MIX CHALLENGE - MC104 June 2025 - Mix Round 1 in evaluation

[gloukin]

Hi All, its good to be back. I haven't been around for a couple years and my account was deleted.

Anyway, what an excellent song to come back to.

Mixed in Luna, listening through UA Apollo Twin X Gen 2 with SoundID into M-Audio BX8s and DT 770 Pro 250 Ohm in a semi-treated room.

SSL Native Channel Strip 2 on all channels, mainly for high/low pass filtering, subtle EQ and very subtle compression on a couple of channels.
Drum bus feeds into Studer A800 tape - SSL Native Drum Strip and into SSL Native Bus Compressor 2.
Vocals are running through SSL Native Channel Strip 2 into SSL Native Vocal Strip 2 summed into the Vocal Bus and into the SSL Native Bus Compressor 2.
I used 3 different reverbs: Perfect Room 2 for Snare, Lexicon 224 for Synths and another Perfect Room 2 for Vocals as well as Cooper Time Cube for Delay.

Master feeds into SSL Native Bus Compressor 2 then into Studer A800 and Cambridge EQ for final correction.
All compressors are doing 1-3db of reduction max.

Hope everyone enjoys it!

Update:
Probably enjoyed trying to fit various synths into the mix the most working out the sonic landscape I wanted to present. Working on vocals was also fun and challenging.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/z63okuew ... 0kkhs&dl=0

[SDB_12]

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/vja1ibgn ... kuhhj&dl=0

Hi all!

What a great song and production, wow! Well done BenjiRage!!!!

Here is my mix, I had a lot of fun experimenting and playing with this one!

Mixed using NS-10M’s with an HSU sub in a pretty well treated room. Also referenced on Dynaudio LYD 48’s with 18s sub, Steven Slate VSX 5.0 (the new update) and Audeze MM-500 headphones.

Used a lot of analog gear. I mixed through a Rascal ToneBuss summing mixer. It has two separate mix bus outputs in which I had an Alan Smart C1LA compressor and a pair of Audioscape EQP-A EQ’s (Pultec clones!)..and blended the two.

I ran various tracks out through SSL 611 EQ’s, Heritage Audio 1081 EQ/Pres, and CAPI EQ’s, Audioscape 1176’s, AML 52f50 compressors, etc.. The vocal for instance went through an Audioscape Bluestripe 1176 and into Neve 542 tape emulator. All of this was then printed back into the session.

I can’t remember exactly what I did with settings as I was going and printing as I went. But my goal was to try and make the chorus really explode and feel like waves crashing. So the mixbus is automated in Pro Tools to get wider and bigger on the chorus. I also worked hard on getting the bottom end full and consistent.

One thing I’d mention is that I spent a lot of time listening to the bass tracks and the kick. I ended up having to automate a phase flip on the sub rhythm track for different parts of the song…I noticed that it seemed to be going in and out of phase with the Diva Bass track in certain sections…so I listened and kept flipping phase to keep the bottom end more consistent. I then grouped those together and flipped the overall phase of the Bass group track, as I thought it sounded better that way with the kick.

Again, great song and thanks so much for allowing us to mess around!

[Pavel Nebesky]

Hi all,

This is a great, nicely produced song and it was a pleasure mixing it.

Here is my mix:
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/rg675jy9 ... 25u0k&dl=0

Mixed in an untreated room, using Adam Audio 5" and Presonus 8" speakers with Sonarworks Sound ID Reference software. I also use Steven Slate Audio VSX headphones and software. Studio One 6 DAW
I used my top down mixing template:
Mix bus - Acustica Audio Ash clipper, Cytomic The Glue compressor (both about 1 dB of reduction), Tone Projects Michenangelo eq and Waves Linear Phase Multiband Compressor at the end of the chain.
Not too much eq and compression on separate tracks, mostly on busses to glue everything together (compression) and sculpt when necessary with broad eq moves.
Vocals - Noiseworks DynAssist as a first plugin on each track, UAD LA2A + UAD 1176 with FabFilter Pro Q4 where necessary. UAD Studer A800 and Oeksound Soothe on vocal buses.
Moderate amout of automation, just to make certain parts pop out a little bit more.

Cheers, Pavel

[Quince]

Here, I share my mix with you guys. I hope you enjoy my taste!

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

Project Approach Explanation (that nobody is going to read):

Monitoring and Software: A couple of years ago, my house was robbed while I was on vacation, and I returned to find it nearly empty. A few weeks later, I faced a health issue with a family member. So for now, I’m using my fancy QKZ AK6 IEMs as my only monitoring system. I also found a 2013 Core i3 PC with 4GB of RAM in my friend’s basement. I installed software for which I could recover licenses, including Studio One 6, an older version of FabFilter, an older Slate Digital VMR, and a few Waves plug-ins. With the current setup I’m managing projects with up to 50 stems for now, relying heavily on bouncing and freezing tracks - as you might have guessed!

