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

[scottfitz]

Drums: Basically the Drums were directed to 4 buses, Kick, snare, toms and Resto where I already have some processes in my template like compression and saturation, in turn these go to the Drum bus, where I have a hornet vu meter so that the drums always hit at -6 peak to the processes that follow, back box, tr5 comprexxor, coffeepun, and a soft Clipper, also some parallel processes like distortion, parallel compression and reverse. There is automation in the volume of the overheads in the striillo to give it more emotion and also in some of the parallel processes.

Bass: I adjust the volumes of the 3 bass tracks, and send everything to a bus where I compress everything very strongly, equalize, also some parallel processes like compression, some early reflections to give it some depth, and distortion.

Electric guitars: use high and low pass filters at about 120 and 8k, use some boosts to emulate cabinets, Crunch, Dist L and Dist R I send them to a bus where I cut around 400hz to give them clarity and add a waves metafilter that increases 0. 5db in the strong beats and in some weak beats to give it movement, it is very subtle, for just use studio one pedalboard and add a couple of pedals to give it more presence on the sides use a chorus pedal, reverb and a delay in 1/8, the GTR Tremolo, it has an automation in the panning, I increased it about 5db in 3k so that it overdrives on that side and I put it at a fairly low volume, wha gtr, has an Autopan at 30% and I put a limiter that I really do not remember why I did it, in the guitars there is a lot of automation of volumes because between verse and chorus sometimes they were in a plane that seemed to me that it was not the right one,

Keys: I equalized them more than anything to take them out of the middle of the guitars, to leave as much space as possible for them, in the keys bus, I filtered the sides to 227, the phase meter of studio one gave me phase problems, I put a tape emulation of ik multimedia to remove a little digital color, compressed with idx, and put a high pass filter at 10k.

BG Vocals: I only compressed them very hard with bx opto, in BG Verse as in the lead voice, there were some consonants with too pronounced transients, I tried many ways to control them and finally I ended up smoothing them with a transient designer, in the BG bus I used a bus compressor, an ott, denise bad tape to give it color and I controlled it a little with dynamic eq.

Lead: the lead vocal I divided it in 2 tracks, one for the verse and another for the chorus, to save me some automation, but basically the 2 are the same, what changes are the parallel processes, the 2 are compressed and equalized in the same way, only the chorus has an increase in the 200k zone, the parallel processes are enough, there is parallel compression but by bands, there is chorus, 3 types of reverb, 3 delays, and a lot of automation in the lead vocal bus, I tweaked a little the eq and added tape saturation.

All this goes to 4 buses, Drum mix, Bass Mix, Musica Mix, and Vocals Mix, in which I gave some eq tweaks, that goes to the mix bus and 2 different types of parallel compression, in the mixbus there is a compressor bus, a multiband compressor, use hornet thrust to clean up peaks and increase the overall loudness, and I think nothing else.

I would like if some charitable soul could give me a feed back, especially of the bad things to have a reference for a next time because so far I have never been selected, I leave you my mix below ---> https://drive.google.com/file/d/1W6q-3X ... VxVj2/view

I think you've done a great job. Maybe the lead vox are a bit high? your mix sounds very clean, almost too clean! I think if I were you I'd sneak up the guitars + keys on the chorus, but maybe not as high as I put them on mine! Listening to yours I think my issues with congestion on the chorus were because I had too much of a fight over the midrange. Anyway, great job and good luck

[i-dont-like-mixing]

My mix: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ELkRo1 ... sp=sharing

Drums: sidechain saturation, compression, gate, EQ, parallel comp
Bass: gate, heavy saturation
Guitar: slight EQ, heavy saturation
VOX: parametric EQ

[floodo]

Drums: Basically the Drums were directed to 4 buses, Kick, snare, toms and Resto where I already have some processes in my template like compression and saturation, in turn these go to the Drum bus, where I have a hornet vu meter so that the drums always hit at -6 peak to the processes that follow, back box, tr5 comprexxor, coffeepun, and a soft Clipper, also some parallel processes like distortion, parallel compression and reverse. There is automation in the volume of the overheads in the striillo to give it more emotion and also in some of the parallel processes.

