MIX CHALLENGE - MC063 March 2020 - Winners announced

[Elias]

Hi guys, here's my take on this song. I had a great time playing with it.
I've tried to make it more personal and cool as well as more intense and explosive. I hope you like it.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/yfu7ogqlbd2hd ... s.wav?dl=0
Vocals: softube fet compressor, arturia v76 pre, softube pe-1c, ddmf MagicDeathEye
Drums: arturia fet-76 - all buttons in, pulsar smasher. Bass: arturia STA-2, softube pe-1c.
Guitars: DC1A3, maag eq, api eq. Effects: ik Sunset plate, pulsar echorec, sknote dimension d
Master bus: bx_townhouse.
Screenshots of the session:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/rkjhzp8ud2szg ... 9.png?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/x9yrkl3kfvk0u ... 9.png?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/zyr9diryn5u01 ... 9.png?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/q6eda4bw8sl2k ... 9.png?dl=0
Any feedback is appreciated

[anto]

Hi All,
Thanks to Mister Fox for running the show and to ceZar for his great song!

Here is my entry:
WAV

I found the parts to be well-recorded and required comparatively little processing. The only corrective work I needed to do was the click track bleed at the end of the song with the acoustic guitar tracks.

I have tried to keep the dynamics and the essence of the original performance.
I found the parts that required the most work were the vocals and the guitars and I used a couple of rock reference tracks (e.g. Foo Fighters) to try and get the guitars to sound right and get the low-end in shape.

Compression was generally very light and usually parallel compression was used (with the exception of the kick and snare).

I've also used a fair amount of automation to maintain interest in various places.

Mixed with Reaper DAW (6.05)

Master Track
Volume envelope
Pan: center
FX chain: TDR Kotelnikov GE (Tokyo Dawn Labs) (gentle mixbus compression, 2:1 ratio, < 1 db gain reduction)

Bass
Parallel compression with re-amping using UAD Gallien Krueger 800RB
TDR Kotelnikov GE (Tokyo Dawn Labs) compressor
EQ to remove muddiness ReaEQ (Cockos)

Bass was blended together with kick (NY compression)

Acoustic guitar
Panned individual tracks and then bussed together.
Light compression (2:1 with around 1 dB GR)

Electric guitar
Tracks bussed together with light parallel compression
Deresonated with TDR Nova GE (Tokyo Dawn Labs)
Sweetened with ReaEQ EQ

Synth
Gentle HPF and LPF

Lead vocals
Lots of automation on the vocals to bring out the character of the performance.
Tracks bussed together.
Passed through UAD Neve 1073 for character
Parallel Compression with TDR Kotelnikov GE
De-essed with TDR Nova GE

Parallel compression with 2 compressor plugins:
UAD UA 1176AE
UAD Teletronix LA-2A Silver

Vocal doubling and delay with NI Replika XT

Backing vocals
Panned and bussed together. No other processing.

Drums
Light parallel compression on bus (2:1, < 1 db GR)
with TDR Kotelnikov GE (Tokyo Dawn Labs)
EQ applied to sweeten top end and remove some boxiness with ReaEQ (Cockos)

Kick:
UAD dbx 160 compression 2:1
No reverb or delay sends

Snare:
UAD dbx 160 compression 2:1
ReaEQ to sweeten
Bussed snare top and buttom, reversed polarity on bottom

All other drum tracks just panned appropriately.
No other processing apart from reverb and delay sends.


Ambience and Hall reverbs
Seventh Heaven Professional (LiquidSonics)

Slapback delay, half-, quarter- and eigth-note delays
NI Replika XT

Happy to answer any other questions.
Hope you are all staying safe.
Cheers,
Anto

[wfaudio]

Hello!

Here is my mix of the song. It was a fun project and a nice song to work with. I hope you enjoy my mix.
Wav: https://drive.google.com/file/d/14XyD0n ... sp=sharing

I think all the instruments where nicely recorded especially the drums and the acoustic guitar. Because of so well tracked instruments it was easy to get the fundamental to sit in the right place. The only down side, the separate mics on the main acoustic was from a different take.