As Benji requested, I made the mix lush, wet, and reverby, especially on the keys, while making the drums and bass punchy and powerful to push as much air as possible through the consumers' speakers or headphones.

Drums: I tried to add some weight to the kicks using MaxxBass and applied saturation to the snare with Studio One’s stock distortion plug-in. Also made kicks and bass in phase with each other by slightly moving the bass lines and flipping them in some parts - so they won't cancel each other and stay punchy without the need to rise the kicks' faders. The speakers will never throw much air if the kicks and bass aren't in phase.
I also used heavy parallel compression on the drum bus with Slate Digital’s 1176.

Bass: The Diva bass was really versatile and I enjoyed working on it. Applied some saturation and some typical EQ.

Vocals: I would’ve loved to tune the vocals, however Benji asked us not to. So, I only applied de-essing, mild LA-2A parallel compression, along with reverbs and delays, and a bunch of automation!

Master bus: Some light clipping, and filtering automation.

Thanks Benji and the moderators.
Best regards,
Quince

[marc clement]

MC104__BenjiRage__AboveTheClouds__marc clement/44.1/24bit -16.1 LUFS, -5.1 TP

Hi All,

Thanks to BenjiRage for uplaoding the tracks. Really well presented tracks.

Felt like going for the 80s vibe so tried to use tools from that era. I had Aphex Exciter, H3000 on microshift setting and Clearmountains domain on aux sends. Also a booth, room and plate reverb , all from Relab.

On most of the keys I used Azero by Acustica, which is an emulation of different kinds of sampler ADA conversion, seemed appropriate and just pushed into them
for some saturation.
Also on most of them i used Corn, an emulation of the stereo section from a Prophet synth I believe. Soundtoys Space bender for reverb.

Vocal Chain; Tape emulation with EQ (Taupe Studio by Acustica), DeEss, Pulsar 1178, DeEss, Cla Vox for some FX, Dove (kinda like Soothe)


Mix Bus; Fairchild emulation, needle hardly moving on program 5. SSL Fusion for a little drive. Ivory 5 eq becuase i like the pre, no eq and Taupe Studio tape emulation.

ASH, another sample of a converter just to turn the mix down to fit within requested parameters.

Monitoring is Neumann KH120s in a semi treated room. I use ARC studio room correction.

Hope you like it

Marc


https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LiPON7 ... sp=sharing

[Dodgingrain]

My mix is here: https://1drv.ms/u/c/6b8275e712f941aa/Eb ... Q?e=QeCr7R

I enjoyed the song, thanks for the opportunity to mix it.

mix notes:
Drums: Compression and exciters on the hats. The toms have some panning work to make them a little wider so they don't get lost in the mix. The kick has some gating to try and prevent it from dragging to much on the groove. The kicks also have substantial eq cutting in the mid range to help make space. The drum bus has a little bit of volume automation to help differentiate some of the song sections.

Bass: The bass is ducking a little bit when the kick hits and has a little bit of eq to bring up the higher frequencies. Overall there isn't much done to the bass.

Guitar parts: A little bit of eq and some automation on the reverb.

Synths: Saturation, saturation, and more saturation. Some eq cutting to keep them from drowning the track. There is also a substantial amount of volume automation both to make the sections stand out and within sections so there is some changes going on to keep the listener interested.

Vocals: These are tough since they are not natural and are missing a lot of air. There is some initial compression and dessing to even them out but then lots of high end air added. There also is reverb automation and substantial delays added to different parts.

Mix bus: Just tape saturation and some basic glue compression.

[Mork]

Hey,

great song, thank you @BenjiRage !

Hmm, this one's hard to describe. I referenced the original mix, threw the faders up and started exploring what goes where. It stood out to me that the chorus had to be an explosion. Gladly that explosion is built into the arrangement so it has to be unleashed. The two chorus pads play a major role in this. The airy pad is thinned out with a low shelf, so it sits on top of the diva pad. Both are widened a little and bussed into airwindows tape, to form one cohesive block of pad
I went for a not so subtle reverb vibe, which has been challenging because of the many things that are going on. Sadly there's no magic bullet, so careful balancing and eqing had to be done, but of course that goes for every mix.

