MIX CHALLENGE - MC103 April 2025 - Submissions until 21-APR-2025 23:59 UTC+2/CEST

[fercobm]

Hello everyone, here's my mix!!!
First, the emotions I felt. I also travel a lot by car, and for me it's an ideal time to listen to and enjoy music. Sometimes melancholic, sometimes energetic. I really liked the song @Strange because, although I don't speak German, Spanish is also a very energetic language. I tried to give it punch, sonority, open up the stereo with the keyboards, and respect the song's arrangements, which are very well done.

For the mix, I used Yamaha NS10M Studio monitors, with SonarWorks Reference software.
The mix is ​​hybrid. I first work on surgical EQs in the box, then use the SSL Fusion and SSL BIX SIX on the stems.

The stems I created and processed on SSL are:
Drums
Percussion
Bass
Guitars
Keyboards
Effects
Lead Vocals
Vocals and Whistling

The final mix has also been printed via SSL.

And here is the final result

https://1drv.ms/u/c/873ff5106b23dd43/ER ... g?e=AAzsKO

[floodo]

Hi @Strange
First of all, thank you very much for sharing this very special song. Since I heard it, I clearly imagined the scene you described: people in their cars, singing with joy about their partners. That gave me a very emotional direction to work with.
My setup is quite simple but effective: I'm using a Presonus 24c interface and Presonus HD7 headphones. Although I don't work with monitors now, I made sure to do checks on different systems so that the mix translates well.
My main idea was to enhance that bouncy happy feeling you mentioned. I tried to make everything sound very open and bright, with special attention to the backing vocals, making them bigger and more embracing using parallel compression and a bit of plate reverb with modulation.
In addition, I added some little “ear candy”, like microdelays at specific moments and a subtle automatic filter on some details, so that there is movement without distracting from the main emotion.
Also the stereo opening in general is growing along with the song, reaching 100% in the last chorus, I played with the opening of the claps where they start practically panned to the center to end up in L and R in the last chorus
I simply tried to enhance the intention of the song: that nice feeling of coming home thinking about someone you love.
I hope you enjoy my interpretation of your work. It was a pleasure to work on it.
Thanks for the opportunity!

Now in the more technical part, I will name some of the things I did maybe things I did for the first time in this mix which was a top down mix
Mix bus: glue compression, a little bit of tube and tape saturation, then and this I had never done before, I put an OTT and the ik quad image.
Drum Bus: distressor, a soft Clipper, and a tdr nova working as a multiband limiter and a parallel compression with a dbx 160.
Bass Bus: Basslane to add harmonics from the highest part to the sides, hornet harmoniq that I recently acquired and I think it's wonderful and I made a cut at 60hz with 24db per octave to leave all the sub to the kick
GTR Bus: I only used a saturator
Keys bus: Uad Verve to give it a little more life, wider and I increased 4 db at 300hz, I honestly do not remember why I did it
BG Bus: an 1176, verve and a deesser

Lead Vox: used coffee the pun but only for its preamp, a tdr nova also as a sort of multiband limiter and some tape saturation

after that I just started with the mix itself, which to not make this post longer I just equalized and compressed each track as surely we have all done here.

My Mix---> https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SdZBEw ... sp=sharing

[Strange]

Hello Mix-Community

Living between Cologne and Frankfurt I was happy to see a german song here. Thank you Strange to let us work on your song.
So, here is my mix - download: https://bernbrich.de/MC103/MC103__Stran ... nbrich.wav

phpBB [media]

Mixing Environment:
Mainly on headphones as I do not have not a proper sound treatment in my room: 'Beyer Dynamoc DT880' with 'dearVR Monitor' to compensate for the headphones, no control room simulation.
Crosscheck on larger hifi speaker and car hifi and smartphone.

Main Intentions/Decisions:
- I felt like I should not change the guitar sounds too much, so I did not amp sims.
- I tuned a lot until the claps sounded a) light enough to convey an uplifting vibe and b) but also snappy.
- The high D that stands at the end indicates a kind of homecoming (in the sense of the optimistic feeling to soon arriving at the loved one). In favor to this note I did a litle fade out prior to the outro to promote this note.
- I like the waving synth sounds in the bridge/interlude that stands in contrast to the previous happy vibe. It is the question mark or the doubt within the song like 'is it really all ok? What if...?'. But soon the optimism returns and easiness finds it's way back guided by the warm pads.