For me the bigest task was to gett the vocals to sit right in the different parts, to gett a nice progression from the soft intro to the wall of sound in the last chorus. And find out how i could make the mix interesting without go totally crazy.

For the most tracks in the project I used SSL Channel strip and the CLA-76, and Bias Amp for reamping the guitars.

Have a marvelous weekend! // John in sweden

[KevJ64]

First time contestant. Hopefully I'm not late getting this submitted.

The particulars:

DAW: - Reaper (updated version)
EQ's: Waves - SSL EQ Mono Channel strip across the board. One iZotope EQ on the Master_sub to fix a couple of annoying frequenies.
Compressors: Mainly CLA-2A from Waves. I did Slate Audio VBC (top compressor on the rack), on Master_Sub just to keep a couple of the peaks down and for a little gain.
Effects: Only used Lustrous Plates. Really liked how worked on this song. Two different plates...Silver and Chrome plate. Silver was drums and Chrome was on every things else. They are were on separate AUX's.
Vocals: Used Nuetron EQ and CLA-2A compressors and Lustrous Plate..Chrome setting. Lots of panning. For both lead and BKG vocals. A few envelopes to try and curve some the peaks in the tracks.
AC_Guitars: Waves - SSLEQ-Mono and Lustrous Plates and panning full left and right according the recordings.
ELC_Guitars: Waves - SSLEQ-Mono and Lustrous plates AUX. Added CLA-76 compressor on the AUX. Panned according to recording with exception of "pick" tracks. Those are through the center.
Drums: Waves - SSLEQ-Mono and Lustrous Plates Steel setting. Ran only the OH/RM mics and the snare to plate AUX. CLA-2A compression.
Vocals: Spent the most time on these as I thought that they are the most important part of the song. Nuetron EQ and CLA-2A compressor and Lustrous plates. That has a separate AUX.
Synths: Didn't really do much. No EQ or effects. That maybe a mistake but for me, it just didn't see how they fit into the song. You can hear them but not as prominent as maybe the writer/performer may want.

That's about it. It was a lot of fun and challenging is some areas!

And the link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vxFLv1 ... sp=sharing

With all going on in the World today, I hope that everyone finds themselves safe and healthy!!!!

Thanks for opportunity and Good luck!!

[delicate]

Greetings!

My submission
.WAV — 24/44.1

Although recorded very well, it was a tough one for me.
The biggest difficulty was to make various parts of the song different yet coherent.

I used FabFilter & Hoser EQs on most individual tracks, little compression.
Most compression was on busses. This time I tried using several saturators on the mixbus (vsm-3, preamp emulation and tape) instead of a hard-hit one.

For effects, I used short and medium plate (identical) and slapback for vocals (automated).

[Pemberley]

Hi all,

I just found this forum a few weeks ago, and am eager to jump in! Thanks to CeZar for providing a terrific track for us to play with, and to the moderators of this forum and contest for your time. I'm a hobbyist looking to develop my skills, and appreciate the opportunity.

Here's my mix:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1TuONQ ... 1xdBPFDW_H

Here's what I did, per instrument:

• Acoustic guitar was well recorded and didn't need much, just a bit sent to the plate reverb (more later)
• Electric guitar bus has a decent sized notch out at ~2k, and a tilt filter to brighten them up a bit (TDR SlickEQ in American mode)
• Drive and Riff guitars have a Soundtoys Devil-Loc for some extra character
• Lead vocals: de-ess -> PSP FETpressor -> PSP preQursor2 cut at HMF (~4k) -> ReaComp
• Backup vocals: PSP 2445 -> Newfangled/Eventide Saturate
• Drum bus: TDR Limter 6 just clipping a touch
• Kick: PSP PreQursor2 boosting at 60 and 4k, cutting 500 -> PSP FetPressor
• OH: Soundtoys Decapitator -> PSP preQursor2 with a small HF cut
• Toms: PSP Twin-L
• Snare: Soundtoys Radiator -> PSP preQursor2 with 120 cut, 350 and 2k5 boosted a touch -> PSP 2445

Kick sends to sidechain of a clean, fast compressor on the bass guitar.

