bx_console N channel strip (neve style)
Applied EQ and Compression

Bass:
Brainwork bx_console N channel strip (neve style) Only used EQ on the track

Bass Bus:
Neve 1073 max boost at 35Hz pushed into Ozone Limiter
Pro-Q3 for additional frequency shaping and SansAmp PSA1 to taste for added tone.

Guitars: All processing on Guitar bus

Brainwork bx_console N channel strip (neve style)
Applied EQ and Compression
Pro-Q3 to remove harshness and mud
Ozone Imager 2 for stereo width
SSL 4K E Channel Strip (only used Compressor)


Synth:
Brainwork bx_console N channel strip (neve style)
Only used EQ
Stock PT 1 band EQ automating frequency
Ozone Imager 2 for width.


Vocals:

Voc 01:
Brainwork bx_console N channel strip (neve style)
EQ and Compression

Vox 02:
Ozone Nectar De-esser
Brainwork bx_console N channel strip (neve style)
Applied Gate, EQ and Compression
UA Distressor
UA LA-2A
Pro-Q3 in dynamic mode for post compression De-Essing

[Emil]

Hey guys! Cool song!

Here is my mix.

I used pro tools HEAT on all tracks with the drive turned almost all the way up, and the tone knob turned down slightly.

Drums:
Kick - Eq, comp, bsa silencer to reduce bleed. It was also out of phase with the overheads so I flipped the phase.

Snare - Eq, comp, transient designer to reduce the transients, bsa silencer to reduce bleed. Volume automation on the buildups before the choruses and the two times in the outro

Toms - Volume and panning automation to seperate the two rack toms. Otherwise eq, comp, transient designer to reduce transients a bit here as well on both rack and floor tom, and also rbass on floor tom.

Room - eq, comp, soothe2 to deharsh the cymbals a bit, schoeps upmix 1to2 to make it slightly less mono

OH - eq, comp, soothe 2 again to deharsh cymbals and transient designer to reduce the transients a little bit.



Bass - Eq, comp, soothe to reduce some low end resonances, a little destortion with saturn 2 on the midrange with the warm tape setting

Guitars - eq, soothe to reduce harshness a little bit

Synth - eq, gullfoss to tame the mids a little bit

Gang vocals - eq, deesser, soothe, decapitator, volume automation

Lead vocals - Waves "Clarity Vx Dereverb", not to remove the reverb entirely but reduced it alot. Also used some more subtle delays and reverb instead. Also eq, comp, deesser and soothe.




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

[RicardoGuzman]

Hi, this is my first time here. Cool and kind of tricky song to mix, I had a lot of fun figuring out how to deal with the snare.
Here is my mix
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dkOkFF ... sp=sharing

What i did was entirely in the box.
Kick: A lot of tube saturation. I used a transient designer to control a bit of the sustain and get a tight punch from the kick. Sub synth to enhance the deepness that establishes the ground of the entire mix. Soft clipping in the end to limit the peaks and get more saturation.
Snare: 1156 with fast release to get a bit of distortion. I tried to enhance the body of the snare with tube saturation on the 200hz area using Spectre. Standard Clip to control the transients and SPL transient designer to tame some of the excessively snappy attack.

For the drums as a whole I created a stereo room with UAD Ocean Ways, and for the mono room I went for heavy saturation with Headcrusher. Finally, compression on the drum bus with API 2500 and Pultec EQ (Classic boost/cut on 60hz and boost on 10k)

Bass: I did a parallel distorted track with an emulation by Arturia of the Sansamp pedal. The bass bus with the two tracks have an 1176 (slow attack, fast release), a sub synth for harmonics on the deeper lows and Wavesfactory Trackspacer for ducking using the kick as sidechain.

Guitars: Almost nothing, just a gentle compression on the guitar bus, EQ filtering the lows and boosting a little bit of 700hz.for more thickness. The rest is panning and volume automation.

Vocals: I like to control the transients of the vocals using a limiter. Little bit of glue compression, tape saturation and de-esser.

