MIX CHALLENGE - MC102 February 2025 - Mix Round 1 in evaluation

[Christoph_K]

I really enjoyed putting my hands on this beautiful song and great production! I only had two hours to work on it and this is my first mix pass. Unfortunately i don’t have time to work on it in more detail, but that may also be a good thing

Here’s what I did:
All tracks are treated with Softubes SSL4K via the console 1 ecosystem.

DRUMS
All Drumtracks are summed with the UAD API2500 and the Softubes Zener Limiter in parallel. Kick and Snare have a second parallel compression channel. The Snare top had a nasty spike in the transient which I didn’t like so I controlled this with Softubes transient designer.

BASS
The bass DI was reamped with the Brainworx Ampex SVT, the original Amp track was high passed. In parallel I used a „Bass crush“ channel with a UAD Fairchild 670 with heavy compression to get a steady low end.

GUITARS
The guitars just have some Pro Q4 to shape the tones and get rid of some nasty spikes and resonances with the newly introduced spectral dynamics. UAD LA3A for compression. The Acoustic is just EQ.

KEYS
Just EQ and balance, Reverb.

VOCALS
The BG are compressed with the MagicDeathEye + deessing.

The leadvocals got Q4, UAD 1176, UAD LA2A, Weiss Deesser and a UAD Neve1073 crunch channel in parallel.

Effects
Softubes Atlantis chamber for drums and guitars, UAD ATR102 Slapback delay on some guitars and Leadvocals, UAD EMT250 with a longer reverb for the synths and Process.Audio Ripple Delay on guitars.

Mixbus
all tracks are summed with the Neve summing extension in LUNA, Pro-MB, outboard SSL comp, Kazroq green, UAD Studer 800 tape and Master Plan.

I hope you like it

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/vtw2h80w ... idevm&dl=0

[WMN]

Hello Everyone
This is my first to to be part of this event. Thanks @MisterFox and @Edling for hosting this event and providing this well composed song .

Here is the breakdown,
I listened to the song and I marked sections such as the verse and chorus and outro.
I figured out that the Drums are carrying the song, so I started mixing the drum & percussive section to give it the bounce because if I startred mixing anything else I would lose that ‘journey’ of the song.

DRUMS

The drums tone selection was great for this song. I didn’t do much interms of compressing.
But what I did mostly was carefully eqing the harsh frequencies

KICK
The original kick tonal character is mellow,heavy

I duplicated the kick track into two for blending, because if I decided to handle one kick track, a) I will end up with a lot of low end or b) my kick will be clicky,

1. One kick had saturation/distortion and heavy compression, so that it has that click
2. One Kick had the original signal but slightly compressed
I blended the two prioritizing the click signal at first because I was avoiding low end build up in the beginning of the mixing phase.
Once I was able to get the decent kick with a click I stopped there.

SNARE
The snare signal was clean, it didn’t have mic bleed.

Snare Bottom : Boosted round 4.7kHz 4db, then compressed ratio 4:1 Attack 10ms, Release 1ms Gain reduction -4db

Snare Top :Compressed ratio 6:1, release fast attack fast then Boosted 3.4db 4.5kHz,

EQ Removed abit of the honk at around 250hz
Blended the group, added saturation, used a transient shaper to add snap and body.

HI HAT
I panned it to the Left(33%)
EQ : cut the High frequencies around 350hz, 6.7kHz ,17.5khz around 3.5db reduction.

Then used a Multiband compressor, Fast attack fast release in the high frequencies to take care of the harsh snare.

Used a stereo imager to widen the hihat


TOMS
HI Tom was Panned 42%L
Low Tom panned 60%R

Kindly note I used the same principle with the kick,
Hi tom panned 42%L had 2 Hi toms duplicated sub tracks
Low toms panned 60%R had 2 duplicated Low toms sub tracks(I had to be careful not to boost the bass a lot,)

All these 4 subtracks were grouped to the Tom

OVERHEAD and DRUM AMBIENCE

Overhead were panned both 55% left and right and compressed

Used a MB Compressor to remove the harshness of the cymbals

Then used a stereo imager to widen the cymbals,(give that doubler wide effect) without it the overheads will sound bad.

