MIX CHALLENGE - MC102 February 2025 - Submissions until 21-FEB-2025 23:59 UTC+1/CET

[kombainera]

@Edling 100 % agreed . Forgot to mention that i really like the song btw but didnt wanted to make too long post. its not just the compression when mixing only in the box like most of us i gess to be at least half way close to the finale goal that we aim for without heavy use of the few plugins that are giving something like psp vintage warmer decapitator ssl saturator and so on is just impossible at least for me.Not in this mix but in general most rock mixes need the heavy use of paralell buses too so its very easy to get louder not in purpose.

[BenjiRage]

Fun fact, the vocals were recorded dry without any compressions. We'll just have to blame the singer (me) for the strong transients

Wow I didn't realise you were also singing on the track, the vocal performance is superb!

[Nysa]

Hi, good song!!!

Here is my mix:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/11ysNH8 ... sp=sharing

I didn't do to much things...
Drums: on the elements eq, and comp, in parallel drum comp, reverb on OH and Rooms. On the Drum bus comp and little saturation.
Bass eq and comp.
Acoustic guitar little compression to tame the peaks, on other guitars just eq, and little short delay on leads.
Synths: eq, hall reverb and delay for width and depth.
Vocals: eq, comp, saturation, plate reverb and short delay on leads and hall reverb on BV's.
Mix bus: mix bus comp, pultec eq

I mixed on Yamaha HS7 and beyerdynamic DT 770 PRO.

[JeroenZuiderwijk]

Fun fact, the vocals were recorded dry without any compressions. We'll just have to blame the singer (me) for the strong transients

Wow I didn't realise you were also singing on the track, the vocal performance is superb!

I totally agree! I am impressed.

[MemphisB]

Hi All

Great song again for us to Mix. LUFS 16.5 . Peak 4.5 44KHZ 24Bit

I went with a more ethereal(posh word alert) mix with plenty of ambience to give the song a wide softer feel , Great Lyrics on this
I worked in Reaper on Headphones
Grouped Percussion, Bass, Keys, Guitars, Vocals into there own folders with VOS VBL on each folder-FX for some Weight & saturation if any .5db compression to glue & Balance
Sent these to Music, Rhythm , Vocal Aux's with HLS Stereo Channel for EQ and Kramer Tape for a touch of Saturation on each
Master Bus HLS Channel for control and some sheen with Density as Bus Comp
Drums EQ , Saturation & Comp where needed
Bass Some Comp,saturation and tone shaping to bring up the bottom end and Balance (I Like Bass lol)
Keys odd EQ/Stereo and reverb where needed
Guitars ,Acoustic H-Comp & Eq the rest a bit of EQ
Vocals De-Ess, Rvox, Comper VCA & Opto ,Plate and Verb Effects, some work on ducking the plosives
Some automation for Chorus, & Instrument solo parts to give some movement

Hopefully it didn't come out too bad

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rcijF8 ... drive_link

Keep Rockin

MB

[Mister Fox]

A friendly reminder:
Including today, 14 days left to submit your mix.


So far, we have 14 entries (compared to 106 Mix Pack downloads -- now in standard ZIP form, that doesn't need special apps).

Please continue to pay attention to detail (see bundled TL;DR Rules.txt and/or post #003).
There are yet again several entries that ignored given parameters (filename template!).

[scottfitz]

Hi all,

I have been feeling this one! Thanks to Edling for providing this amazing music and to Mister Fox for all his hard work as usual.

Here’s the link for my mix
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sTzsAb ... sp=sharing

I mixed this on AKG K371 headphones via the Topping DX7 Pro headphone amp.

What I set out to achieve was to get an emotional response from myself. The first word I noticed was “Cancer” which made me think of people I’ve lost. Then when I read the notes I saw that it was more about mental health, which I have had some problems with, so I was instantly connected to the song. The instruments which bring the sadness for me the most are the synths on the verse and that picked guitar line which comes and goes. Sadly with synths I often find there isn’t actually that much to do with them, but I made sure the level was nice and high to create that atmosphere, almost like there is a choir. For the picked guitar I put it one side and made a delay for the other side, fairly subtle but I wanted it to last just a tiny bit longer. The verse section I was happy with for the mood I wanted.