Bass: I adjust the volumes of the 3 bass tracks, and send everything to a bus where I compress everything very strongly, equalize, also some parallel processes like compression, some early reflections to give it some depth, and distortion.

Electric guitars: use high and low pass filters at about 120 and 8k, use some boosts to emulate cabinets, Crunch, Dist L and Dist R I send them to a bus where I cut around 400hz to give them clarity and add a waves metafilter that increases 0. 5db in the strong beats and in some weak beats to give it movement, it is very subtle, for just use studio one pedalboard and add a couple of pedals to give it more presence on the sides use a chorus pedal, reverb and a delay in 1/8, the GTR Tremolo, it has an automation in the panning, I increased it about 5db in 3k so that it overdrives on that side and I put it at a fairly low volume, wha gtr, has an Autopan at 30% and I put a limiter that I really do not remember why I did it, in the guitars there is a lot of automation of volumes because between verse and chorus sometimes they were in a plane that seemed to me that it was not the right one,

Keys: I equalized them more than anything to take them out of the middle of the guitars, to leave as much space as possible for them, in the keys bus, I filtered the sides to 227, the phase meter of studio one gave me phase problems, I put a tape emulation of ik multimedia to remove a little digital color, compressed with idx, and put a high pass filter at 10k.

BG Vocals: I only compressed them very hard with bx opto, in BG Verse as in the lead voice, there were some consonants with too pronounced transients, I tried many ways to control them and finally I ended up smoothing them with a transient designer, in the BG bus I used a bus compressor, an ott, denise bad tape to give it color and I controlled it a little with dynamic eq.

Lead: the lead vocal I divided it in 2 tracks, one for the verse and another for the chorus, to save me some automation, but basically the 2 are the same, what changes are the parallel processes, the 2 are compressed and equalized in the same way, only the chorus has an increase in the 200k zone, the parallel processes are enough, there is parallel compression but by bands, there is chorus, 3 types of reverb, 3 delays, and a lot of automation in the lead vocal bus, I tweaked a little the eq and added tape saturation.

All this goes to 4 buses, Drum mix, Bass Mix, Musica Mix, and Vocals Mix, in which I gave some eq tweaks, that goes to the mix bus and 2 different types of parallel compression, in the mixbus there is a compressor bus, a multiband compressor, use hornet thrust to clean up peaks and increase the overall loudness, and I think nothing else.

I would like if some charitable soul could give me a feed back, especially of the bad things to have a reference for a next time because so far I have never been selected, I leave you my mix below ---> https://drive.google.com/file/d/1W6q-3X ... VxVj2/view

I think you've done a great job. Maybe the lead vox are a bit high? your mix sounds very clean, almost too clean! I think if I were you I'd sneak up the guitars + keys on the chorus, but maybe not as high as I put them on mine! Listening to yours I think my issues with congestion on the chorus were because I had too much of a fight over the midrange. Anyway, great job and good luck

Thanks for your comments scottfitz, from the beginning I wanted to make a very clean mix, and yes, at the last moment I decided to lower the volume of the guitars and synthes and raise the vocals (foolishly), I deviated from my path probably because of tired ears, and I got a mix more than an indie rock, an indie pop rock, with the vocals in your face, now listening to it again from time to time I feel like I used as reference some song by the weeknd, by the way I always liked your mixes, it's one of the mixes I always download to compare them with mine in expose, and again thanks a lot for your comments.

[MemphisB]

Drums: Basically the Drums were directed to 4 buses, Kick, snare, toms and Resto where I already have some processes in my template like compression and saturation, in turn these go to the Drum bus, where I have a hornet vu meter so that the drums always hit at -6 peak to the processes that follow, back box, tr5 comprexxor, coffeepun, and a soft Clipper, also some parallel processes like distortion, parallel compression and reverse. There is automation in the volume of the overheads in the striillo to give it more emotion and also in some of the parallel processes.

Bass: I adjust the volumes of the 3 bass tracks, and send everything to a bus where I compress everything very strongly, equalize, also some parallel processes like compression, some early reflections to give it some depth, and distortion.

