MIX CHALLENGE - MC073 February 2021 - Winners announced

[Coiled_Ear]

Very cool song to mix!
WAV - https://www.dropbox.com/s/l9fqgsz2errbt ... r.wav?dl=0

I use pretty strong compression on Drums. And cut a lot of mids. Used sooth on cymbals to tame resonances and added a room verb.
Bass is also highly processed. FirComp, a lot of mid cut. Pro-MB as well to tame 100hz.
Guitars are ok. Added delay to a clean and shimmers to solo. This is post-rock! ;-)
Jembe is hardest part. I ended with a lot of compression, cut resonances and decrease attack and add spatial with MicroShift.
Synth - added a lot of high end to make it crisp and cut through the mix.
Loops - filtering out and tame high peaks. No big deal. Also microshift for chorusing out.

Cheers! And good luck to all

[Naturecord]

Thanks for an interesting challenge. I had fun mixing this, and enjoyed the different opportunities and obstacles the process offered me

https://www.dropbox.com/s/jhvepnjkx5e73 ... d.wav?dl=0

Wav, 24bit, 44.1 kHz
Integrated LUFS: -18.9
Digital Peak: -2

In general: I kept the drum Loops, but added the snare track on the chorus to get it more punchy (worked on the phase alignment and eq’ed a snare plate to fit it into the mix). Made VLC channels, and did a lot of volume and some pan automation and on the different instruments and groups of instruments to get a feeling og a little more punch and rhythmic progression, also to try to glue the different parts together. All tracks have Slate VMR on them (Brit-N) for console emulation
As it is an instrumental track I tried to identify different instruments that I could put forward in the mix at different stages, sometimes rhythm section, different guitars, Jembe or bass to try to keep momentum in the song.


Mixbus: a glue compressor (UAD shadow hill compressing very gently 0-2 db), a little EQ (Chandler curve bender) pulling out a little 300hz, Slate Saturation for the VMR.

Guitars are grouped in Rhythm guitars: Clean and Distorted, and Solo/lead guitars.


All Guitar Aux: Sent to General Verb
Rhythm Distorted Aux:Fabfilter ProQ-3 low pass and pulling out some 300hz. Manley massive passive adding some 470 and 2.7hz, FG-401 compressor
Rhythm Clean Aux: Fabfilter ProQ-3 low pass and pulling out some 720hz, FG-401 compressor, and some AirEQ to add a little shine. Sent to a guitar parallel compression (1176)
Solo Guitars Aux: Maag EQ4 for some air and mids, Fabfilter ProQ-3 low pass and pulls out some 300hz, Slate Fresh air for more air, UAD Fairchild 670 for some compression, Oxford inflator to make poke a little in the mix.
The clean Acoustic guitar and clean electric also have a fairchild 670 to control the dynamics a little but mostly to add some character. In addition Acoustic guitar has an eq pulling out some 150 and 240hz and a manley massive passive pulling out 300 and 560hz, adding some 1,5k and 12k. Most dynamic control was done with volume automation on this guitar.

Keys Aux: Fabfilter ProQ-3 low pass, removing 300hz, boosting a high shelf, Pro-C compression, a UAD Studer a800 saturation to control tops and add warmth.
There is a Maag EQ4 on each of the tracks to control mids and add top, Piano has a fresh Air for more air.

Bass Aux: Bass Rider, Fabfilter ProQ-3 adding 128 and 5.5k, subtracting 300 and 500hz. Took out some 62hz to make room for kick. Fairchild 670 for compression.

The bass is split into 2 tracks, one track has a low pass filter set to 2.5K and added Devil-Lock for distortion and is fed slightly in to the Aux. The other has the Ampeg SVTR classic emulator on it.

Drum Aux: Fabfilter ProQ-3 boosted 62, subtracked 128 for bass, cut out some 688hz, UAD shadow hill, Decapitator, Abbey Road Saturator, Fabfilter ProQ-3 with mid-side to low pass sides under 100hz and cut some 330 from mid.
Sends to Drum room, General Verb

Loops: Chorus Loop is EQed quite a lot, I found it a little muddy so wanted to clean it up a little and also to carve out the snare since I added the snare track on top, the others loops are mostly just volume automation.

Perc: Added some top, The shaker is doubled and panned using microshift on one track for some stereo fee.
Jembe: Some EQ, adn Oxford Inflator to make it stand out a little in the mix.

Snare: Added the snare on Chorus Loop, Little Labs Phase alignment, EQed alot. Sendt to a snare plate also with quite alot of EQ on it.

HH: Fabfilter ProQ-3 to cut lows, Maag EQ4 to add air, Oxford Inflator.

