MIX CHALLENGE - MC064 April 2020 - Winners announced

[Green-Dog]

Hi everyone,

I'm not big expert in this gender that why it was very interesting experience. I had to violate the order of workflow a bit so as not to make a pre master. In a normal situation, I would mix with hard working comp and cliper on the master.

Here is my mix. Hope you will like it.

Mix
ScreenShots

Good luck to all!

Regards
Andrejs

[canese]

Check out this mix! https://www.dropbox.com/s/hoo3vf8vt0ckf ... e.wav?dl=0

I started mixing the drums. I put little compression, and EQ in mostly everything. HI hats have an high-end exciter, snare has a transient shaper for more attack and the kick has little distortion. In the bus there is a reverb to glue and I put some parallel compression to make it stand out more.

Then I added the gong, because I think is one of the main objects in the track. I just put some compression and reverb with paning automation.

Next thing I added were the synths, this have little modulation and distortion, with some chorus in parallel. Also with a lot of paning and stereo automation.

The ambience sounds /piano/bells/etc. have a high pass filter with lot of stereo enhancement for more ear candy.

In the final mix I put some compression and eq to get rid of the muddiness. And also automated a few filters in the transitions.

Hope you like it.

[MrMista]

Hi people,

just a suggestion; wouldn't it make sense to include an integrated LUFS goal for the mixes so it would be easier to judge all the mixes when listening back to back and perhaps A/B'ing?

Also a lot of the "mixes" so far is @ -9 to -10 LUFS (i) - even with 1dB headroom... my mixes are loud as <beep> and peaks around -12 LUFS (i). You can clearly see on the waveform that a limiter is working on the master bus on a lot of the mixes too. Just saying. Should I be mastering the track at industry standard level as well or just do the mix?

[Clueless]

Hi people,

just a suggestion; wouldn't it make sense to include an integrated LUFS goal for the mixes so it would be easier to judge all the mixes when listening back to back and perhaps A/B'ing?

Also a lot of the "mixes" so far is @ -9 to -10 LUFS (i) - even with 1dB headroom... my mixes are loud as <beep> and peaks around -12 LUFS (i). You can clearly see on the waveform that a limiter is working on the master bus on a lot of the mixes too. Just saying. Should I be mastering the track at industry standard level as well or just do the mix?

There are instructions on the site on what the requirements are, check 1st post, I think there is info there.
It’s definitely a mix challenge not a smash the sugar out of it challenge

[Mister Fox]

This is indeed already part of the Rules and Guidelines for quite a while at this point. The only new addition is to not "undershoot" a certain LUFS ILk value now.

As your submission is final, failing to adhere to the rules will result in instant disqualification.

[pabloAT]

Hi all,
I hope everybody is keeping safe and health at home.
Please find below the link to my mix and some information regarding the mixing process that I've followed.
Best wishes,
Pablo

Link to the mix
DAW = Cubase 10.0.60
Integrated LUFS = -20.0
True Peak = -2.9 dB

Mix Preparation
Preliminary raw balance: setting levels, panning mono tracks, ...
High-pass filtering on some tracks
Applied Cubase’s silence stripping tool
Bass
808: splitted identical copies into different frequency bands, added distortion for compatibility with small speakers. Heavy distortion on the third part of the track. EQ to fit with the kick.
Analog: EQ, a bit of distortion and RBass
Drums
Kick: glued together the kick and rev kick tracks. EQ to fit with the 808.
Crash: glued together the 001 and 002 tracks.
Snare: glued together the snare and pre-snare tracks. Applied imager and a bit of distortion to widen the sound.
Cymbals: added reverb and imager for size and 3D space location, with some automation.
Percussions: added assorted delays, reverb and imager for size and 3D space location, with some automation.
Synthesizers & Piano
Sound manipulation with delays, reverbs, filters, compressors and tape saturation machine. Applied gentle side-chain to Apollo Pad with the snares for an eerie effect on some parts of the track.
FXs
Liquid drop: I’ve found a hidden gem here, with some frequency manipulation and filtering I was able to extract some rhythms structures that give a nice vibe to some parts of the track. Find them! :-)
Ambience: a lot of automation, added an LFO for dynamics and movement.
Main Mix Buss
Gentle SSL-G master compressor for gluing the mix together
Waveform
Spectrogram (all channels mixed)

[VasDim]

Hi all,
this is my attempt to mix:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/pnldp24z2tvdt ... m.wav?dl=0

For all track are used:
- Waves Q10;
- Waves C4;
- Db ProComp.

