MIX CHALLENGE - MC061 December 2019 - Winners announced

[Mork]

Hey,

I wanted to interefere as least as possible with the bands dynamics. There is only very light compression on bass (1176 style), piano (33609 style), Guitar (Fairchild style) and some parallel on the mix bus (33609 style). Then there is a handful of EQs and that's basically it apart from some 224 on the brass section.

MP3: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1wfliC ... NAcGswyIEZ
Wav: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1vzKVk ... zkptRBHcAN

Cheers
Mork

[Clueless]

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-8I5Kf ... p=drivesdk

More of an exercise for me really, so i apologise upfront.
Not much automation, some eq and light compression.

If anyone listens and has any feedback

Thanks

Liam

[B-Loaded]

Hi all,

First time here, too.

I tried a new approach.
I used a lot of compression, hopefully its inaudible, instead of extensive edits, clip gain, or automation.
Most of the EQ and compression are done in the busses.
All the busses start with a gate, to minimise bleed, except the 'Kick and Bass" bus and the "Snare and overheads".
The first plugin in each bus is a compressor around 3db and tape saturation.



I used 8 busses:

Kick and Bass: Kick: I gated the kick then pulled out some of the sustain with transient shaper, then eq, a coloring compressor. For the bass, only eq in the actual track. In the bus: two compressors, one to level the transients and another to control RMS and tape saturation.

Snare and overheads: Snare:I gated the snare then pulled out some of the sustain with transient shaper, then eq, a coloring compressor. Nothing other than a high pass on the OH tracks. Bus: compression, eq, coloring compressor, and then another eq

Trumpets, Trombones, Sax and Clarinet: They are group into their own busses. Similar treatment: A gate, two compressors and two EQ's.

Trombone Solo: Same treatment as the rest of the horns but it is on its own bus because the dynamics were too different from the other trombones.

Guitar and Piano: Piano: duplicated the track, then hard panned them left and right. The right is a bit low on volume because the guitar is also panned right. Bus: Two compressors, a spectral panned, eq, and a stereo widener.

Reverb: a gate, two reverbs, then eq to cut low and high frequencies. And a mild boost in the mids.



Parallel Compression:
I printed all the busses except for reverb. Then squashed them with compression. They then go back to their respective busses. The level they add is less than a db.


Master bus:
Tape saturation
An 1176 compressor (doing around 1-2db gain reduction in the loudest parts)
Final eq: I was happy with the balance of the kick and bass but felt that the bass was a bit too much. So I shaved 2db at 90hz. Took out some throatiness of the horns at 800hz, minus 1db. Brightened the top end a bit, 1db at 4khz.

Hope you enjoy it,
B-Loaded

View of edits and busses:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1NG76x ... Wn058YCDhE
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1r6U32 ... HqOipgxf-9

My Entry:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1zF0Ym ... qOUEjCh16P

[Arthur Labus]

Hello everybody !

Great tune !
My focus was on clean, good separated sound, so i did some high passes on low heavy tracks and groups.
Was aiming for "modern" approach with almost regular rhythm section.

Overall specs:
Tracks set to 0 VU. Izotope Neutrino and Waves NLS on every instrument bus.

DRUMS:
Variety Of Sound Thrillseeker VBL, Noveltech Character and Toneboosters Sibilance De-Esser on drum bus
KICK: Waves CLA Drums, Pultec EQ (kick trick)
SNARE: Waves CLA Drums, Variety Of Sound Slick HDR for warmth
Overheads: Waves CLA Drums,Toneboosters Sibilance De-Esser, Black Rooster Audio VHL-3C high pass filter 50Hz / low pass 15kHz

BASS
Pultec EQ
Overloud GEM EQ550 for extra air
Waves CLA-76 compressor
Waves Scheps 73 clean bass setup
Phazor (during guitar solo)

CLARINET
EQ (boost 1,5 kHz, down 7 kHz)
Voxengo Stereo Touch
digitalphishphones endorphin compressor

TROMBONES
EQ (boost 1,7 kHz wide, down 7 kHz and under 500Hz)
Voxengo Stereo Touch (on solo Trombone)
digitalphishphones endorphin compressor

SAXOPHONES
EQ (boost 2kHz wide, down 7 kHz, 500Hz, wide below 200Hz)
Izotope Imager (on sax 6)
digitalphishphones endorphin compressor

TRUMPETS
EQ (boost 1,5kHz wide, down 7 kHz wide, wide below 300Hz)
digitalphishphones endorphin compressor

GUITAR
splitted into 3 parts
intro and choruses: Cypress TT-15 crunch and Convology XT Plate reverb
verse and pre-solo: Cypress TT-15 crunch and Waves Brauer Motion
solo: Plugin Alliance bx_rockrack player (reamping "mellow leads") and send to Eventide Stereo Room 2016. Reverb with high pass.

PIANO
NugenNG-EL Stereoizer
TG12345 console

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Master Bus:
NLS Bus as analog summer, Waves TG1234 subtle eq, Density MkII compressor (glueing, max. 2dB GR), Prime Studio Charly Limited analog gain, Toneboosters Barricade Limiter (just for sure), Youlean loudness Meter

Round 2dB headroom and -18,4 LUFS loudness.

WAV: 48kHz/24bit
WAV: https://drive.google.com/open?id=162S2q ... d6QBcPB2jr

Good succes everybody !

[Mister Fox]

It is the 22nd December 2019, 02:30am GMT+1/CET - the first Mix Round has officially ended

Once more, a very warm welcome to all new participants.


STATISTICS:

• If I didn't miscount, we have 44 submissions this month, which are 9 entries less compared to last year (53 entries)
• We have 0 submission after the deadline

Please check all if your links again, make them downloadable(!). Those that uploaded MP3s only, please take note: providing a WAV file is mandatory. Please also update your posts with documentation for others to learn from (see Rules & Guidelines).


I now open the field for everyone to give each other feedback (highly encouraged). This will be independent to the client feedback however.


Please watch this spot for the client feedback and Mix Round 2 participant announcement.

On that behalf, an important note:

!

Bonus Info

I've been in touch with the Song Provider, and we agreed to do a little bit of a "holiday break", so that everyone can enjoy the Winter Holidays with friends, family and loved ones. Mix Challenge 061 (MC061) will therefore be on vacation until 6th January 2020. After that, the global feedback and 10-participant announcement will be posted, and we can start off Mix Round 2 regularly. Please also keep in mind, that the Mix(ing) Challenge itself will be on it's annual vacation in January. MC062 will start on 1st February 2020.

Good luck to all participants.

[White Punk OD]

have great holidays everyone! shall everyone comment who has spare time?
a couple of mixes were really great, especially kirurg.
cpsmusic - bass sounds very beautiful. I would not use the phase align robot for jazz, as drums become too upfront. bx console N does great things, meanwhile I have it too, very happy.
arthur labus - I would not use the same plugins for almost every channel, unless they are the best of the best. the imperfections of the freeware might multiply. to me, endorphin became notorious, it was good many years in the past. it can make mixes sound narrow and boxy. I use as many different compressors as possible, e.g. klanghelm types, and kotelnikov (which is very transparent, but a CPU hog). I use also different EQs and channel strips, except now console N which has the trick of analog tolerance and sounds different in every instance. tinyQ is very good, melda EQ sufficient for subtractive notch surgery.

I was a bit disappointed that so many did not remove the serious hum. to me, in jazz this is totally toxic. (I have an incredibly sharp "hum removal" from 2009, but can't find it online any more. it uses a very old analog algorithm with a roundrobin of delay lines, that have autosync to the precise hum frequency. It is not a notch filter but it collects the hum by resonance in the delay lines, and then cancels it out, including harmonics to an amount you can tweak. you need to reprint these tracks with it, else get CPU congestion. but its worth.)

good luck and keep it coming.

[kevin gobin]

Happy holidays to everyone then, be nice with Santa Claus/Papa Noël and see you next year.

[Chriswilson83]

I'll try to have a good listen and feedback at some mixes later, but I will say that looking through the files I've seen a number of entries that are already disqualified for various rule breaches, hopefully the client picks up on those when critiquing entires :-)

Have a good christmas everyone.

[Chriswilson83]

AlanValdez; The kick and snare are way too overpowering and processed for the style, if I didn't know better I'd say they're samples from Slate Trigger .

[beyondthemind]

I'll try to have a good listen and feedback at some mixes later, but I will say that looking through the files I've seen a number of entries that are already disqualified for various rule breaches, hopefully the client picks up on those when critiquing entires :-)

Have a good christmas everyone.

Am I one of them? I'm wondering because this is my first time submitting a mix here and I don't wanna do something wrong :-)