ValhallaVintageVerb set to dirty plate gets its own channel, with sends from acoustic guitar (a touch), lead vocals (some, changes over time), backup vocals (more), kick (a touch), and snare (a fair amount). This channel then has a Pulsar Smasher followed by a PSP preQursor2 cut at ~500 to de-mud it a bit.

TDR Limiter 6 on main bus, with the compressor in use almost exclusively, just some light 2:1 for glue.

An interesting challenge here was pulling off a contrast between the more delicate parts at beginning and end, while letting the climax be busy and more energetic. I used some automation of sends to the dirty plate to help achieve this.

Happy to answer any questions; honest feedback appreciated! Hope everyone is staying safe and healthy as possible.

[loupi]

Thanks for the opportunity to mix these well-recorded tracks.

tried to get a solid straight forward clean groovy mix.
lots of things but mainly:
drums: darkened with a tilteq, gate on snare and toms, sga-amp on drumbus, parallel expander, no compression on kick or snare, tamed the cymbals a bit, wanted the toms to stand out nicely, basically wanted a driving clean solid groove going.
bass: compression, chorus and they got the sub-space (went for a more punchy kick)
acc guitars: tried to keep them quite natural yet present
el guit: gae them another space then the acc guitars (further back filling up the room to the back)
synt: some distortion, higpass
mainvocal: tried the vola2 vocal rider with some other compression. some manual editing
bv: present but smooth
some things like kick, snare vocals went to parallel dc3a compressor by klanghelm (negative)
3 reverbs, plate and delay (mostly ir of real places)
2bus: tdrmaster eq, tape and console emulation (neve) by airwindows

hope you enjoy!

https://www.dropbox.com/s/g2otfle9knsfb ... i.wav?dl=0

[TomImmon]

What a wonderful pearl of a popsong. It was really a pleasure to mix the racks. Well recorded!

Here is my mix:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/a62ve4rvp97mi ... n.wav?dl=0


I used no samples, no pitching, except the snare bottom mic aux send goes through a small pitch before ending in the reverb.
I used the amped guitars, except the on that played the riffs in the chorus. This i re-amped with a marshall and some FX.

The acoustic guitars get some saturation with acustica celestial.
Vocals get some saturation with the new waves abbey road saturation.

Drums:
Drumbus SQL Iron
Use basic eq to filter out rumple and mood on all tracks. Kick and Snare were gated. Toms were clean by manual editing on the tracks.
Room was compressed with Rough Rider2 and emphased with abbey road saturation.
Kick runs though Sheps Omni and SPl Iron.
Snare track was splited in sidestick and normal parts and processed differently. TS1-Transient Shaper and Waves C& on both.
Toms uses just some basic eq tweaks.
Overheads were phase alligned with snare.

Bass uses CLA Bass.
Acoustic guitars get phase alignment. Dyn Eq with TDR Nova and some EQ with MilenniaNS.

E-git were processed with devilLoc, Tan 3 and Scheps Omni.

Vocals uses MilenniaNS and ShadowHill comp and saturation.

FX: Echo boy on guitars and vocals (Double slap). Some chorused delays with eventide omni for acoustic gits.
MConvolution reverbs for vocals and snare.

Mixbus: just Townhouse for some glue and a very basic eq to add some mids.

[RJR]

This is my version of this pop song, mixed ITB Cubase 10 pro:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/bic7eam1bd5na ... R.wav?dl=0

-I added shine (10k) to the vocal and bit of EQ-ing out the low mids
-I added shine to the drums with mild compression on the tracks
-I added some Mids to the guitars. I always find it quite tricky to make a good sound out of software amped guitars
-FX were chorus, reverb and delays

Cheers, RJ

[Pavers]

Hi, this is my version of the song

https://www.dropbox.com/s/p01k59dbhnbgd ... s.wav?dl=0

Mixed on Pro Tools, using Waves and Soundtoys 5. I used this as a challenge to mix 100% on cans using Sonarworks. Still not happy with the intro guitars but the rest seems to hold together OK

First time doing a mix contest here, any feedback welcome.

Thanks

Paul