AUX Effect;
- Waves TrueVerb;
- Waves SuperTap;

Good luck to all.
VasDim

[TomFernsby]

Hi everyone,
this is my second mix challenge!

Mix: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1hGil2 ... gi0PnOzaJZ
Screenshots: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Bw1-N ... jf0XdHJ0n8 - they contain both session view and also individual plugins used for mix.

This was and interesting and fun track to mix. I am not very familiar with the genre, so I followed my gut instinct.

There is a lot of atmospheric sounds, it really captured my imagination - highs being like a bright sky and darker sounds showing occassionally like birds flying over.

The pads are dominant sound around which everything else revolves. I tried to approach it as ambient soundscape (large brush strokes) with very concrete rhytmic elements (sharper brush dots). I loved working with the ambient sounds to blend them in with the rest of the track. I tried to achieve maximum effect with track volume, EQ and per-track compression. Used sidechain only on sub-bass (Kick 808) triggered by kick.

Interesting was mixing Ambience 3 and 4. 3 sounded like rain and 4 like birds in zoo (for xsome reason I imagined big volier). I wanted to make these two sound like being under the roof when it rains and hearing birds outside.

I used my recently created mixing template. Active plugins are the ones with dark background in mixing view.

Track comments:
- Master track - Added *Volume Adjustment* plugin for fade-out. I prefer it to volume automation, as one can use many of them and layer the effect. Combining and modifying volume curves is not that easy.
- Apollo Pad - The original sound wideness did not click with me, so it has reduced side (M/S) by 10 dB and ValhallaShimmer instance on it. As siuggested, it is lowpassed in one of the easy passages and flanger effect (provided by ValhallaDelay) is occassionally brought in. It is mildly high-passed.
- Bell - Equalized, added delay and reverb to give it a bit of ambience and used a compressor to have it more present.
- Factory Pad (track Pads) - same as above
- Modular FXs - Added *ValhallaSpaceModulator* to give it a bit of movement and *ValhallaRoom* for ambience. Accidentally both after *Compensation* volume adjustment.
- Noise Chant - used *ValhallaDelay* as parallel processing on the track to be able to send there signal panned to other side than original sound was.
- Piano - same as above
- Drums (buss) - no processing, just *Compensation* (instance of *Volume Adjustment*)
- Break Break - This one was breaking the rule. In the song, it provides top of the excitement for the rhytm by being bright and loud. I tried to make it also obvious, but different to what it should be. It is darker color - distorted and EQed darker to bringenergy to frequency that is not much occupied in the song.
- Break - distorted a bit to give it body
- Dry Drums (buss) - no processing, just *Compensation* (instance of *Volume Adjustment*), it is track from my mixing template where I usually put everything except hi hats.
- Jingle Bells - Brought the highs with *SSQ*, then saturated with *Slick EQ* and to give it a sense of space, used Haas Effect with *Channel Time Delayer*.
- Crash - just EQ
- Crash 1 - Got a bit creative with it, added ambience
- Crash 2 - just *Compensation*
- Perc - As there is already a lot of things that are bright, I choose them to be a bit darker.
- Tamb Hi - Added highs and saturated with *Slick EQ*
- Tamb Lo - Saturated with *KONSOL* and with *Slick EQ*. Single saturation did not seem to be enough.
- Misc Perc - Made ambient and to add width, used Haas Effect with *Channel Time Delayer*.
- Clap (Pre Snare) - Made crunchier by adding delay (multiplying attacks) and added ambience with reverb. Saturated gently with *KONSOL*.
- Snare - Not sure if this is enough genre-specific snare. Might use some more work. Made it bigger with compressor, distortion, adding a bit of low-end and saturating.
- Kick 808 - sidechained with track Kick.
- Kick - Added more low-end to have more weight but also not to be much prominent. Added a bit of high-mids ot perform better on smaller speakers.
- Rev Crash-001 - just volume
- Rev Crash-002 - just volume
- Rev Kick - EQ and volume
- Hi Hat - brought up highs
- Ambience - buss, just volume
- Bong - EQ and volume
- Liquid Drops - Used *YALA* to level the noise at the beginning, brought high mids for the percussive part to cut through mix, increased attack of the transients (after level has been balanced by *YALA*)
- Ambience 1 - just volume
- Ambience 2 - EQ and volume
- Ambience 3 - rain - low cut and increased high mids to give impression this is light rain, used *YALA* to make it seem to be close, added close reverb to give impression it is under the roof ind it resonates in the room.
- Ambience 4 - redunced side (M/S) by 9 dB to give impression this happens outside and we are under the roof, cut a lot of low-end and low mids to give impression the birds are further away outside.
- S Dly - delay, where Apollo Pads were sent as well
- S AlgoReverbs - not used in this project
- S Vox Widener - not used in this project