Sends
Drum Parallell: 1176
Drum Destruction: Devil-Lock
Drum Room: Lexicon 224, some EQ
Drum Plate: Lusterous Plates Crome, Some EQ
Snare Plate: Lusterous Plates Rhodium, Some EQ
General Verb: Valhalla Vintage Verb (Bright Hall)

[vaporF15E]

Hi y’all, this song was quite different than what I normally work on (compared to metal/hardcore music) but I quite enjoyed it a ton. It was all in-the-box.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/17KXwgC ... sp=sharing

DRUMS
Processed the kick differently between the verse and chorus
Verse Kick: EQ, saturation (fabfilter Saturn2 for all the saturation I did), transient designer, parallel compression w/Logic stock comp
Chorus Kick: same as verse kick but scooped out more low mids (300-500hz)
Snare: EQ, saturation, used expander on fundamental then parallel compressed medium attack and release (plugin alliance focucrite channelstrip), uad Ocean Way and vahalla room for reverb/room sound
Snap: boosted mids, 2:1 compression with fast attack slow release, Valhalla room for reverb
Hi hats and cymbals: heavy saturation, eq attenuations on the peaks anywhere between 3K-10K
Drum Buss: eq boost at 4K & 7K (I never do that, don’t know why but I liked it this time), slate distressor doing about 1-2 db of gain reduction, only on the loudest parts. In parallel -> UAD Fatso with warmth circuit only engaged (the ole Andrew schepps trick)

PERCUSSION:
Jembe/bongos - boosted upper mid and highs, aphex exciter, compression slow attack fast release, a little bit of limiting with L1, UAD Ocean way studios for roomier sound, panned left
Shaker: EQ and waves doubler with center channel muted (sides only)

BASS:
Large eq attenuations between 300-500hz, waves Kramer HLS 60hz circuit engaged and boost at 700hz, CLA bass with chorus and distortion turned off. Minor saturation from 500hz and up. CLA-76 slow attack fast release, multi band compression on sub and 100-200hz freqs

Guitars:
Any Reverb on guitars -> Neural DSP’s PLINI plugin with only the reverb circuit engaged.

RHYTHM Guitar:
Hi pass at 80 hz, minor attenenuations at 500hz, minor boosts at 1.5khz, 3.1 kHz, major boosts at 8Khz and 16khz, transient designer, multi band compression on 2-4khz range to tame spikes. Side chained compressor to attenuate guitars around 2-3 db during snare hits.

LEAD guitars:
Eq, plini reverb, multi band compression, 2-4K UAD ocean way studio for more room sound, more EQ, soothe 2, saturation on 2-4k band. Some of the lead guitars had L1 for slight limiting, some did not.

PIANO/SYNTH:
Eq, Spectre plugin, transient designer, soothe2

MIX BUS:
small Eq bump at 12k, small attenuation at 4k, MaxxBass, 1-2db compression with uad Neve 33609 100ms recovery (limiter DIS-engaged) 1:1.5 ratio, soothe2, saturation

thanks for making great music,

Seth

[Christoph_K]

Here's my entry:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/afqos3mxzh5v9 ... K.wav?dl=0

First I went for a SSL sound but I made up my mind and finally went with the Focusrite Channelstrip from Brainworx. I found it did fit the sonic character of the track much better. It had more punch, clarity and sweetness! I used it on every track.

DRUMS/PERCUSSION
Kicks: Pulteq and EQ (added subharmonics in the chorus with Voice of God from UAD)
Snaps: EQ
Snare: EQ
Hi-Hats and the Bridge Loops: MannyM Distortion, EQ
On the Bridge Loop 2 I put the UAD MXR Flanger
Djembé, Shaker: EQ
Bell: Abbey Road Saturator, EQ
Parallel Drum compression with DBX160, Fatso, CLA-76 and Izotope Trash.

BASS
I duplicated the Bass DI (LA2A, EQ) and put the UAD Ampeg B15N on it (with EQ). On the Bass aux is the Manley VariMU and EQ. Added subharmonics with Voice of God from UAD.

GUITARS
The Verse Guitars are on an aux with LA2A and EQ.
The Bridge Guitars have 1176+EQ on it.
For the Solo Guitar in the Verses I loved the pure Sound, so I didn’t put a chorus on it, just a little bit of saturation on a duplicated track with „The Abuser“ plugin.
On the Chorus Guitars I used the Softube Zener Bender Channelstrip (via Console 1) and dialed in some drive.
The GTR Solo 1 are grouped on an aux with an 1176, some EQ and the BX refinement plugin.
GTR Solo 3 just EQ and a little bit of compression from the Focusrite.
GTR 4 are on an aux with LA3A, EQ and „The Abuser“.

KEYS
The Chorus Synth got a little help from the PA Blackbox and the Bridge Riser has the Arturia Juno Chorus on it.

EFFECTS
As Effects I used the Capitol Chambers, Lexicon 480L, AKG BX20, EMT140 and Ocean Way Studios (all UAD), Echoboy, Eventide H3000 as delays and the Inspirata Lite for snaps and bell.

REARBUS/MIXBUS/MASTER
On the Rearbus is the Vertigo VSC-2 with around 2-7db gain reduction
On the mixbus I used the Scheps Chain (Fairchild 670, