MIX CHALLENGE - MC057 August 2019 - Winners announced

[JulienMeirone]

Hello eveyone, here my submission for the round 2

Wav 48/24 : https://www.dropbox.com/s/wvr82dky8ipux ... 2.wav?dl=0
MP3 : https://www.dropbox.com/s/wvnsr01r8gcuy ... 2.mp3?dl=0

Screenshots : https://www.dropbox.com/s/a5yklbfvfdlio ... s.rar?dl=0

Just added a bit of volume, saturation and character to the strings, decreased the low end on the mix buss and the kick and tuned slightly the vocals in the chorus with melodyne in comparison with the round 1.

Mix buss : VCC, VBC, BX digital V3, gulfoss and satin

Drum : dbx160, arousor, decapitator, SSL E channel, radiator, bx townhouse, maag eq2, Cla76, cla drums

Bass : cla76, cla 2a, decapitator, api 550B, Pro MB

keys : Cla 3a, api 550B, Pro MB, Elysia phil cascade, aphex vintage exciter, trash 2 and mjuc

Guitars : cla guitars, air chorus, api 2500

Vocals : Melodyne, pro ds, pro q3, bx opto,decapitator, maag eq2, izotope vintage eq

EFX : trueverb, echoboy, microshift, Pro R, H910, Vdelay, vintage verb, phoenix verb

I hope you will like it. Have a great day guys.

[PeterM]

Hi Dirk,

How nice to read that my mix belongs to your favourite 7 mixes! Thanks for the feedback!! I agree that the guitar solo is too dry. Regarding the comments about vinyl: never thought of it, so it certainly makes sense to take this into account next time. Unfortunately I'm on vacation now, and my MacBook with Logic Pro X is still at home. I am very disappointed, because I am unable to make adjustments to my mix. I come home from vacation one day too late to meet the deadline ... Sorry! So I can’t make the adjustments on time and I can’t also not bounce the mix 48/24. Unfortunately I missed that in the first round. It is my first mix on this forum, I think I have to get used to all the rules!

A short explanation of my mix:

I only used the Logic plug-ins. I start with a "Gain”, "Channel EQ" and "Compressor" on all tracks. Some compressors do a lot, some do almost nothing. There is indeed no tuning on the vocals. All tracks go to 3 buses: Low End (Drums + Bass), Instruments and Vocals. There is also a compressor on the buses, but to be honest they only do a few db gain reduction. Most compression is on the individual tracks. I cut a lot mids in the kick drum. With the bass guitar I had trouble getting the dynamics right. I then made that stereo with the "Stereo Spread". Something I normally never do, but it worked well in this mix. I actually made the organ less stereo because it distracted me too much, in my opinion. There is a lot of reverb (Chroma) on the strings. The RH Guitar is on 2 tracks: the original + a re-amp with heavy compression. There are 4 vocal effects: a short delay (doubler effect), a slightly longer delay, a short plate reverb and a longer room reverb. Together it produces a nice sense of space that, to my taste, matches the music style.

It was nice to make this mix, I would also like to participate in the following rounds.

Cheers!
Peter

[White Punk OD]

Hello Peter, sorry to hear that, as I as a comrade like your mix a lot, and want to hear an update.
I like particularly the vocal, bass, and drums. String rev works well.
For the rh git I would have done some more panning between git and piano. Not a stereo widener.
Also, I think a strong chorus on the git solo sounds outdated and conflicts with the organ. Again, the panning here between solo and organ might deserve a second thought. Organ in the finale sounds beautiful.
Greetings, hope to see you again as a competitor.

[kirurg]

Hi everyone,

Thank you Dirk for feedback and choosing for round 2.
Here's my submission for R2:

Wav
https://www.dropbox.com/s/6pchzfio6hj2y ... 2.wav?dl=0

Mp3
https://www.dropbox.com/s/6ecnpc6ly9oi4 ... 2.mp3?dl=0

Could not do much, there is a classical situation when a change in one
track leads to another issue, etc, etc. These are pretty minor changes I have made:
Vocal's room made wider, some vocal parts additional volume automation.
Also mid freq cut EQ to the vocals. And main bus tape saturation changed a tiny bit.
Hope things got better however.

[creedchub]

dsadsa

[Mister Fox]

A friendly reminder:
We're in the final 24 hours to submit your edit for Mix Round 2

[Pavel Nebesky]

Hello everyone, sorry for last minute post, here is my submission for round 2:

WAV: https://www.dropbox.com/s/xk3vcev7oiiz7 ... 2.wav?dl=0
MP3: https://www.dropbox.com/s/j2iyzc473dh3h ... 2.mp3?dl=0

To comply with add-on rules for round 2, here it goes:

Round 1:

I started the mix with different preamps (Acustica Audio / Nebula) on all tracks. Most of the tracks are from MIDI instruments, so IMHO they needed a little bit of saturation to give an „analog“ feel to a song.

Drums: I used standard EQ treatment on all elements, little bit of parallel compression, especialy on hi-end bus. I tried not to overdo it, I think in a song like this, drums should be as dynamic as they can be.

Bass: EQ and little bit of compression. Waves R-Bass in parallel (to try to make it heard on smaller speakers). It was not a finest element of my mix, as Dirk noted, so I had to work more on it for round 2.

Piano: main harmonic instrument in a song, I tried to make it as wide and prominent as I could. Also tried to make it fill most of the space in a song, frequency-wise.

Strings: most compressed element in the mix, hipass filter, Eventide Harmonizer for upper octaves.