Plugins used:

- Valhalla DSP:
-- ValhallaDelay
-- ValhallaRoom
-- ValhallaShimmer
- Analog Obsession
-- BritChannel - Neve-style equalizer
-- DoDoD - distortion pedal
-- FETISH - FET compressor
-- KONSOL - recording console emulation
-- LOVEND - sub harmonic processor
-- MERICA - API-style equalizer
-- SSQ - SSL-style equalizer
-- TRANSATURE - transformer saturation
-- VariMoon - some vari-mu compressor
-- YALA - probably emulation of LA-2A or LA-3A
- Tokyo Dawn Labs:
-- TDR Nova
-- TDR VOS SlickEQ
- REAPER's plugins:
-- Channel Mixer
-- Channel Router w/Polarity - for in-track multi-channel processing
-- Channel Time Delayer
-- Mid/Side Encoder
-- Mid/Side Decoder
-- Volume Adjustment
- Saike's Transience - REAPER plugin for manipulation of transients
- Sonarworks Reference (both for headphones and speakers)

The plugin instances named *Compensation* are *Volume ajdustment* instances, where track volume from fader to the plugin is saved and volume fader is back to 0dB. As fader has logarithmic scale, around 0dB is its most sensitive area. It is done by custom script and values from *Compensation* instances can be put back to faders by another script.

Following plugin names are also *Volume Adjustment*, just renamed for my better orientation:

- 1-2 Stereo Channel Volume
- 3-4 Delay Volume Adjustment

Following plugin names are *ValhallaRoom* instances:
- VR Small Ambience
- VR Large Chamber
- VR Big Hall

- Following sequence of plugins is used for M/S volume adjustment:
1. Mid/Side Encoder
2. Channel Mixer
3. Mid/Side Decoder

Good luck to everyone!

[msom]

Hi All,

That's definitely my music. Great opportunity to learn this style and production techniques. It was pleasure to mix.

Notes:
Ableton Used.
1. First of all, I did some gain staging. Everything down by 15dB using Utlility before effects of course on every
2. Did some order in the tracks - colouring and grouping logically after first listening. Pointing out tracks which play together and sit in the same spectrum area.
3. Almost every chain was eq'ed or cleaned up from unnecessary freqs at first to make space for lows, mids and to not to rise RMS without the reason. Then creative correction/saturation and compression if dynamics had to be controlled.
4. The main goal was to balance and preserve readability of the material.

Hope it meets expectations. Can't wait to get feedback.

Tools used:
Mighty PSP Audioware: NobleQ, E27, Old Timer, Old Timer MB, Echo, MixBass2 for lows and stompDelay, N2O, 2445, PS35 for creating effects and space.
Additionally some stuff from D16 Group: Syntorus, Fazotran

Sample Rate and res. : 44kHz/24bit
File Name: MC064__7th_Pyramid__Octalism__msom.wav

Screenshot: ScreenShot

Cheers
Mike @ msom

[MrMista]

https://www.dropbox.com/s/x1liifayczin4 ... a.wav?dl=0

Held it pretty clean, nothing too fancy. Went for a transparent mix - didn't color anything too much. I had to color the 808 a little just so itll be noticed on small speakers.

Fabfilters plugs on damn near everything. Let me know if you guys want any further info... it's a pretty straightforward mix though.