Mixing:
- Bass drum: Transient work to up the attack, Toms: some compression leaving enough attack, Claps: got a bit of chorus and sent to small room reverb, Congas: Comp and reverb, Drum bus: got a bit distortion and a bit extra reverb
- Bass guitar: Comp, EQ and a bit Tape emu, the DI signal mixed in with comp and bass emphasis plus a slight sub octave
- I preserved the twang of the guitar fills, so no distortion here. But I added EQ and comp and gave them some volume movement (chopper). Other guitars got some comp and EQ.
- The e-piano got an additional movement by the use of a phaser and a rotary.
- The SFX cymbals got a plate reverb and and a valhalla delay.
- The whistles sounded good to me, compared to the synth whistle I liked the acoustic to be compressed a bit.
- The lead vocal got Comp and EQ and some stereo treatment and an effect during the interlude. As the track was not dry, I gave a little delay and send reverb.
- BG Vocals: were nice to pan them in the stereo field and they got also a bit of delay.
- Main: Final Comp and EQ

Thank you.

_____Martin :-)

Hello @mbernbrich,

thank you for sharing and mixing my song! First I'm very impressed how you present your mix,particularly how you embedded it in the post: one click to hear your mix, one click to download. How did you do this?

[UHLS]

mix download:

https://workupload.com/file/KKxckHnd64u
--------------------------------
hey guys
thanks for the opportunity to mix the song.

all tracks are mixed with Equalizer Need 84 by noise ash, and I used very little compression.
the drums have absolutely no compression, only the snare and kick I processed with smack attack.
lead vocal has gotten parallel compression, and on fill guitars I have phase misstress from soundtoys.
reverbs: uad Lexicon 224 and Soundtoys Little Plate.
delays: Waves Hdelay.

As far as emotions are concerned:
Unfortunately, I cannot serve with any meaningful answers.
I think of mixing as working in the engine room of a ship.
All elements must be well oiled into each other - only then can the passengers enjoy their ride.
Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't - the main thing is that the ship doesn't go down.

Enviroment: mixed straight with headphones only (AKG 701).

[juhu]

Hello,

1) Enjoy my mixdown of "Weg Zu Dir" by Strange:
http://tinkerstate.com/mix-challenge/MC ... __juhu.wav

2) Documentation below (click on "SHOW" to expand):

► Show Spoiler

Monitoring documentation:

• Room: wooden attic under a slanted roof, has mineral wool + styrofoam insulation inside all walls / ceiling / floor, otherwise untreated, speakers placed 45cm away from a slanted roof due to space constraints
• Main monitors: pair of HS80M with back-panel DIP switches adjusted as follows in order to accommodate near-field usage: MID EQ: -2dB 2k bell / ROOM CONTROL: -2dB 0.5k low shelf / HIGH TRIM: -2dB 2k high shelf
• Monitoring headphones: MDR-7506
• Single-driver small radio speakers: CFD-S05 via aux in

Reflection on my feelings and aim when mixing:

For me, the tune immediately felt like it’s playing on the car radio during a ride, and that’s cool so I didn’t even try to fight against this direction - simply went with the flow and worked to shape the multitracks as much as I felt was needed to make them fit together as a cohesive piece. I mostly avoided adding any unnaturally artificial treatment (with one obvious exception for an obvious reason) and tried not to remove every last bit of roughness that makes the song feel real. The latter means that I definitely did NOT aim to make every instrument clearly audible ALL the time, but rather, wanted to achieve an evolving hierarchy of sounds based on importance, seeded by pre-existing dynamics already baked-in to the multitracks and further enhanced by DAW automation. I did make heavy use of the suggested reference tune “Happy” for a light and bouncy feel, since the instrumentation is quite similar - I’m starting to suspect that at some point, “Happy” may have served as direct inspiration instrumentation-wise for “Weg Zu Dir”, except for the bridge section perhaps.