B3: more saturation, little bit of leslie effect

Guitars: nothing special, EQ, delay on solo guitar

Vocal: I did not mind pitching, tried few compressors, liked them all, so I finished with multiplication of 4 vocal tracks, with different compressor on each track - 0,5-1,5 dB of gain reduction on each. After that I combined all 4 track to one, different combination for verses and refrain. Plate reverb (Nebula), short room (Nebula) and 2 delay lines (Acustica Audio and stock delay).

Used a lot of automation, a little bit of compression on all busses (0,5-1,5dB of reduction). Also Nebula plates and rooms on most tracks.

Round 2:

As per instuctions I tuned vocal slightly (Melodyne).
I reamped Bass and put a little bit of Sausage Fattener on it.
Solid cut of few dB on 300Hz with wide Q on piano. I think this was a main culprit for a low mids problem in my mix.
Few minor changes overall.

I want to thank Dirk for giving me a „wildcard“ pass, for spot on remarks on my mix, and last but not least, for providing this great song for us to experiment with.
Also, great respect for Mister Fox for keeping alive and managing this great platform with great bunch of people around it. This was my first involvement, but I am sure it won’t be the last.

Best regards to you all!
Alex.

[finnishcharm]

Whoa, barely made it before the deadline Last's week has ben absolutely crazy...

Here's my submission for Round 2:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dbJuTd ... sp=sharing

I focused on bringing more low end to the overall mix with a great and astonishingly simple plugin - DynamicTilt EQ by HOFA (I actually learned about the company through Dirk's mentioning HOFA blind test, amazing stuff!). I tried to tame the harshness of the vocals with Cubase's stock de-esser, experimented with saturation and reduced reverbs ( Valhalla ROOM) a little bit. Besides that, I used a number of different EQs (TDR NOVA, TDR SlickEQ, Cubase stock plugins) and compressors (stock ones, Molot, klagenhelm dc1a) to make everything sit in the right place.

[Mister Fox]

It's the 30th August 2019, 1:20am - the 2nd Mix Round has officially ended.

Sadly, not everyone has sent in an edit (FrequencyPainter - stepped down out of protest regarding the rule set "being too strict", PeterM - couldn't send in an edit due to being out of town)
We have no submissions after the deadline.
Rule Compliance: All submissions (WAV) are in 48/24, no track exceeds -14LUFS ILk or -1dBTP

Please check your upload links again, and have an eye on this thread for the final results.



I'm now opening up the room (again) for Q&A's and giving each other feedback (which is highly encouraged)
As of MC058, there won't be as detailed "Game Round Statistics".


The next games will start on 1st September.


See you on the flipside.

[White Punk OD]

As there are only 5 updates eventually, after the fact let me post an update on my own.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1N8bE9i ... sp=sharing

In general, I softened the sound a bit, and tried to make it warmer by boosting around 135 Hz (esp. the Rhodes with a MIA Fat knob),
and also I had to fine-tune the vocal exciter.
(Thx to Mork for comments)
I'm not using these expensive plugins branded with the name of some famous mixing engineer, that have such an exciter in one of the many sections, but still use the free, old VOC-EQ-pro by T.West.

So, my vocal chain uses the following:
Verse - FromTape by AirWindows.
Chorus - main plus 4 mults (+/- 3 cent and 6 cent) have TinyQ ("Pensado shape" -2dB below 960, -1dB above 5k; also a boost at 180).
That together goes to a pre bus that has TDR Nova (sends also to exciter), VOC-EQ-pro (in a stereo wrapper rack because it is mono but the detune stuff is stereo),
LittlePlate (610Hz!), and Subspace.
The exciter track comes from an aux in (see above), and is made with TinyQ (hipassing 5k3), Melda Saturator with a complex harmonics preset, Klanghelm DC1A2, Brainworx Cleansweep lowpass 8200Hz (very soft roll-off), AirWindows Capacitor lowpass (it has a particular color and is cutting deeply into the signal above 10k), DeEdger. So, especially the capacitor is new and did the job.
The vocal sum bus has another TDR Slick, attenuating around 3k, then addng a bit air band, and it contributes to the color, Klanghelm IVGI2 saturator (response dialed to the brighter side), TesslaPROmkII (transformer emu).

Other stuff was described in my round 1 entry.


If one plays an organ in such a song, it is a bit unfortunate to forget the organ swell pedal. So, I faked one with an automation curve, and tadaa, it solved the problem that solo guitar and organ sounds were clashing. The musicians have just to play together.
Some comrades achieved a very dominant organ sound, that consequently took over too much attention. I kept the organ still small but musically contributing (hopefully).

Guitar solo got a much stronger delay, but it is not a standard one but the granular LaGrange.

I did some vocal edits, but still did not tune, simply as I haven't installed Melodyne here, only the Melda-Autotune that resembles the Antares, which is better fitting those typical Hip-Hop chorus lines.
There is a little extra in the edit, that creates a miminal artifact, but for now I don't reveal what it is. It makes up for a certain aspect at a certain point.

The bass got a "bass professor" reamp and a multiband comp with my bass preset.
Also, bass and Rhodes piano got a sidechain ducker from the kick.

Overhead mics and similar stuff are in a drum room bus, and that got another "analogizer" gadget and more EQ.
Gloria eq VST1982ART is an exotic thing with quite a nice color, I used 3 instances in this mix.

Stereo bus got a little EQ (TDR Slick) and a softening compressor with transformer and "fat" emulation (Density 1.0), that is busy in a -2dB range of gain reduction.

--
On another note, most entries selected by Dirk have a color that I dislike (so YMMV) in the vocals, feels like "there is a mic in a booth". The music productions that I like today, especially the Japanese live productions, have "no mic" whatsoever i.e. the voice often sounds totally in the face, with not the slightest impact of any physical tech and color, just some modern effects.
A few mixes here have at least some effort into this direction.

@Dirk, I hope you have time to listen to the vocals and organ.