MIX CHALLENGE - MC070 October 2020 - Winners announced

[odistdan]

I enjoyed balancing the guitars, Creating width with distorted guitars and layering the main melody.

I found it struggling for the vocals to sit in the mix. It was struggle even more so with right FX.
I tried to create bass like ‘Warpaint’ reference but couldn’t replicate that pedal sound.

There is not a lot of plugins beside eq, compression, width and saturation with some automation.

Thanks for providing the files.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1A1gy-7 ... sp=sharing

[nicores]

hi this is my mix!

Drums:
Bass drum: ssl channel strip, fab filter pro q3,

bass drum copy: drum leveler (gate), fab filter proq3 (cut highs), camel crusher.

snare drum: ssl channel strip, fab filter pro q3,

snare drum copy: drum leveler (gate) proq3 (cut highs), long reverb valhalla vintage.

ohs: fab filter pro q 3, ssl channel strip.

Toms: klanghelm mjucjr compressor, fab filter pro q 3, decapitator

rooms: Klanghelm MJUCjr, fab filter pro q 3.

Parallel compresor: Api 2500

Hdelay on ohs for movement.


Bass: amplitube 4, cla 3A, fab fitler pro q 3.

Guitars: amplitube 4, Chandler GAV19T, h delay, waves q3, trackspacer.

Vocals: cla 1176, fab filter pro q 3, waves c4, red compressor, ssleq, rdesser, Klanghelm MJUCjr. H delay, waves doubler, lexicón room and hall, echoboy, valhalla vintageplate. Little alterboy.

bck vocals: waves c4, voxengo stereo touch, devil lock deluxe, fab filter pro q 3.

Stereo buss: api 2500, klanghelm MJUCjr, devil lock deluxe.







https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Gop3rO ... sp=sharing

[Arthur Labus]

Hello everybody !

Specs:
Tracks set to 0 VU. Izotope Neutrino and NLS Channel (Neve) on every instrument bus.

DRUMS:
Variety Of Sound Thrillseeker VBL (vintage compressor) and Toneboosters TB Sibilance v3 (deEsser) on bus
Kick: Waves CLA Drums / Black Rooster Audio VEQ-1P Pultech EQ (low end trick)
Snare: Waves CLA Drums
Cymbals/Overheads: Brainworks console_N
Toms / Overheads / Room: Waves CLA Drums (Room bus with hard gate)

BASS buss
Overloud Gem EQ550
Waves Scheps 73 (clean bass)
GVST GMonoBass (below 150 Hz)

Bass DI: Black Rooster Audio VPRE-73 / Waves CLA Bass / Black Rooster Audio VEQ-1P Pultech EQ (low end trick) / Bass Professor Mark II / D16 Syntorus (Chorus, Hi Pass 390 Hz)
Bass DI duplicated in places: as above, more aggressive distortion in Waves CLA Bass

VOCAL:
Black Rooster Audio VHL-3C (Low cut 100 Hz, High cut 15kHz)
Toneboosters Sibilance v3 de-esser
Sonible smart EQ2
Black Rooster Audio VLA-2A compressor
Waves CLA Vocals
Luftikus EQ (adding Air)
Native Instruments Raum reverb
Toneboosters Sibilance v3 de-esser

BACKING VOCALS: vary panning in automation, parts with Waves Brauer Motion
Sonible smart EQ2
Black Rooster Audio VHL-3C (Low cut 50 Hz, High cut 10kHz)
Toneboosters Sibilance v3 de-esser
Waves CLA Vocals (reverb, delay disabled)
Luftikus EQ (adding Air)
Black Rooster Audio VLA-2A compressor
u-he Protoverb
Toneboosters Sibilance v3 de-esser

Rhythm GUITARS BUS:
Black Rooster Audio VHL-3C (Low cut 150 Hz, High cut 15kHz)
Black Rooster Audio VEQ-1P Pultech EQ (guitar trick)
ReaEQ pulling some 400 Hz
Toneboosters Sibilance v3 de-esser