Electric guitars: use high and low pass filters at about 120 and 8k, use some boosts to emulate cabinets, Crunch, Dist L and Dist R I send them to a bus where I cut around 400hz to give them clarity and add a waves metafilter that increases 0. 5db in the strong beats and in some weak beats to give it movement, it is very subtle, for just use studio one pedalboard and add a couple of pedals to give it more presence on the sides use a chorus pedal, reverb and a delay in 1/8, the GTR Tremolo, it has an automation in the panning, I increased it about 5db in 3k so that it overdrives on that side and I put it at a fairly low volume, wha gtr, has an Autopan at 30% and I put a limiter that I really do not remember why I did it, in the guitars there is a lot of automation of volumes because between verse and chorus sometimes they were in a plane that seemed to me that it was not the right one,

Keys: I equalized them more than anything to take them out of the middle of the guitars, to leave as much space as possible for them, in the keys bus, I filtered the sides to 227, the phase meter of studio one gave me phase problems, I put a tape emulation of ik multimedia to remove a little digital color, compressed with idx, and put a high pass filter at 10k.

BG Vocals: I only compressed them very hard with bx opto, in BG Verse as in the lead voice, there were some consonants with too pronounced transients, I tried many ways to control them and finally I ended up smoothing them with a transient designer, in the BG bus I used a bus compressor, an ott, denise bad tape to give it color and I controlled it a little with dynamic eq.

Lead: the lead vocal I divided it in 2 tracks, one for the verse and another for the chorus, to save me some automation, but basically the 2 are the same, what changes are the parallel processes, the 2 are compressed and equalized in the same way, only the chorus has an increase in the 200k zone, the parallel processes are enough, there is parallel compression but by bands, there is chorus, 3 types of reverb, 3 delays, and a lot of automation in the lead vocal bus, I tweaked a little the eq and added tape saturation.

All this goes to 4 buses, Drum mix, Bass Mix, Musica Mix, and Vocals Mix, in which I gave some eq tweaks, that goes to the mix bus and 2 different types of parallel compression, in the mixbus there is a compressor bus, a multiband compressor, use hornet thrust to clean up peaks and increase the overall loudness, and I think nothing else.

I would like if some charitable soul could give me a feed back, especially of the bad things to have a reference for a next time because so far I have never been selected, I leave you my mix below ---> https://drive.google.com/file/d/1W6q-3X ... VxVj2/view

Hi Great mix sounds really clear,

MB

[flik]

Hi everyone!

I finally found time for Mix Chalenge and mainly because of the song The lyrics are really quite depressing, but obviously for a reason. The original mix was also a stimulus, which was kind of harsh for the mood of the lyrics, the details are not audible, although they were probably recorded for a reason.

Although the theme of the text leads to suicide, I did not want to emphasize pathos but the struggle with oneself. Therefore, the dynamics are created exclusively by adding and removing instruments, which IMO, was the purpose of so many recording tracks.

I mixed in the Reaper DAW with UAD and WAVES plugins. Monitors are YAMAHA HS50 and some computer sub Double check on Gigabite computer speakers I had the most work with the kick, which is kind of poor quality, and with the bass, which I reamped with a UAD Ampeg SVT3 & 8x10 box. For the bass, I cut the Bass Amp line in the solo, because it was too powerful when the Fuzz comes on. For drums, I worked in subgroups, with an emphasis on OH and ROOM. There are also other subgroups mainly due to the addition of the Studer tape recorder. I put a medium plate reverb on the vocals to make them more distant, according to the content of the lyrics.

Because the song sucked me in, I made the mix myself in three hours and after a good night's sleep with minor level corrections and EQ settings for another hour. I hope the authors like it, regardless of the success achieved on the challenge.

Here is the MIX track: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Z6vqpI ... drive_link

True Peak: -1,3
LUFS-I: -18,1

[Martial.Levesque]

Hello!

I really enjoyed working on this song and appreciated the excellent production, great job! The vocal performance is really impressive, i really like it!