TAMBOURINE
Panned 17% R
I used eq to remove harshness and compressed it.
Used stereo widener

SHAKER
Panned 20% R
I used eq to remove harshness and compressed just a bit,
Used a stereo widener to give it space.


PARALLEL COMPRESSION

For this track I decided to parellel compress the percussive elements only,(
Kick, Snare and Toms)

GUITARS

Acoustic Guitar
It sounded great, I only used eq, slight compression to give it a push.

I brightened it a bit and used a stereo imager to give it depth.

Distorted guitar

Hard Panned 100% L and 100% R

Compressed 4:1 medium compression -1db reduction. Medium attack Fast Release

High pass at 63hz, removed the harsh frequencies 950hz, 2.4khz and 5khz.


Crunch guitar
EQ to Remove harshness
Blended with distored guitar during chorus

GT Solo
Compressed ratio 4:1

Had a send for effects.(Ping Pong Delay then Reverb)
I made sure it was 100% wet and side chained with the source signal.

The guitar wah effect + delay + reverb creates that “ bloom effect “ (I am a guitar player *wink *wink )

GT TREMOLO
Compressed 4:1 Attack 129ms Release 11.25
Compressed again hard 6:1 Attack fast and fast release -2.0db gain reduction
Had a send for effects.(Ping Pong Delay then Reverb)
I made sure it was 100% wet and side chained with the source signal.

BASS GUITAR
Parallel Compression and Saturation

VOCALS

Great singing.
Used melodyne for tuning
Challenge was the harshness and getting the balance of the body and the nasal ring
I prefer using low shelf for vocals, dipped using a MB around 45hz, then again at 125hz

I think @Edling vocal register at this song the lowest note is B2 (123.47 Hz)
So anything Below I used a high pass filter at 123.47 Hz)

Vocal Lead Dub
Panned 68% L and R

PADS AND STRING

Pads
EQ out at around 307hz and 405khz

Keynoise,
Saturated and boost at 1.5khz and 4.5hz for that sweep sound

Key strings
Saturated and low cut at 123hz
High frequency boost at 3.5khz 2db

MIXING

The key noise dictated where the kick snare and vocals will sit

The gain and low end of the bass guitar is recessed in the intro and verses. I didn’t want it to overpower the vocals.

The bass kicks in the choruses and the bridges.

Drums had volume automation in the chorus because of the cymbals, I boosted them a bit to enhance the performance.
Open Hihat was handled the same way especially before the chorus hits, I added a bit of gain.
I had to listen to the drum and percussion and automate parts that were needed in the parts of the song.

The wall of sound was tricky to get, but as long as the bass sits well, the rest will follow.(I will explain how I did sidechaining below)

SIDECHAINING

Sidechained Kick with Bass,guitars,pads,Overheads

Vocals with Guitars,Pads,

Guitars with Bass, pads,

Key Lead with Pads,Guitar

Key string with Key pad

Snare with Overheads Bass,Guitars, Pads,BgVocals

Toms with Overheads, Bass, Pads, Guitars

Guitar Solo, Pads and Guitar

EFFECTS

SUB
I had a sub track for my low end,
Grouped kick,bass and toms

Normally assists getting the sub done quick rather than boosting individual elements.

DELAY+REVERB
I make sure that thay are 100% wet and sidechained where applicable.

For the vocals I added subtle delays for words said after one measure.

Since most of my signals are side chained I normally have separate faders from the busses that are connected to the mains out.
Example Incase I feel vocals are too high or low , I use the dedicated fader to reduce without affecting the balance of the mix.

