MIX CHALLENGE - MC045 July 2018 - Winners announced

[DQB]

First mix on this page!

I did not used the DI tracks of the bass and the guitars.

DRUMS:
HP filtered Kick Out to get only the punch and combine it with the Sub one, for getting more clean subs.
Basic EQing on the rest of the drums.
Drum Buss:
Molot Compressor to add character, but with a medium attack to keep the transients.

BASS:
Molot Compressor and ADHD Leveling tool and EQ boosting some lows.

GUITARS:
Some saturation on mid-high freq. DC1A2 Compressor and EQ for eliminate some annoying resonances.
Harmonic exciter on the highs and a very subtle Phaser effect on top of all.

VOCALS:
ADHD Leveling tool to compress the signal and a Deesser.
Backing vocals: EQ on mids to give room to the Lead vocal.
Vocals Buss: Harmonic exciter on miss and more EQing.

2 Chroma Reverbs: one for the drums and another for the rest.

Mix bus: Small EQ tweaks, Tube Harshness Control bx_refinement and an stereo spreader. SPAN for metering and Magic AB for references.

mp3: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1BZaC1 ... swlB3zEcgG
wav: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1_60Aw ... sxFz3MraFW

[davidpaulpaige]

Well this one was awesome! I got to use some stylistic compression!
Drums:
Got the overheads and the room to get along. I used eq and compressor on the SSL G Channel to get some vintage "vibe" going. Generous amount of parallel compression on the whole kit with some filters. I know, why not just send some things and not the whole kit. In this case it fit the production style.
The kick track has 2 compressors on the Outside Kick, one releasing late and one later at a 1/64 note, i think it was like 43ms.
Bass: Bass Amp, I just bumped up 6K with a wide Q, hi-passed everything above 45Hz. The bass DI, I made an amp sim with a bit of harmonic distortion and hi-passed above 70Hz.
The guitars are hi passed above 180Hz. I used the DI tracks to add some production value to the quiet sections with added chorus and harmonizer. Didnt eq hard for them they sounded to me like care was taken to get a great tone that matched the sound and feel of the track. Just felt like the quieter sections needed some modernizing. The guitar buss has an API 2500 lightly compressing on the loudest sections because I felt it imparted a good warmth and girth to the tracks. Made them fell bigger without being louder.
Vox are compressed, eq'd, hi passed. I added some weird delays to some of the bg vox. I liked it thought it was just "normal" enough and really helped push the bg vox into the background.
Last but not least, a bit of 2 buss compressing and I did place a hardware limiter last, it got nice and loud without damaging my mix. I used it for volume because mine was notably lower than the original, and put it on AFTER I did the mix with the 2 buss SSL ratio 2:1 and releasing to the tempo of the song.
The Hardest thing: It was very difficult not to make this track into a metal genre.
The Best part: Listening back I felt like that's what I heard in my head from the beginning. I did spend more than usual time on this one, I have a 2 hour, let's see what you can do, philosophy on free work. I believe the track could benefit from a bit more automation but I'm satisfied I did the best I could and delivered what I imagined. Thank you very much for providing these tracks so everyone can learn and grow.
My Mix:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/6a4zax74nlsp ... FcZNa?dl=0

[maxovrdrive]

This is my first time to enter this competition, and I'm excited to hear your comments.

My mixing style is usually from the top-down. I start processing at the 2-bus, then work my way down, to eventually the track level. I have a submaster group, which all the other subgroups go to. I have groups for drums, bass, guitars, background vocals, and lead vocals. So it's 2-bus, submaster, groups, then tracks.

In all my groups, there's some processing going on. After all this, if individual channels/tracks need further processing, that's the only time I go in and apply individual processing.

No references were used except the ones provided.

It is however worthy to note that I did some heavy processing on the vocals, primarily minimizing the esses without dulling the track -- not that easy for me.

I'm more than happy to provide more detailed information, if asked. Thank you very much.

Here is my mix:
https://soundcloud.com/maxovrdrive/mc04 ... ez/s-5AlOG

[marc clement]

Hi Fajebru,

Thanks for submitting the song!

DRUMS- ssl channel strip and TG 12345
BASS- ssl and rbass

GUITARS- comped 1,2 and 3 to make one double tracked part
and blended virtual amp with something a bit cleaner and more mid

4+5 are panned ....6 is 6


BVS AND LEAD VOX individually compressed with dbx 160...de-essed....eq,
added 1/8 triplet delay to chorus ...

Rear bus compression+Schepps 2 bus chain

MP3. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1X1Jkv4 ... sp=sharing

WAV. https://drive.google.com/file/d/124q022 ... sp=sharing


Hope you like it

Marc Clement

[Dr.Acula]

Thanks for the mixing contest!