- Guitar Verse
used DI track with Fretted Synth FA3 (with phaser and delay). Room mics track in intro only
In bridge used also Fretted Synth FA3 (with chorus and delay)
- Guitar Heavy
used the RIV 609 tracks with Waves CLA Guitars. Room track panned opposite.
- Guitar Dirty Chords
used DI track with airwindows Guitar Conditioner and AcmeBarGig Shred 1.06 (Honken amp, tremolo,delay,reverb and unparallel Naus Filter)

LEAD GUITAR BUS:
Black Rooster Audio VHL-3C (Low cut 150 Hz, High cut 12kHz)
Black Rooster Audio VEQ-1P Pultech EQ (guitar trick)
ReaEQ pulling some 400 Hz
Toneboosters Sibilance v3 de-esser

- Guitar Intro
used Riv 609 track with Waves Brauer Motion and room tracks.
-Guitar Arp
DI track with Shred 1.06 (Shred amp, delay) and duplicated DI with Shred 1.06 (Marvel amp, Delay, reverb and Naus Filter)

Lot of volume automation

Master Bus:
NLS Bus (Neve) analog summing, Acustica CoralEQ (pulling down some 350 Hz),Waves TG12345 console with subtle EQ, Density MkII compressor (glueing), Toneboosters ReelBus tape sim, Toneboosters Sibilance, Charly Limited analog gain, Barricade Limiter (just for sure), Youlean loudness Meter

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

WAV 24bit/48.KHz round 2,0 dB headroom / loudness -16,9 LUFS

Good succes everybody !

[Mister Fox]

A friendly reminder:
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Please do not forget the official Rules and Guidelines before you submit your edit, as your entry is final (as in: no forum post edits to replace your WAV file)

[wanwo_]

Hey all, first time on this forum!

This was a really really fun one to mix, love this track too. Really got some Ataxia vibes, and maybe some Fontaines? Really great stuff. I took the shoegaze influences from the album reference and ran with them, adding some nice long reverby textures and spacious sounds. Used a LOT of bussing techniques and saturation, most parts are volume automated - really wanted to keep the washy shoegazey vibe while pushing the key parts of each section out front.

Here are the links to the mix, below them are some details on how I treated the tracks:

WAV: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gBBuaJ ... sp=sharing
MP3: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1v-RJW0 ... sp=sharing

DRUMS:
Gated kick, snare, toms and checked phases. Added some extra distortion to kick and snare on individual busses (inspired by that Savages ref track). Muted ride spot. All room mics were used, all have some parallel compression applied. Crash overdubs were a cool idea, I decided to treat them as an overdub production choice and not try and blend them into the performance as if it was all in a room at the same time by the same performer, think it's paid off well and gives some interesting cymbal texture. Room and plate reverb was used. The buss was saturated and parallel compressed, with a little bit of guiding m/s eq.

BASS:
Saturated the DI and treated it with distortion, which was then ridden along with the song. The sound is mostly that and the 57 which I thought sounded great, 112 is added to give a spot of weighty low end thump. Bit of gentle parallel compression, saturation, sculpting EQ, and a chorus effect blended in (Warpaint ref track is SUCH a tune).

GTRS:
Treated the "Dirty" guitar as a second part to give some stereo accompaniment on the R to the rest of the guitar, which I panned to the L. The only DI I used was on the dirty gtr, the rest are all stock amp mics. Room mics were a really great touch, used loads of them. Generally stuck with 2 mics and a room on each part. Those heavy LR parts were gorgeous. Generally all parts were bussed and busses given a touch of compression, sculpting EQ, saturation, and sent to either a plate or spring reverb to give some variety to the sounds while trying to tie them into a single performance.

HARMONIES:
Individually ridden, messed about with the panning on each so there was some spread in that intro and post chorus. Bussed together and compressed, sent to a room and plate reverb, and a doubler with a stereo width effect added.

