MIX CHALLENGE - MC056 July 2019 - Winners announced

[Marc Rapture]

What's up everyone!

Here's my submission for round 2.

WAV: https://www.dropbox.com/s/cuqutrajqu1or ... 2.wav?dl=0

MP3: https://www.dropbox.com/s/tek6gj5b70tnn ... 2.mp3?dl=0

Made all the proper revisions. Added some width to the overall stereo field. A little M/S processing and added a limiter to the mix buss. I also did a little EQ boost around 200HZ to the bass track and increased the overall loudness to the mix.

Thank you Chris for this great mixing opportunity and putting my mix in round 2! And thanks for the insightful details you provided us for this mix challenge. It's the best I've seen so far!

And to everyone else in the top 10, good luck! May the best mix win!

Have a great weekend, Cheers!

Marc

[White Punk OD]

.... today mixing in mono is still a good way to test the balance in the mix ....

The issue is not that I would not fully agree. Just saying, different tactics exist.

Only in this special case, with limited capacity, it is my deliberate strategy to move any issues away from the musical corner into a technical.
Then, the audience out there might say "Sound quality is mediocre but I love the singer, what a strange but nice song! Lets hit the replay button." (or watch the live show)
For those, to whom the product is "accessible" via their device, but that's a wide field with very diverse age brackets and listening habits.
Personally, I never listen to music on a gadget. Only with big headphones with a good sound card.
The YMMV thing.

The band may or may not like my approach, as it is not possible to communicate in detail beforehand. But one or the other comrades here might find it interesting, many thanks if so.

On another note, in some mixes, I see some "static" reverb applied, that created a steady, calm, room experience. While I used reverb that creates more of this "ocean wave" impression. For the storytelling around the song, we might ask, how can we have the music describe that post-addiction feeling, to create the closer approach? Would I sit and comtemplate, or - in avoidance of the substance - would I fight and jump and stumble, and run away from my own self?
(Anecdotally, I know about a guy who was an "Idol" singer, and later became very unhappy, and jumped from a cruise ship, not far away from where the Titanic sank, and is considered dead in the waves.)

So that's my point. With a limited recording, issues will come out in the classic triangle: fast, cheap, and with greatest quality. Not.
Capacity (budget), musical quality, technical quality. There will be a trade-off.
From my position, I can gladly afford to put every effort into the side of music.
But it has to have a bold style. As Warren Huart says: "There must be something wrong. We need it so and it creates energy and impact. The know-how is how to do this to make it good not bad."

It is clear to me why the scoring system provided by Mr.Wilson is more on the technical side, and my achieved ranking is totally fair.
He wants to explore what can be done with this recording in terms of audio technology.

It would be utterly exciting to have comrades here who own the full Zynaptiq and IZotope suites and what not, so we can get serious, huge case studies!


For the total other side of our example, we might take into account, that an industry guy could say "Normally, we do not deal with imperfect recordings, as we ARE the ones that create perfect recordings in our 5 studio rooms 24/7. And in this case we are going to call in two session musicians, and tomorrow we have perfect recordings of this song, which costs us 600 extra. Take it or leave it."

Which of course is not the purpose of Chris and his friends, and there is a lot of business out there for local studios, to support this type of local artists.

----
So, i examined a bit further.
To get better mono compatibility, I can use detailed M/S EQ, to get the much better separation that is then required.
But then also, the mentioned cymbal that has lower frequencies than usual, will start to conflict with the guitars.
Still not sure what to do without making the sound too sterile. Would perhaps become a job to some algo plugin to specifically select this cymbal and give it a special space that somehow brackets the guitar sounds. Which is a bit dynamic.

Next issue, in mono, the timing difference among the guitars becomes crucial. So perhaps, the HF or air band or strumming sounds of one guitar should push away this area from the other guitar, that we found to be less precise. Which though would hurt the stereo image. Trade-off again.
Or, we can master some elastic algo and smoothly align ALL the guitar timing. I have a limited elastic tool and I am not good at this, but it would be exciting to hear a good example by one of the other contestants.
It becomes even more of a challenge, when drums were not played on grid but have an exotic groove that must not get destroyed.