The trick was getting the right kick sound, taming the high end of the drums, vocals, and tambourines and getting the wall of sound

MIXBUS
Compressor to glue everything together Ratio 2:1 Slow attack,Automatic Release Gain reduction around -0.7 to - 1db


I mixed this song with Sennheiser HD560S Headphones
DAW : Reaper
Reference: Laptop Desk Speakers, Bose QuietComfort Headphones


Link to the wav file
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Cd8R0U ... sp=sharing

Let me know, if there are any technical issues

Always love your feedback!
WMN

[LughSenderson]

Hello, very cool music to mix.

As always, my approach was quite simple. All individual equalization and compression was done on the BX SSL 9000J and VSC2 on the bus out. As effects, I used LX480 for reverbs and delays. I used some shorter ones for impactful ambience and others longer ones to prolong some instruments and create atmosphere.

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

[Mister Fox]

It's not a big thing: duplicate a track, one for each section (verse/chorus) and delete the part you don't need in each duplicated track.

I still don't fully understand. But I guess you're using something similar to a "bass trick" (parallel track, band-passed, distorted) for more flavor in certain spots.

[Alfeus Aditya]

Hi! Everyone! This is my mix


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


Let me tell you a little about this mix. Maybe I'm not much different from my friends here. So I'll just highlight a little of what I do compared to the details.

The approach I take when doing a simple mixing process, I use multibus and parallel processing as my template for years to emulate the sound of analog gears in my memory. Yes! I love Michael Brauer with him Brauerize.

Every channel that needs treatment I process using ssl 4k E from brainworx. And surgical eq using ReaEq, if special action is needed I use kirchhoff from threebody. Some use resonance suppressor like DSEQ3 and SpecCraft

I've always loved what the Api 2500 did for my drums and bass.

My treatment on vocals focuses on cleaning them rather than coloring them. I always use vocal compressor from Bertom then send it to multibus to 3 different compressor (fet, distressor, tube)

My distorted/drive guitars, most of them go to neold wunderlich. On this song i did a little re-amping with tonex. trying to keep the original color

I have a bus for widener, using tools like waves center, melda center, leapwing centerone, or even the free/cheap ones from bertom. this is the secret sauce

Masterbus with ssl compressor, machine head, other tape plugins, and bassroom to help me analyze sub and bass

edit: reverbs vintageverb and bricasti

My setup : Reaper with Babyface and EQ'd Sennheiser headphones

[unclesnuggles]

Hello everyone, here is my mix, Cubase pro 13.5, Focal CMS40. Great song! A real pleasure to mix!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/16vWBBY ... sp=sharing

I mainly did a work of gainstaging and equalizations, to make all that coexist.
My individual tracks are treated with a Century tube channel strip.
I mainly work with group tracks (drums, bass gtrs ....) all these group tracks are routed in several mixbusses, I have 3. A first one for the Drums and bass, another one for the vocals, gtrs keys ... both have a significantly different equalization and spatialization setting, for that I use the Brainworw digital and a Tubetech, these two mixbusses are sent to a last Mixbuss (comp, atr102ampex, eq).
I also use a lot of automations throughout the songs.
My main goal was to make the song more Rock than Pop. I focused my mix on guitars and vocals.

Enjoy listening!

[jw_]

It's not a big thing: duplicate a track, one for each section (verse/chorus) and delete the part you don't need in each duplicated track.

I still don't fully understand. But I guess you're using something similar to a "bass trick" (parallel track, band-passed, distorted) for more flavor in certain spots.

Pretty sure they just mean something like this (Git_Dist_L/R being the important parts), just split a track into several sections so you don't have to automate the !@#$ out of everything because they serve different functions in each of those sections.

Sorry for the straight-from-the-2000's image compression, couldn't figure out a way to upload something here on the forum itself quickly enough.

[JeroenZuiderwijk]

What a fantastic song. The energy, the lyrics…it hits hard. So thank you very much Edling voor providing this song.

Here is my mix:

https://1drv.ms/u/c/db87448a7ec47c1a/EV ... g?e=ITF33U

I mix in my homestudio. The walls (behind and next to the monitors) are treated with accoustic panels from ‘Ekustic’. I use genelecs 1030A as my main monitoring. I also check the mix on Beyerdynamic 990 Pro . I mix in Reaper (with some outboard).