[MixyMcMixFace]

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

Set a static mix with EQ, started cutting material I wouldn't be using, and tried to add some movement/variation to the macro-dynamics. The snare was a poppy nightmare, and there were a few places that wanted some micro edits to flow, to my ear, at least. It wants a roomier sounding kit than is provided, so they got blasted with compression. Didn't bother with any tiddly tweaks to the kit sound, the OHs and Rooms is what I assumed it was meant to mostly be.

The tracks were quite boxyfizzy (TM) and dry, except the vocals, so things got a bit more surgical to get them to stack OK, and I found I didn't need a huge amount of automation. In some places the copy/paste that was used to make them sounded unusual. The geets got a touch of extra drive, and some feedback was added with FF Saturn occassionally as I felt it suits. I dragged the FX channel forward a bar in places.

The vocals were pretty cutting, they got a huge dent, but otherwise there were no crazy moves. I didn't feel it wanted effects overly, so everything is in a room only and otherwise dry. I added some mega-phone and delay throws as there were some, in my humble opinion, arrangement gaps, and I had quite a good time mixing it.

[jordan_ruined_it]

Okaaaaaay here’s my entry.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/pvqp7868 ... 4fvpu&dl=0

My whole goal was to get everything properly 3 dimensional, nothing nonsensically burying each other. Being light on the guitars while letting dynamic sounds (drums and vocals) in the forefront really gave this mix the space I wanted. I could’ve done the extra credit and added a load of automations to make everything flow dynamically but I got lazy - I also didn’t care about timing. Everything is basically Live 12 Native (so no fancy outboard toys), except Waves X-Click which I used for the snare which I’ll explain here in my breakdown.

Kick: This thing is disrespectfully smashed. I wanted this to sound aggressive enough without losing its slap. It goes Compressor (for overall dynamics) > Multiband (to shape the tone and gate the floor) > Limiter (to control and even out the transients).

Snare: X-Click did the trick on removing that annoying snappy transient. I’ve also placed a limiter on this to control the body of the transient. It’s probably a little poofier to my liking on second listen but anything 2khz and lower still thwacks on my system.

Overheads: Soft cut everything below 1khz, compression and smashed everything 10khz and up. I automated EQ as well because the crashes were hitting way too hard during the chorus. Also they are hard-panned all the way.

Room: Muted.

Toms: Also hard panned. Compression to even out the fills.

Guitars: I’m very minimalist about my guitars. They do not need anything above 8khz and anything under 1khz just buries the vocals so I put a shelf there. Some hard panned, some straight center.

Amp Solo: Overdrive made this more present.

Background vocals: Homemade dimension expander separated it from the main vocals that were all mono.

Synth: This is mono just because the image is already quite occupied with the guitars and hard panned drums. You can barely hear it but it helps a bit filling the space in the chorus.

Main vocals: EQ, and multiband compression on the high and low ends. Nothing crazy.

Bass: The bottom is ducked aggressively by like 10dB. I wanted to get its plucking transient more present that was going on around 1khz - I even added a bit of distortion there.

References: AC/DC, Red Hot Chili Peppers

Tools: Audeze LCD-X, ATC SCM25a’s, my abused ears.

[Pitta]

Hello good people!

Thanks song provider and Mister Fox for keeping it going. MC100!

Here is my mix: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1omeGMm ... sp=sharing

Was fun but challenging.

Vocals - I though about using a deverb plugin but I don't have one. But I was finding the recorded reverb too sibilant. Cuted some of it using a M/S plugin and taking the side information where most of the reverb was, making the lead vocals mono.
Used eq, compression, tape for a bit of saturation pushing some highs into it. Used dynamic eq to control sibilance, sidechaining it to a track with a deesser in delta mode.
Two parallel tracks, one with compression and other with distortion that I blend and automate along the song.
Sending to a doubler, 8th and 16th note delays, slap, and plate. Automating these and adding some reverb and delay throws to help and highlight some passages, for fill and drama.

Backing vocals - Eq and compression. Some compression in M/S, compressing just the center, just to get a bit out of the way of the lead vocals.