Guitar:
Reamped Di´s (chorus), Eq, saturation, phaser after 2. chorus

Bass:
Split into Low and High Bass, saturation, eq, multiband compresssion, room

Vocals:
Saturation, eq, compression, room, reverb 1/2, chorus, delay, wide saturation, dyn. eq

Drums:
Saturation, eq, compression, different room/ reverb plugins, large room plugin on the snare (hit before the chorus) as an effect, saturation

mp3: https://www.dropbox.com/s/c3earcxfjls90 ... a.mp3?dl=0
wav: https://www.dropbox.com/s/yp3muaqjesw4t ... a.wav?dl=0

[3ee]

hope to catch the deadline! Cool song, quality tracks..

[Kellox]

Hi Everyone.

I've worked a lot with the room mics to get a more aggressive sound.

And I've played around with the DI guitars giving them a different attitude.

I also worked with the vocals and the FX.

Here is my mix: https://www.dropbox.com/s/1t6a0e8840hv9 ... r.wav?dl=0

[Al B.]

Hello! This is my first contribution. Here my mix description:

I inserted a tape machine in the master channel. Nothing else, since no mastering is desired.

I routed the main voice and the doubles together into a group channel and then tamed them with two compressors. First with a fast limiter and then with a slow compressor. Afterwards I removed some upper heights with the de-esser. Then I cleaned up the bass area with a high pass filter, removed some lower mids and added some upper mids. Then I tamed the upper mids again with a dynamic EQ so that the vocals fit better in the mix. Then I added some parallel compression, ambience and delay to the group channel.

I routed all background voices into a new group channel and tamed them again with a fast limiter and then with a slow compressor. Then I removed the Esses with the De-Esser so that these do not add up with the main voice. Then I cleaned up the bass area with a high-pass filter and boosted the midrange a bit. Then I added some Ambience and Delay again.

I routed the kickdrum tracks into a kickdrum group channel. On the kickdrum group channel I inserted a gate to remove the snare and cymbals. Then I added an EQ with a highpass filter and also removed the lower mids and added a lot of upper mids.

I routed the snare drum tracks into a snare drum group channel. On the snare drum group channel I added another gate to remove the kickdrum and cymbals. Afterwards I added some punch with a compressor and some upper mids with the EQ. I gave the snare a short plate reverb.

The tom-tom tracks are routed into a tom-tom group channel and are not further processed. I also gave the tom-tom group channel some short plate reverb.

Ride and hi-hat are routed into a cymbal group channel. In the group channel I have an EQ with a high pass filter and a boost of the upper mids and highs.

Overheads like ride and hi-hat.

I didn't use the room tracks.

All drums and cymbals go into a drum group channel. I didn't insert anything on the drum group channel. I compressed the group channel again in parallel and added some Ambience Reverb.

I inserted an amp simulation into the bass DI track and compressed it. Then a high pass filter.

All guitars are routed into a guitar group channel. I compressed the group channel and added some overtones with an exciter. Then I inserted an EQ with a high pass filter. I compressed the group channel in parallel and sent it to a room reverb.

That's all. Thank you.

Edit: I updated my mix because I found out that my new little PC speakers, on which I checked my mix first at night, extremely compress and distort the sound. I only realized that later.

MP3
https://dl.dropbox.com/s/fdd46vsclkffye ... B.mp3?dl=0

FLAC
https://www.dropbox.com/s/7w5osvpluje9d ... .flac?dl=0

[Waleed Morris]

What happen to -18 dbfs ? just saying !!

[Michael B]

Hi all,

This is my first post and I’m glad I found this mix competition. I am always looking for motivation to practice mixing.

Here is my mix:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1JTFUt ... 2T6Zdf6xtS

In general, I tried to keep to the guidelines provided with an emphasis on providing a well balanced mix. I haven’t had much experience mixing vocals in a different language, so this was an interesting challenge.


Master Bus: Only Izotope Insight for Monitoring

Drums:

Kick, snare, and toms: Used expanders, compressors and parallel compression to shape slap and punch of each drum.

Overheads: Used Waves S1 to make the overall stereo image a little bigger. I had a hard time getting a natural sound from the overheads. A little parallel compression on the overheads to bring up low level detail.

Rooms: I used the Room mics to make the kit sound a little more natural.

Guitars:

A little Fab Filter Saturn to add bite to the guitars. Short delays used to create smearier sounding guitars.

Bass:

Rather a lot of compression used to keep the bass present. Lots of high-mids EQ’d to give the bass some growl.

Lead Vox:

EQ’d a bit of low end out to keep the vocal presence. Compressor with low ratio (1:1.5) used to keep the vocals a little more even. A lot of manual compression (moving the fader) used as well. A touch of reverb to make the vocal blend in better.

BGV Vox:

Compression to keep everything at a good level and some reverb and delay to push the BGVs back in the mix.

I used mostly Fab Filter plugins with a few stock Avid plugins.

That's the gist of what I did. I'm happy to be more specific.

Thanks for listening!