If I reduce the "industrial" reverb, I also need to correct the timing and volume of many more snare hits. Which will make the performance less organic.
Some snare hits sound muffled and get drowned, therefor everyone uses samples. But here with the rules, we need automated EQ, or some algo plugin that creates the regulated snare sound, practically turning every snare hit into its own sample that is re-engineered.
(Personally, I love organic drums without any samples.)

Just another 2 cents humbly, while waiting for completion of the #56 challenge. Cheers!

[shroom feverish]

Here is Round 2 submission.
WAV
https://drive.google.com/file/d/18n6Hkj ... sp=sharing
MP3
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PYPTW9 ... sp=sharing

Round2 edits.
Lowered volume on ride/cymbal track at the end.
Shelving EQ to cut 70Hz on Kick/Bass group.
Baxter EQ to lift 3-4k on Snare group.
Vocal volume lifted 2db, added reverb.
Compression and volume lift on Reverb/Delay/Chorus group

Mix notes.
Kick – FabFilter Saturn for tape attack/compression/saturation, Compression/Limiting to even out dynamic. EQ to lower resonance frequencies. Both kick tracks got different settings and then sent to group to add more compression.
Bass – FabFilter Saturn for tape attack/compression/saturation, Compression/Limiting to even out dynamic. EQ to lower resonance frequencies.
Snare – Both tracks got FabFilter Saturn for tape attack/compression/saturation, Compression/Limiting to even out dynamic. EQ to lower resonance frequencies with different settings.
Cymbals – HiPass filter from around 400hz, shelving eq boost around 10k
Guitars – Two tracks were used for left and right pan and one for center. EQ to lower resonance frequencies and boost around 5k and 12k
Vocals – Main vocal got EQ to lower resonance frequencies and boost over 5k, Compression and distortion. Cubase Variaudio tuning, one parallel track with iZotope VocalSynth 2processing.
Back vocals were processed separately with eq, delay, reverb, compression and sent to group for compression and eq to add color.

Three different reverbs were used for sends on every track.
Soundtoys and Native Instruments delay on Guitar and Vocals

Thank you.

[Chriswilson83]

It would be utterly exciting to have comrades here who own the full Zynaptiq and IZotope suites and what not, so we can get serious, huge case studies!!

I do own such tools (not from those people though) and was looking at every mix through spectrometers and geniometers whilst listening to them to help guide me towards anything to check, to comment specifically on that for 73 mixes in addition to what I already did would have been killer. Much for the same reasons I didn't go further into finding the exact reasons why some mixes had low volumes yet no headroom.
.

[White Punk OD]

Good to make this known, well this is one side of the aisle: very detailed and deep metering.
The other side would be, different use of the processing on the material, to discuss what could be achieved with a particular technique, and what wasn't.

I left in as much dynamics as possible, after having made the experience, that the mastering engineer has always the better compressors, and the more dynamics he receives, the more he can preserve. There could be still a bit more automation for a couple of the peaks, to tame the culprit (snare hits) in particular. Sounds always better, same with (additional) manual de-essing.

(Some peaking snare hits are as loud as others, but the phase progression is different. Thus, the solution is not limiting, but dispersion.)

[Psymfonius]

Good day guys;

Here is my submission for round 2:

WAV:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/3om7kjtwduziw ... 2.wav?dl=0

MP3:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/20f142bpps6nw ... 2.mp3?dl=0

For this revision I added some headroom and adjust the stereo field and the width by rechecking M/S processing proper tracks.
I worked on OH, balanced and polished some frequencies on snare,OH, Guitars and kick.
Also enhanced reverb on some tracks like guitars, drums bus just a little bit.

Thanks and regards,

[3ee]

hi!

here's my R2 mix:

wav: https://app.box.com/s/t8tyemsblpwoppw7ph98qreabxjhwnxl
mp3: https://app.box.com/s/32rg23uzkcatjzgwora2ve3fq35i0l50

Made the changes from the feedback and then some more:

- intro gtr parts are more refined now. Took out the 'glossy chorus' which made it sound a bit cheap and re-filtered the sound to still be lo-fi but smoother
- re-did the vocal delays + automation and used more amount.. also used a large reverb send as well for a different feel of ambiance.. More "ghost" if you will...
- bass gtr more solid especially in the low-end and better blended/leveled in the mix now.
- snare has a bit more bottom punch now + the whole drum kit is a tiny bit 're-mixed' to feature a bit more overheads. Now it should sound clearer, stereo image is better defined/rounded.
- I got a better sense on how loud you want the piano track from the other mixes+feedback so piano is louder now and re-mixed a bit to adapt the change.
- Used a bit of mid-side eq on the gtrs to correct tone in relation to stereo image.
- other small changes to improve mix... overall there should be an improvement in every department, hope you like it!

