MIX CHALLENGE - MC056 July 2019 - Winners announced

[Armenelli]

Hey, Chris. Thanks for the feedback. As a heads up, I didn't use any stereo wideners on the guitars, just panning, and mine are noted as disappearing in mono. I usually check it in my mix room but let it to the phone listen this time. In my mix room, it's that they are just too low compared to the bass and drums; they did appear to disappear. Should have mono checked it, and the loudness. Thanks for the opportunity!

[shoma]

Hi Chris, thank you again for providing your song and your very detailed feedback. Sadly I didn't make it into the Top Ten, but then again I learned a lot from the points you've mentioned regarding my mix. The kick drum...well...that was a mistake I made short before the rendering process. I must have accidentially hit the low shelve eq and deactivating it..dumb me, not doublechecking this. The fake room-mics, generated from the overheads and treated quite heavily with DevilLoc...that change would take a matter of seconds, because it's a parallel channel and could've been lowered quickly a few db; same goes for the reverb on the snare...but anyway...it was a lot of fun and I shurely learned a lot.
Good luck to all winners. I'm very excited to hear the results from round 2 :-)

[dobebon]

Hi Chris, thanks for the feedback, very well documented and much appreciated.

Good luck to all who made it into round 2.

[RotterN]

Hi Chris, thanks for the feedback. It is super useful and will consider all your points on my next mix.

Good luck for round 2 everyone.

[White Punk OD]

....
Without that feedback i would probably never have noticed, that i accidentally loaded nectar3 with activated pitch correction into my main vocal-strip.
Sounded wrong the whole time to me, but i not listened to the raw track or other mixes enought to realize that this was my fault.
...

I have met many great guys, and those who were brilliant in their particular craft, and also very sensitive, passionate and compassionate etc., sometimes seem to hit a wrong button occasionally, or mix up left and right, plus or minus for a moment, and then it became a matter of humor and a good laugh about human imperfection.
so, in reality, of course there is a relationship that allows time to detect and correct mistakes, and go on successfully. a gaming situation with much less mercy is quite a good rehearse. we must hone our precision still.


-----
The mono issue, so what's the purpose in the first place. If there was more time, there will be a discussion about the target audience, and whether they need any mono compatibility at all. The big cats in the craft have very different opinions about this, while they can perfectly deliver what is required. Some say, they see "mono" as entirely obsolete and stone-age because of the trade-off in art, others do a meticulous mono check on principle.
But sometimes there is an artsy idea and sound concept that wouldn't be possible on vinyl, and will trigger a little correlation issue. But with headphones/ear buds or on CD in a car, can be exciting.
FM Radio is the difficulty, and many mastering engineers have some emulation to check it out. There is limited capacity for content that has the correlation meter in the red, because it delivers mono in the first place, and stereo (side signal) is an additional feature in the broadcasting format, and has its own way of limiting etc., all that super complex radio post processing.

Technically, hard-panned stuff even without anti-phase/correlation issue, will suffer from the mono switch almost every time, and there will be a little iteration of adjustments until the sweet spot can be found.

-----
While the client has his legit purpose and goal, the "crowd chat" for the game is equally essential, to gain some benefit for all participants.
Because everyone has their own taste and musical emotion, and the multitude, especially in the global digital culture, will widen insight and perception about what might be liked, and what might gain attention. All these nishes and pockets can become great opportunities.
I'm really happy to see people from India, Japan, South America, Russia, etc.... !

[Bombest Bomb]

Hi Chris

I just came back to check this after giving you a few days to go through them and I am extremely impressed with the spreadsheet you set up for your notes. It was great to get a chance to see your thoughts on the mix, so thank you very much for that!

For everyone moving on to round 2, best of luck!

[Al B.]

Hi Chris, thank you for your feedback.

[TomImmon]

In the past it was all about technically necessary mono compability, today mixing in mono is still a good way to test the balance in the mix. Technically, the correlation is more important, which you can hear but better measure. Listening to all the relevant devices of the target group is best of all, because what sound and stereo processors in smartphones, tablets, and TV make of the audio material is hard to predict. If you want to bring the track to vinyl, you will certainly do an additional mastering. Even correlation problems can be tackled there, but with significant changes in the audio material. Almost the most important thing today in my opinion is the headphones compatibility, because not every stereo effect sounds good on it. Also some positions in the stereo image can be over headphones sound as too extreme, or as not extreme enough. So, testing on as much devices as possible has always been important and nothing has changed to this day.

Although Chris has criticized my mono mix, I mix at the beginning of a mix always in mono to level the tracks. I also constantly check the correlation afterwards, especially when I am using stereo effects or pulling instruments wide. The Monomix I control at the end again, but go more to the correlation. For me it must sound good in mono, as long as the correlation is right, but there may be changes in the sound quality for my taste. How much depends of course on the client, the musical genre and the target audience.

@Chris, thank you for your great feedback to all participants. This is a great orientation for all of us. It makes your decision transparent - great! it's only my second participation here, but I guess not every client has made so much effort.

@ Mr Fox: Thanks for that great service here! All rules for participation are really clear and sometimes described several times. Nevertheless, there seem to be always misunderstandings. Maybe because everything is described in too much detail? You know, long reading is not is not everyone's hobby ;-). So, how about a small tabular checklist (maybe printable)? according to the principle:
Sample rate = 48khz? Check!
LUFS <= 16db? Check!
No Mastering on Mixbus? Check!

BTW, good luck for everyone who is going to round 2!

[tiptoe3]

Hi Chris,
found some time to get into your exel sheet and need a different browser for
a complete view. That´s really a big effort you put into. Awesome.

One thing i would like to express: You got me complete wrong about the
production side. I don’t want to offend anybody. It´s the opposite. There came
up some comments about how the songs was made and recorded.
This has nothing to do with the purpose here. It is a mix job.

It should sound more like stopp whining guys, get the job done. mixes to
be made.
Sorry if you got it the wrong way.

Cheers, tiptoe3

[soetZA]

Hi Chris thanks for the feedback, firstly we seem to disagree on the kick, I like that sort of kick sound on my rock music as for it being to loud that's
a easy fix. But I could change the sound too. I also definitely could fix summing to mono. The bass is not only in the sub frequency it was deliberately pulled back in the mix but also an easy fix if one was to want it more present. The guitars have FX on them but not delay I do not believe delayed
guitars were needed. Could add chorus? Listening to the mix again I needed to remove more mud, that's why summing to mono gets washed out.
There was no limiting just a small amount of transients that peak higher than the rest probably the kick in this case. I've heard a lot of mixes
and seen you commenting on mixes adding instruments to the song, this is mixing not production, if you were to release those mixes as a
final to your song these engineers would have to get be credited as producers and would also have to be compensated through royalties
if you were to release the track. Anyway it was fun mixing the track. Cheers