VOCAL LEAD:
Chain: DC1A3 (parallel), SDRR2tube, WavesSSLE, D3CL, D3DE, Pro Q3 (dynamic EQ). Sent to a parallel distortion, Room verb, long plate, slap delay, long delay, and a washy, autopanned, reverbed delay that I rode into on certain phrases mainly because I thought it sounded cool as heck.

MIX BUSS:
Tiny bit of guiding SSL eq, Pro Q 3 m/s to tighten the low end and widen high end ever so slightly, gentle DC1A3 compression, maxim limiter set to a very high threshold to control any peaks should they occur. There was a LOT of volume riding going on throughout this.

Only edits I made were in the drums, one in the first bar of drums, one in the fill into the second verse, and I time aligned most of the cymbal hits to keep them a little tighter to the rest of the playing while retaining some of the loose rhythmic feel. The rest is as delivered.

[Jerze]

Thanks for the song to mix.

I used most of the tracks. I start by time aliening the drums a little, flipped the phase one some of the tracks also .Then I went to the GT and flipped the phase on some of those. As for the vocal no time to tune any notes.


48/24
Wav https://www.dropbox.com/s/cju0g1r28kn6i ... e.wav?dl=0

Drums:
All tracks sent to a buss that had some compression and EQ to start. Then went back to the individual to add a gate on the snare eqs and some saturation some tracks sent to verb track.

Bass:
I used a sim on the di track. Added distortion on the other track and used the last track for the subs.

GT:
I sorted all the tracks out ran to a sub buss then all the subs were sent to a master GT bus just to do some eq shaping.

Vocals:
Used some verb saturation along with some delay eq and compression 1176 to a Cla 2a and then to a opto.

Master track:
SSl G

Thanks again any thoughts or questions let me know!
Jerze

[ConcreteMixer]

Thanks for the fun track! My approach was to make some really crunchy drums and then vocals that weaved in and out from both in your face during the more intimate vocal passages and echoey and spacey during the more dynamic parts.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/jaxbyp8pbu2u5 ... r.wav?dl=0

General Mix Notes:

• Mixed in Ableton Live 9

Drums:

• Added some tape saturation/distortion to the drums to give them some added crunch using uHe’s Satin

Bass:

• I preferred to use the bass DI for this track and used the bx_rockrack for the bass sound along with a parallel compression for the sub bass
• Some light sidechain compression on the sub bass sidechained to the kick

Guitars:

• Mostly just highpass and lowpass on the guitars
• In the verses I did go with the DI for the guitar and used Scuffham’s S-Gear 2 for the clean, tremoloed guitar sound

Vocals:

• Added a bright parallel compression channel for the lead vocal boosting around 10 kHz to
• Automated some delay for the vocals in the verse part and then just added it to the end to give the vocals that echoey sound in the end

Master Bus:

• Added a small amount of bus compression on the master using Ableton’s stock Glue Compressor (Cytomic) to glue the mix together

Loudness:

• Metering via YouLean Loudness Meter 2
• - 17.6 LUFS (integrated)
• - 4.1 dB True Peak

[MattRocket]

Hello,

mix: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ikxb26w6cv57k ... t.wav?dl=0

screenshot1: https://www.dropbox.com/s/1p4wryihdt077 ... 1.jpg?dl=0
screenshot2: https://www.dropbox.com/s/wbo03j3ioqy4f ... 2.jpg?dl=0
screenshot3: https://www.dropbox.com/s/nznt1068iu5kk ... 3.jpg?dl=0

I did not use DI on guitars
I mainly used DI on the bass guitar, and Bass_sm57 to add highmid
On vocals, a long reverb and an echo

MattRocket

[parnellij]

Thank you for the tracks. It's been two years since I've participated in a mix challenge, so I thought I'd take a crack at this one.

