Thanks a lot for your thoughts, yeah I'm guilty of that, I have even a "Bass + Drums" bus, that occasionally might get its own exciter or multiband compressor (with punchy attack settings). So I can change the general feel of the song quickly, between the two described ways of expression.Manii wrote: ↑Tue Dec 22, 2020 07:30 CETBack to your mix, in my perspective I find the bass and drums too proheminent, leaving the other instruments in background and making the song more "easy" to listen to, which for me loses a bit the soul of the song. But that may actually be what the client was looking for! I think my mix is quite different and now that I listen to both, I wish I've made something in between haha!
Anyway, congrats for your job!
This is different from the "Room" bus, that delivers the back plane, but also has the cymbals, as I see some question and answer game between the overhead sound (includes some upper mid-range pressure from all drums) and the darker back room / theater sound. So I create the balance between these, and then occationally boost them together, this changes the feeling/intensity/depth but does not disturb balances too much.
In the previous project, I threw the room mics of those many guitars into the room bus also.
* But also, with pushing the exciter a little bit more, and slamming it all into Vlad's machinery (2-band clipping and everything..), a lot of detail that you seek will return. -10 integrated seems the limit for what I did, which is a lot, so we can also loosen up if we want it softer and still be loud.
(Beware the sibilants, when you use clipping, they will be the first to distort and become harsh, next come cymbals, so - more deessing, and using the treble softener button that Vlad had created.)
With this experiment, I found out that I have to tame the bass fret sliding noise, because it came up at certain points and messed with the vocals.
This is what I do, additionally beyond using the monitoring level knob and the different listening devices, as told by Mr. Fox.
I do a test check, what would brickwalling do to it, Vlad's, or the Maximizer (many times sounds worse than the former), and it may tell me issues with my mix.
But it depends, and can't be generalized, I think this leads to the question if we have an established relationship with a couple of mastering engineers, and we know how they work, what they usually suggest to us, and what will happen to our mixes in their labs (and perhaps not in others).
This is part of the business process (or often would be), that will complete the circle, i.e. also the purpose must be defined here, about do we need a soft or a loud version, aggressive or night radio, album or TV etc. etc. including the vision of the artist themselves.
What I did, might belong to the genre of loud Latin and Spanish music played on the beach, not too audiophile, and it may still have a lot of critical lyrics, it depends on the owner of that place, and the regular guests. I saw a lot of that on Greek islands.
A myriad of anecdotal facts might play together, to make some song suddenly successful...
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