The tracks are of high quality. So it was mostly about balancing the volume and some hpf-eq where it was needed.

I did use a fair amount of delay and reverb on some of the tracks. The vocal, the synths and the picking guitar all go to a delay-reverb chain. The picking guitar has got tons of delay time to create a atmosperic pad in the background that I thought contributed to the blending of the tracks.

The vocal sounded great on its own, so there was not much processing needed. Some eq, compression and volume automation. I also automated the fx send to the delay-reverb.

The drumsound I re-mixed maybe 10 times before the final mix. It was not that the drums needed much processing but I was aiming for a sound that had enough aggression (‘snap’ on the snare) without sounding harsh. I tried a lot of compressors, first I used the WarmAudio Buscomp on a parallelcomp track, it sounded great on its own but in the full mix I was missing something, it made the decaytime of the snare very long…and drowned the sound a bit in the overall mix, so I tried Blockfish (one of the best freeware plugin-oldies) that had sort of the same character with a little more aggression. That still wasn’t enough so I finaly settled for the Digital Drum Compressor (comes with Reaper). That is a really aggresive sounding compressor and then I had to work with EQ and volume to keep the transients under control because I still want the drums to sound natural.

I was in doubt about the balance between the synths and guitar. I could go for a more rock-vibe or for a more electro-pop vibe. The demo mix leaned more on the rockguitars so I went with that vibe. But I think the synths play a big part in the emotion of the song (if you mute the guitars it is still a great song) that is why I also tried to give them as much space as possible without muddying the mix.

The accoustic guitar in the break I panned to the left and sent the signal to a short delay to the right with a different eq setting to imitate a stereo sound.

Cheers,
Jeroen

[MilkMonster]

Hi all,

it's a nice indie rock song, love the vibe. My vision with this mix is to make it more open and a little bit modern sounding without sound to edgy, and punchy

- start off with cleaning up the tracks with HPF and LPF and then balancing the mix
- Kick = Shorten the sustain with transient designer, shape it with pultec and compress with 1176 rev D
- Snare = Helios EQ and going through hardware Retro double wide for some punch
- Drum bus = going through hardware Audioscape D-comp (zenner diode) for impact and punch and Ampex ATR102
- Bass = EQ with Pink (API emulation) compress with LA2A and Ampex ATR102
- Vocal = I put RVOX first to make the vocal more consistent and polish di DSEQ to tame some harshness and resonance. for the processing I use Manley Voxbox
Reverb is mixture of seventh heaven, LX480 and Glow

I'm also using Analog summing 2-bus through IGS rubber band pultec eq and Stam SA4000mk3 for glue and subtle final polish for excitement with Cranborne Carnaby. I'm using Barefoot footprint 03 while mixing this track

Enjoy ! hope you enjoy my mixes

https://drive.google.com/file/d/13nhfUo ... sp=sharing


Best regards,
MilkMonster

[Himora]

Hi, I hope all you guys are doing great! 

First of all, I'm very happy that I had the pleasure of stumbling upon this contest, and I thank all the people that came together to create the art that we do, which is music.


The original mix was good, but since mixing is subjective and every taste is different, in my opinion, it needed some sonic changes in order to juice up the soul behind the track.

As we all know, every song that we grew up listening to and enjoying was all before the digital age, so analog gear with their characters was driving the song to their final limits. The original mix was a little bit short on that three-dimensional warmth and thickness, also a bit of separation and life was needed.

In order to achieve that, Mix was done hybrid. I used certain summing chains for my master buses, an SSL 9000K for the main control and summing desk, and certain hardware compressors and EQ on my groups, mostly Neve 1073 and Pultecs, to give it a good vintage flavor.

Generally, I tried to achieve the space and depth that i was missing and tried to make the track as exciting as possible using specific saturation and compression styles and effects like chorusing and doubling.

Also automated my FX to create tension between the sections.



I hope you guys enjoy it and hit me up with your comments.


CHEERS 


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