Best"
3ee

[Mister Fox]

A friendly reminder:
We're in the last 24 hours of submitting your edit for Mix Round 2

[HalfinHalfOut]

Here is my revision for the competition!

WAV: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Bscu1 ... c4XQnGlMFw

MP3: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1cD7yP ... nEnDB5PQgU

Ok, so very little has changed in over all concept of my mix flow since the first post, so please follow that as I will only be visiting things that have directly changed!

Chris was unhappy with Snare, some Reverb and the Headroom, all have been adjusted as follows:

I changed two major EQ's in this particular revision, the one with the most radical of changes was the snare. I recently received a copy of the BX_Focusrite ISA plugin for free with my interface, I utilized this plugin to get more of the pop that Chris was asking for! I also added a gated snare reverb to the mix. I went ahead and EQ'd all the snare reverb and delay tracks to try and tame some of the unruly low end he was unhappy with.

In regards to Reverb, Chris had mentioned there was to much in a few locations, so I simply adjusted the reverb automation to the large space I used. They were trimmed both by amplitude and length, allowing the voice to come through a bit more directly in the mix with out being to obscured.

For headroom, I brought the true peak down to one max hit of -2.3, there was one snare hit that was just crazy loud I located that was throwing the entire mixes peak off, I simply reduced the gain on that one to be more in line with the others and it fixed the issue allowing for an overall more balanced mix when it came to level. The over all LUFS was also lowered in comparison to my previous mix which again, should lend it self to being more in line with what he requested.

I altered the Acoustic guitars with the same ISA strip, as I wasn't really getting the sound I was after with the Neve from Softube, it just seemed a bit to thin in comparison, the ISA helped to fatten it up I felt, give them a little more mid-range life.

When it comes to bass, I simply had combined both tracks before into one bus and EQ'ed it to taste, this time I ran the DI into an Eden amp and cab sim with a high pass filter and blended that with the low end of the mic signal for the final bass sound. I also did a LOT more editing to tighten up the bass timing with the acoustic guitars. The edits are not very noticeable when it comes to the picking attack of the bass because the acoustic guitar/bass combo in the mix gives the bass the sensation that it is "strumming" with the acoustic guitars, however, the entry and timing of the actual notes matching up is significantly improved from my first mix. This really helped in cohesion. I listened to the drums just by themselves, and though it was a very strong performance, I really didn't hear anything egregious in timing, so adjusting anything there would be to the determent of the feel and vibe of the track. The acoustic guitars had some things that are not perfectly aligned with the drums, but it works given the context of the song. Quantization does not directly equate to musicality in my professional opinion.

Other minor tweaks were balance and character issues, I used waves MV-2 on the voice to bring out some of the specific characteristics of his timbre, I brought in just a touch more top end and boosted the upper treble frequencies to give it a tad more treble.

In addition to that I played with some of the tape emulation settings I was using to find the character blend I wanted out of various tracks, mostly snare/acoustic/bass/vocal I made minor adjustments to the style of tape I was using.

I also brought out the piano a tad more in the mix as I really liked the character it brought to the track.

I think that about wraps it up! Thanks again for the opportunity and hopefully I didn't DQ myself in round two by doing something stupid!

Dallas

[Piranha]

Befor explaning the updates to the mix I just want to say: insanely detailed and useful feedback sir!
Regarding the updates:
I thought drums where ok, with just snare being a bit aggressive, so I lowered it a touch.
I automated guitars left hand noises volume and fixed intro volume and final echo. Also piano is less present than in the pre-revision mix.
Vocals where automated with volume and ambience to fit better the different part of the song and maximize emotion. Everything in general now should also feel more spread back and forth in stage depth, with the best ratio between verb, delay and presence I was able to do.
Finally I added a touch (3db max) of compression on the stereo buss to gain level and enhance the sound to my likings.

WAV:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/h942rejnv8zir ... 2.wav?dl=0
MP3:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/7or0nudmhmf6u ... 2.mp3?dl=0