Drums: Fairly standard natural sound with a touch of distortion on the kick and snare to chop off transients and saturation on the entire kit to glue it together. Automated delayed reverb on the snare to fill in dead areas.

Bass: Low passed D112 and high passed the 57. Pitch shifted a second copy of the D112 down an octave and broght in just enough for some depth. Ran all three through amp sims to square off the waves a touch for definition.

Guitars: Mostly mixed and matched provided mic'd cabinets, but did reamp two guitars through amp sims where the provided tracks were too dirty/crunchy to sit in my mix.

Vocals: Added a high-passed super compressed copy of the track for a touch of "air". Big plate reverb automated to extend the long notes. Maybe a bit of pitch correction too.

BG Vocals: Sometimes audible, sometimes not really. Drowned in big plate reverb.

This is pretty much a static mix. I left the dynamics to the actual performance, which can get sloppy in places, but also makes the track feel more organic.

WAV: https://drive.google.com/file/d/17cTrnf ... sp=sharing
MP3: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OztDBu ... sp=sharing

[anto]

Hi All,
Thanks to Los_Ady for the great song and to Mister Fox for running the competition.
I really enjoyed mixing this track!

Here is my mix:
WAV

I used Reaper v6.14 for mixing this track.

Mix preparation
- grouped the tracks into buses
- gain-staging to peak around -24 dB LUFS
- removal of resonant room frequencies (using FabFilter Pro Q 3)
- removed the guitar DI tracks as they were not required (plenty of great guitar tones already recorded)
- applied high-pass filtering to the guitar buses (around 80 Hz with a gentle 3 dB/oct rolloff)
- phase alignment of bass tracks
- removal of "mud" from the bass tracks
- flipping the phase of the snare drum top mic and removal of room resonances from the room mics
- applied pre-fx automation to the vocal at this stage to ensure a consistent volume level as it did seem to be quite uneven

During this stage, I probably spent the majority of time on the drums, followed by the vocals.

I then adjusted the levels to get a rough balance and bounced these tracks to save on CPU and re-imported them into a separate project.

The Mix
Although it wasn't initially apparent from the first listen, after I applied volume automation to the vocal, I noticed a lot of really nice moments that I wanted to bring out.
I also liked the rawness of the band and the great performances so I wanted to preserve a lot of that character without washing everything out in reverb.
I couldn't help feeling that "Milk" by Garbage would make a great reference track so I used it along with some of the others to get the basic tone, particularly after automating the vocal.

For the mix, I generally used the Brainworx SSL 9000J plugin on all the buses for sweetening EQ and usually applying gentle parallel compression (3:1 ratio, around 3 dB gain reduction). I applied heavier parallel compression to the drums and bass (around 3:1 ratio, gain reduction of 6 dB).

Unlike previous mixes, I used more delays (stock Reaper ReaDelay plugins) than reverb with short delays used for providing "ambience".
The reverb I used was the Liquidsonics Seventh Heaven but only ended up sending the snare and the arpeggiated guitar bus to it.
The rest was created with delays or using the existing room mic sounds that were very well-captured.
There are also some more subtle quarter- and eighth-note delays used to help with movement.

In addition to the SSL 9000J compression on the vocal, I also applied some parallel compression with a slower "LA-2A" style (Brainworx bx_opto) compressor which seemed to suit the vocal style a lot. There are also some delays used for thickening up the vocals and I used the TDR Nova as a de-esser on the vocal track.
Although there are some "pitchy" moments in the vocal, I didn't treat these and perhaps a refinement would be to add some subtle pitch-correction.
I found that delays can also be used to help hide some of those moments without sounding artificial.

I also used the Brainworx bx_2500 delay on the background vocals to give it a bit of an "ethereal" sound.

I used the TDR Kotelnikov GE on the master bus for mix-bus compression (1.5:1 ratio with slow attack and release times, < 0.5 dB gain reduction) to help glue everything together a bit better.

I had fun so thanks for the opportunity! Good luck to everyone.
Cheers,
Anto