Mixed in Reaper and (since I'm on the road) only on LCD-X. Double checked on AirPods Pro.

https://icedrive.net/s/a2Y5ZCNWN2XxhhDTx4gaPWR8xvvQ

[Stfh]

Hi,

thank you @BenjiRage for your great composition.
I really love the vibe of your song - a fine piece of music, in my opinion.
Allthough I've to admit that the story behind what lead you to create this song is quite sad. I hope you're fine and make the best out of it.
You have my best wishes for the future.
To @Mister Fox thank you for keeping the challenge alive - it is a great oppourtunity to learn in the field of Audio Engineering.

I usually mix on a roughly 11 year old Daw with cubase 8.5, rme sound card and akg k701 headphones (might not be the best solution I quess). Since my room isn't acoustically treated I generally don't use speakers.

Hereinafter my submition:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fxZrGa ... p=drivesdk
(I might've hit the wrong samplingrate with 44.1 kHz).

To all other participants I want to say that I've heard really good mixes so far, very well done .

I grouped the single tracks in subgroups.
HiHats, Snares and Claps, Toms, Kicks -> Drums,
Ochestra like,
Vocals and
Others.

For the Vocals (front) I used a delay with reverb.
Backings are panned hard L+R with parallel reverb fx channel.

The snare is compressed via the standard channel strip compressor and recived some good old plate hall.
All other snare and clap like sounds are added in the subgroup without further changes other than a light group compressor.

The base drum ist compressed as well I used both available tracks grouped together.

HighHat (mono) is panned to what I tought could be it's position in the stereo track.

Toms recived a bit of standard compression and a low cut.

The subgroup drum is also slightly comperssed (minimaly).

I didn't do much to the bass other than to limit some frequencies (standard static eq) - that is just personal tase.

Tracks that i found to be orchestra like didn't recive any treatment... originally I used a high shelf but reversed it later because I lost to much mids compared to your example mix. (To be fair I cut of everything below 90Hz since there was a digital none necessary signal present - which seems to be quite common with samples and in digital devices such as keyboards etc.).

Everything elese was grouped in the subchannel "other" since I didn't want to route them directly out.
This group is ducked by the vocals. As well as the "funky parts" (key ob and key plucky) are ducked ... that ist done via sidechain between those two tracks... the effect could be more present ...

For the keys in the (I call it) solo part I used a Stereo delay (Standard).
Left 1/2 right 1/8, feedback 40, hard panned to their respective sides, directly routed into a standard Reverb (to seperate them and to make clear that this is an effect).

I hope my mix isn't too bad.

[DRSNIOTAM]

Hello Peeps This is my first Mix Challenge

Thanks to BenjiRage for the Multitracks, Love the song a pleasure to work with and learn from
listening tho everyone's mixes Is fascinating and interesting to hear everyone's different styles
Sorry for the poor write-up skills

There was a lot of percussional instrumentation going on so mixing this into its 3d spaces was fun, using a combination of stereo expander on the airypad, Arp Shimmer on the Auto panning, Fantasia LCR parallel delays, Mid/Side EQing on the blips
All added to a group channel for some glue saturation low-end rolloff

Typical Chain := Inf EQ - KHz Distortion - New York Preamp Harmonica - Khz Stereo - MUtility - Valhalla VintageVerb

Vocal Chain := Inf EQ - FG116 Vintage - Eiosis Air EQ - Elosis E2Deesser - SSL X Delay - Verbsuite Classics Vocal Plate -

Mix Bus := {VBC Rack - FG-RED - FG-GREY - FG-MU} - Eiosis Air EQ -

Monitoring := Beyerdynamic DT 770

Daw := Cubase 14 Pro

https://1drv.ms/u/c/d34a129a3f09cf80/Ef ... g?e=riAIrr

[patlutz]

My mix: https://drive.google.com/file/d/12oKyhn ... sp=sharing

DAW: Studio One Pro 7.2

Monitoring: Slate VSX, Archon Studio room, mid-fields

Plugins used: Softube, Fabfilter, Waves, Sonible, Universal Audio, Izotope, Valhalla DSP, Wavesfactory, Eventide, Soundtheory, oeksound

Approach: went for a bit more of a cleaner, modern mix as I wasn't a big fan of the demo mix personally. Quite a bit of corrective EQing throughout, especially on the keys. A bit of clip gain automation on the keys as well to control some wild peaks. Not too much processing on individual drums, except on the hats, as I tried to keep things cohesive with bus processing. Tried out a UAD chain and Sonible's new smart:reverb 2 on the vocals and I'm pretty happy with the results there particularly (also very impressed with the fact that these came from Synthesizer V). A bit of ducking, EQ, compression and saturation on the bass. Ran the mix bus through a Weiss chain to wrap it all up. Like some others have said, one of the biggest challenges here was balancing everything - hopefully I did alright.

Good luck to everyone.