Notable processing highlights documentation:

• I shall not mention bread-and-butter EQ moves here as there are simply too many to list - just know that EQ plugins are sprinkled all over the place, preceding, following and in-between other plugins
• Didn’t re-amp anything and discarded all DI tracks
• DRM-Room SoundCity: smashed to smithereens (tastefully), then nasty ringing resonances removed with a spectral gate plugin
• OH: ducked by HH side-chain, then nasty ringing resonances removed with a spectral gate plugin
• DRM-BD: partial gate to tame excessive ringing, then parallel compression (dry/wet mix knob) followed by soft-clipping
• KICK bus: tuned the entire kick slightly lower using a Bode frequency shifter plugin as I couldn’t stand the “generic” sound produced by the original tuning in the context of this particular song, then enhanced the transient and reduced the body using an envelope follower plugin
• DRM-Snare bot: ducked by Snare top side-chain
• SNARE bus: tuned the entire snare slightly higher using a Bode frequency shifter plugin in order to better match the feel of this particular song and escape some “genericness” in the sound I was hearing, then partial gate to tame excessive ringing, then envelope follower reducing the body after the transient, then parallel compression (dry/wet mix knob) followed by soft-clipping
• Toms: each has parallel compression (dry/wet mix knob) followed by soft-clipping
• Claps: utilized tremolo LFO’s with slightly different settings on the 2 provided claps tracks in order to add dynamics and panoramic motion, also there’s an occasional delayed slapback clap added for enhanced rhythmic interest (the occasional nature of it was achieved by gating a delay plugin through yet another tremolo LFO plugin, so there was NO manual drawing of any added notes - this should therefore be fine according to the rulebook!). Finally, clap transients were enhanced using an expander plugin
• Congas: clean parallel compression (dry/wet mix knob)
• DRUMS bus (includes Claps and Congas!): Peak Compressor doing occasional 1-3dB GR / 4:1 ratio / 1ms attack / 1200ms auto release, followed by soft clipping
• Bass: first, partial gating to make the notes sound rhythmically more specific, then heavy EQ-ing to make it sound like bass again! Then 2 stages of serial compression with soft distortion after both stages, then envelope follower to enhance transients as well as sustain of the body, and finally ducked by KICK bus side-chain signal
• Lead vocals: compressed, de-essed and occasionally automated
• Back vocals: compressed, de-essed and heavily automated, additionally the “BGV li” track has a delayed duplicate panned opposite for stereo width
• Bridge section: had no choice but to treat the lead vocal with a telephone effect in the Bridge, because at the end of the Bridge there was comically unstable lead vocal pitch on a super-extended note that had to be masked - that being said, I think I’ve turned a bug into a feature here as the Bridge section is more interesting this way, and so is the return of the Chorus which now sounds bigger because of a softer Bridge
• Guitars: there’s very little processing going on except rhythmically enhanced transients on git-verse using envelope follower, some high-threshold high-ratio RMS limiting on git-fills, and, heavy EQ and ducking gymnastics on git-bridge. The latter required serious massaging to fit in with the program (I pretty much just buried it under the epic Bridge synths and called it a day)
• E-piano-chorus: enhanced the transients rhythmically using an envelope follower plugin
• Synth-Pad: ducked by E-piano-chorus side-chain, plus during the second half of the Bridge activated a tremolo LFO for periodic volume automation
• Synth-Bridge: softened the attack using an envelope follower plugin, also did some volume automation to add more macro dynamics during the Bridge
• SYNTHS bus: ducked by SNARE bus side-chain signal
• WHISTLE bus: here I’ve used a neat trick to combine the acoustic whistle with the synthetic whistle in a way that feels organic: I’ve bussed the two together with the acoustic whistle considerably louder, then compressed the WHISTLE bus heavily, causing the synthetic whistle to be ducked during the acoustic whistle transient - this method results in a beautiful seamless hand-over between the two, as if it was a single whistle that almost sings! Never-ever thought I’d be ever writing this much documentation about a whistle sound, and yet here we are!
• SFX track: high-threshold high-ratio RMS limiting
• Four main effect send busses: ROOM, PLATE, HALL, DELAY. The first three are all impulse responses with slightly customized volume envelopes, and the latter is a tape delay plugin
• Master Bus: clean-sounding Peak Compressor doing around 1-3dB GR / 4:1 ratio / 30ms attack / 800ms release, followed by a transparent Lookahead Limiter taming the leftover rogue peaks by 1-2dB, followed by transparent gain automation for subtle macro-dynamics (yes, AFTER the limiter, on purpose!)