You can download my mix version here:

https://ln5.sync.com/dl/63bd07d20#rczhe ... f-zhhyde7b

I mixed using Yamaha HS8 monitors with an HS8S subwoofer in a small treated room, which isn’t perfect. To double-check everything, I also used Sonarworks SoundID on a pair of HD650 headphones.

- My goal for this song was to create a clear mix without being to bright. I focused on balancing the lows and highs.
- I aimed for the vocals to sound warm and clear to maintain the intimate vibe.
- The distorted guitars in the chorus were used to create a punchy transition.
- For the acoustic guitar at the end, where it stands alone with the vocal, I enhanced it with reverb and low-mid presence to make it shine.
- I also adjust the overall balance to make sure that the mix translate well on a multiple of speakers.

Here’s an overview of what I did in the mix:

- Kick and Bass: I EQ’d the kick and bass and applied sidechain compression on the bass to create space for the kick.
- Snare: For this type of song, I prefer a brighter snare, not too heavy, so I EQ’d it accordingly.
- Room: I EQ’d it to reduce boominess, particularly in the kick.
- Overheads (OH): I worked on taming the harshness.
- Bass: I used the Bass_line track for the low end and blended the other two bass tracks for the mids and highs.
- Keys: I focused on leveling, volume automation, and EQ to ensure all the keys were audible without clashing with each other or other instruments.
- Lead Vocal: I reduced harshness in the highs and balanced the low mids and mids to achieve a warm, clear vocal without muddiness.
- Background Vocals (BGV): I blended the background vocals with the lead to ensure they didn’t overpower the main vocal.
- Mix Bus Compression: I applied subtle compression on the mix bus to glue everything together.

Cheers!

[jw_]

Really, really nice track and a subject matter close to my heart. Thank you @Edling (and Mr.Fox for the organizational efforts, as usual)!

For me, this song is all about the transitions from verse to chorus and back. The chorus really steps up the energy and the mix needs to follow along to not mess up that dynamic. In more concrete terms, in my view it needs to dry up considerably to have a more upfront feel, and it needs to densify appropriately. Because the arrangement is already set up that way, it practically made all the decisions for me (obviously a good thing). I mainly used the (excellent) Youtube-Ref to guide me, especially in terms of levels for the strings vs guitars.


Drums:
Really simple, just EQ and compression on the individual channels. Some distortion on kick and snare. Parallel compression for the whole kit. Most importantly, rides on some individual hits (snare leading into the chorus, kick downbeats, the fill leading into the 2nd half of the chorus, that sort of thing). The rooms come up a lot during the chorus because I wanted the drums to sit behind the wall of guitars and synths while getting bigger in size.

Perc:
Just EQ and compression, not massively important in the track. Just there to move things along.

Bass:
Did not use the DI. EQ and compression on the amp track, just compression on the fuzz. Both get ducked very slightly by kick and snare because I was starting to lose the punch with all the stuff happening in the loud sections. Automation in the chorus to make the bass wider and fatter.

Guitars:
Probably the most important elements for the feel of the different sections. A lot more lows/low mids in the chorus, more delays and modulation/pan stuff happening in the verse. There's some stereoizing on the acoustic, mainly so there's some kind of "space" in the bridge without putting a bunch of reverb on it. I really wanted the post-solo section to feel bone dry and small by comparison. Autopanner in slight mix amounts on the trem guitar and the solo so there's a bit of movement behind it. Lots of small EQ automation to make things sit.

All the guitars get ducked very (!) slightly by the drums only in the choruses for extra movement.

Synths and Strings:
Mainly EQ, some additional verb in the verse. Tiny bit of delay on the lead. Everything already felt "there", so this was basically just balance. The same slight ducking as in the chorus guitars is on the synths as well.

Vox:
All the usual stuff in terms of EQ, compression etc.; However, the feel of the space around the vox change a lot, they are a lot more spaced out in the verse compared to the chorus, but the spaces are considerably narrower. Again, helps to achieve a scene change in the chorus. Almost completely dry in the bridge. In general, I did not feel like the vocals really needed to be totally up front and center in a "pop" way where you can hear every breath, but a little more "in the track".

Mixed on Adam S1s in a treated(-ish) room and occasionally Beyer DT770s (to see if I'm doing things in the that sound disconcerting in phones and to check on the low end). No correction/eq stuff, sometimes a crosstalk plugin for the phones.