Guitars have just lowpass, highpass and some eq to fit them together. Some light compression on the cleaner ones. Sending to short reverbs and delays.

Bass - Highpassing around 60Hz, some eq and compression. Using a multiband compressing just the lows to even the tone.
Four parallel tracks, compression, distortion, subharmonics and one that I labell, fingers, compressed and bandpassed around 2.5k, to bring out more articulation and noise.
Sidechained from the kick, lows are being ducked a couple of db.

Synth - Opted to throw it more to the back of the stage to had some movement and depth and left all the fuzz to the guitars.

Kick and snare - Felt a bit hollow. Started with some clipping with LVC, that has some controls for shape and harmonics and then some tape emulation with Airwindows’s Tape7, driving it and using the head bump feature to give them more body. Multiband for compressing just the lows to make them more even. Two compression parallel tracks for snare, one for atack and other for sustain. Sending snare to two plates. One of them is some lexicon hardware emulation that has a very thick plate that I used to help fatten it.
Overheads - Highpassing, compression for dynamics control, cutting some between 2 and 5k, and a limiter to shave a bit the snare.A couple of notches around 500 Hz were some cymbals were whistling.
Toms - Some compression and eq shaping. Sending to a plate.
Room track was compressed with fet compressor, fast attack, fast release, to bring out the ambience and blended a parallel version, even more compressed and distorted with Soundtoys Devil Lock.
Compressor on drum bus, Two parallel tracks, both for just skins, one for compression, extra smack and interplay and other for distortion to give a bit more point, but a bit smeared one.

Have two parallels to the master. One with guitars, synth and a bit of vocals, the other with drums and bass. These are compressed and blended for density and interplay.
On the master bus, some plugins that I like for color: Waves, NLS, puigtec eq1A, J37 and L1. Also using Waves API 2500 compressor, slow attack, fast release. Baxter type eq with a tick at 78 Hz and 18k.

Cheers

[alanvaldez]

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1E7zlPj ... sp=sharing

Hello! I extend my gratitude to everyone who made this mix challenge possible. Here is a description of my approach.

On all drums I used MAutoAlign to align drums and correct phase issues plus they were sent to a group with MTurboComp using the "FairMeld" model this one was super compress and saturated and has low level just to add some excitement to the drums. Drums also were sent to a reverb using Acon Digital Ververate 2

Kick: Utilized the newfangled audio EQuivocate's 6-band mode to remove some unwanted frequencies, then applied Invigorate for dynamic control, followed by Nuendo's gate, MDrumstrip EQ and effects, and finally Hornet's HarmoniQ.

For the snare: use Mautoalign, followed by Newfangled Audio's EQuivocate, gate, and Invigorate, then Mdrumstrip, and finally MaudoDynamicEQ to correct minor issues. Conclude with Newfangled Audio's Punctuate to remove undesired elements and boost those that were necessary.

Toms: both have Mautoalign then Equivocate and then Invigorate as my compressor/saturator.

OH: both have autoalign and were grouped... then Equivocate, Invigorate, and MSpectralDynamics (to eliminate some unpleasant frequencies)

Room: Equivocate, Invigorate (super saturated) and low level on this one

Bass: Hornet's HarmoniQ, MautoDynamicEQ and Sonible Smart EQ4 just to do some extra adjustments.

Guitars: Equivocate on all guitar tracks and MModernCompressor.

Amp Solo: MautoDynamicEQ, Msaturator, MDelay.

For the synth chorus, MautoDynamicEQ, FrontDAW, and MSpectralDynamics are sidechained with the vocals to remove certain frequencies that were masking in the center.

For the vocal track, I applied Acon Digital DeFilter to address some problematic frequencies, followed by Smart EQ4 and MSaturator for further refinement. Lastly, I utilized Nuendo's de-esser to reduce sibilance.

Master channel setup: Gold Clip and Hornet 4K with just -3dB of gain reduction, followed by MautoDynamicEQ to fine-tune minor details. Mixing in 14% of Nuendo's Imager and a Smart limiter set to minimal, ensuring the output level is as desired.