[Ronson79]

Hi, here's my mix.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wsxGeH ... sp=sharing

My monitoring used is Hedd Type 20, smartphone and my car. (Edit after saving because one name was falsely auto corrected)

My intentions were to create a warm and welcoming sound that's easy to listen to.
Also I used compression lightly to keep the natural dynamics/groove.

Drums:
Some parallel compression on the drum bus. Otherwise just eq on some elements.
A little bit of extra drum reverb on the snare and drum bus.

Bass:
Eq, parallel comp + slight peak compression

KEys:
eq, stereo widening and some modulation, little bit compression

Synths:
some modulation and delay on the whistles, peak limiting
Bridge synth: eq and character saturation with the Telefunken Echo to support the beefiness of the part
Otherwise a bit eq on the pad.

GTRs:
played with some amps and eq to make the guitars feel right for the song, my taste and my intention.

Vocals:
Several stages of eq, compression and saturation to make it feel right. Bit of reverb, modulation and delay.

Hope you feel my version of your song. Greetings from another German.

Ronny

[filipandrei]

Hi all,

This is my take on this song:

MC103__Strange__WegZuDir__filipandrei

MIX BUS - SSL Compressor, 4:1 Ratio, Attack 10ms and auto release, aiming for no more than 4db of gain reduction, T-Racks Tape Machine 24 trying to get the input around 0db and compensate the volume afterwards

DRUMS / PERCUSSION - UAD Distressor with 6:1 ratio, squeezing about 4-7db compression with a reasonably slow attack and a fast release, followed by an Avalon VT-737 with a bit of top end and slight boost on 60Hz.
I also have some parallel compression for drums with a Neve 33609 and another one with a FATSO for some punch and Tape emulation

BASS Spliting it in highs and lows. Choosing a strong compression ratio for the low-lows, to keep this under control ( Avalon VT-737 ). I've used the DI-Bass track and ran it through a Bass Professor JS plugin, blending a bit of Bass-Amp track for a bit of low-mids

GUITARS BUS - Mild compression with an LA-3A and, followed by SSL 9000J console for a narrow 700hz boost and a bit of 10KHz.
I've also used the DI guitar tracks provided using the Genome plugin with a NAM profile from Amalgam Audio ( Fender Tweed Deluxe - Clean Warm capture )

KEYBOARDS SSL 9000j console with a bit of air EQ and HP around 80Hz, just THD cranked for some harmonics

VOCAL BUS - Started with some DeEsser / SSL 9000J for a bit of air and 10KHz clarity / LA-2A for some compression and finishing with a 902 DeEsser plugin.

I also have some effect sends to a Slap Delay (Valhalla Delay 90ms) / UAD Lexicon 224 on Plate Setting with no Bass and very low Mid reverb time and 20ms pre-delay and Convology XT with some IRs from PastToFutureReverbs (CLA 480 Vocal Plate 5 IR).

Good luck everyone

[Mister Fox]

...particularly how you embedded it in the post: one click to hear your mix, one click to download. How did you do this?

If people post on their own servers, and "streaming from there" is possible, then the [media] forum code (black playback button in rectangle in the WYSIWYG editor) can be used as a "preview playback" link. Some Cloud Services might also work - but I need to experiment further on that particular topic to give a more educated answer.

[VasDim]

Hi all,
this is my attempt to mix:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/11xu1C8 ... 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]

A friendly reminder:
Including today, 07 days left to submit your mix.


So far, we have 23 entries (compared to 120 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 will be no deadline extensions.