Hope you like it!

My Mix

[PauPeu]

Hi everyone,

It was a pleasure mixing this song, especially with such well-recorded tracks. The production is impeccable, and I really like the "Radiohead-esque" vibe.

Here's my mix: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YAbxs8 ... sp=sharing

Mixing Approach
My goal with this mix was to enhance the dynamics of the song through automation, making the chorus and final bridge more intense by amplifying the strings.

Tracks with volume automation:

Drum Room group
Distorted Bass
Overheads (high boost in the chorus)

Technical Aspects

I noticed some phase and synchronization issues between the snare, overheads, and room mics.

I delayed the Drum Room group by -27ms and the Overheads by -3ms, with phase inversion applied.
The drum tracks received standard compression and EQ treatment.

The drum group was heavily compressed with the Loc-Ness plugin and EQ’d quite aggressively.
Overheads were clipped and processed through a Kiive ADC1 compressor.
The entire Drum Bus was processed with the new MHB Green from Kazrog, which provided the "smack" I was looking for.

Instrument Processing

Bass: All bass tracks were grouped and processed with the CLA Bass plugin to balance frequencies.

Guitars:

Distorted guitars were panned wide and processed with Saturn 2 (Gentle Transformer saturation).
The guitar solo was EQ’d and sent to a ping-pong delay, along with the Wah track.
Tremolo guitar: used a transient shaper to recover some attack, applied a low-mid boost (150Hz), and sent it to a spring reverb (TENS plug by Klanghelm).

Lead keys: heavy saturation and subtle auto-pan for movement.
Pad group: high and low-pass filtering, then sent to chorus and reverb.
Strings: EQ’d with a midrange boost and sent to a long, lush reverb (Raum).

Vocals

Main vocal: Boosted 1kHz with Spectre (saturation), then EQ and de-essing.

Doubles & Chorus: Compressed and hi/lo cuts, then sent to a K140 reverb (Airwindows).

All vocal tracks were bussed to a color compressor (AS V-COMP by Audioescape), with 5-10dB of gain reduction.

Effects & Mix Bus

A room reverb (Sunset Sound by IK Multimedia) was applied to many tracks to create a cohesive space. You can hear it clearly in the breakdowns with the acoustic guitar and main vocal.

On the Mix Bus, I applied:
Spectre for subtle saturation
Multiband compression on the low end
Unfairchild for the final glue and push to the track
That’s about it!

Good luck to everyone, and happy mixing!

[Rc²]

Thank you for providing such a great song to mix. It reminded me a bit of one of my favourite bands from the 90's called Cecil and gave me a lot of pleasure to try to mix. Saying that I found this one really hard to mix as the source material is so nice that I start to over process things and go in circles a bit. Hopefully I stopped myself in time!

Here is my submission Wav file

For nearly all the channels used the scheps omni channel. Within that on a lot of the channels I used the 'thump' feature just to add a bit of low end roundness. I also used either 'Even' or 'Heavy' saturation on everything to add harmonic content and smooth some parts out, its rare I don't use it these days unless the instrument is quite distorted to start with.

The guitars had a bit of Raxx for compression, just a couple of db to make them poke out a little more.

On the kick + bass I used Rbass to fill them out a little and also Kramer HLS too add some 700htz on the bass and 4k on the kick.

The on all the busses I added Kramer Tape just to add some more harmonic content and make them feel glued.

On the bass, guitar and keys buss I used Fabfilter Q4 and I side chain the kick, snare, and toms and make it dip some of the biting and low frequency's when they are played just to make sure they cut through without having then to over process them. I also find this can help with the gluing feeling.

I also sent the lead vocal to a abbey road ADT just to widen it a bit and make it more interesting. They have the L1 to make them more consistent in volume, the API was for some nice high end and a little more bite. The Q4 on the vocal bus is to control some low end and also some 'mid range sibilance'.

There is a ping pong delay that is on some of the vocals guitars, keys just for a bit of ear candy. There is also a scheps 'rear buss' to act as glue and excitement.