When the chorus hits however, I found this section of music quite congested and difficult to maintain the mood. So it changes into one of defiance, some anger and disappointment. If you are suffering with mental illness, the last thing you ever want to do is hope someone else will be of any help at all, most ‘normal’ people don’t have the strength, expertise or patience to handle it. It’s something you have to learn to fight yourself in my experience. The way out is to learn as much as you can about it and start to find the ways to gain relief, of which some aren’t so hard to find. If anyone out there is having any of these problems, feel free to message me directly as I did around 15 years of bipolar and eventually made a full recovery with no medication needed so I do have a fair amount of knowledge about it.

In terms of the music, the feeling of defiance in the face of the situation is reflected most in the driving rhythm guitars. I experimented with various ways to have them but in the end I kept it fairly simple. Firstly though I tried some parallel distortion to help to create the ‘wall of sound’. I liked it, but for me it increased the feeling of congestion in the music so I deleted that track. I also tried to double up the higher strummed electric guitar, panned it L and R and processed each differently to try to create a stereo version of it and increase the sense of width in the song, but again I thought it sounded more congested. I also tried mid-side processing on the lower rhythm guitar to get it to sound wider, but in the end I felt that the stereo image was suffering too much and I deleted that also. As a result of my refusal to make things fatter or wider, it can sound a tiny bit ‘patchy’ at times as the natural playing is felt. However this is what I like in music and this is how I like real music to be, so I decided I will let the performances do the talking. In the end, I think the defiance is felt plenty in those guitars with only the light compression that I’ve given them.

Some specific mix notes on the MixBus:

I used the God Particle, which much as I dislike the feeling of not knowing what it is doing, it just seemed to work well for this tune. I do recommend this as the number one way to choose plugins. Don’t have a ‘go-to’ plugin for anything, instead have like 4 or 5 options for everything and then just run quickly through them, because sometimes one will just stand out as the better suited for the material and if there is this situation then you must get that plugin in there asap. In other words do not spend lots of time tweaking the wrong plugin. Spend a small amount of time finding the best plugin and then you can probably get it sounding good in a smaller amount of tweaking also. After that we have the UAD Hitsville mastering EQ doing +1 on 50Hz and +1 on 12.5kHz. Then is Gulfoss doing Recover 5.4% and Tame 10.2%.

I was trying saturation on the mixbus in the form of tape emulations, “THE OVEN” and Kraftur but in the end I thought it didn’t need it. Also I had Saturation on the lead vocal which I ended up ditching as again it was sounding so congested and for me that means the frequencies are doing pretty well for their harmonic richness.

Good luck to all

[TomImmon]

@Mister Fox
Hi, just a technical question:
Normally we should deliver the master here in the same resolution and bitrate as the provided tracks.
The "General Information.txt" says they are in the following format:
File Format:
WAV, 44kHz, 16bit

But my audio editor reads the files as 44.1Khz 24 bit, Audacity even says it is 32 bit.
So what bitrate should the master have now?

Greetings from Tom

[VasDim]

Hi all,
this is my attempt to mix:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QFk4Cp ... p=drivesdk

For all track are used:
- Waves Q10;
- Waves C4;
- Db ProComp.

AUX Effect;
- Waves TrueVerb;
- Waves SuperTap;

Good luck to all.
VasDim

[Mister Fox]

@Mister Fox
Hi, just a technical question:
Normally we should deliver the master here in the same resolution and bitrate as the provided tracks.
The "General Information.txt" says they are in the following format:
File Format:
WAV, 44kHz, 16bit

I legit had to check multiple times that I didn't do a mistake with the TXT... and that was indeed an oversight. Apologies for for the confusion.

However, this wasn't completely off, since half of the material I got was originally in 16bit. Needless to say, that has been addressed in an update to the ZIP file. However, there is no need to re-download anything, as this only affected the "General Information.txt".

But my audio editor reads the files as 44.1Khz 24 bit, Audacity even says it is 32 bit.
So what bitrate should the master have now?

I also checked this as well, just to be sure - the "TL;DR Rules.txt" and post #003 are as they should.

The delivery format is 44kHz 24bit WAV.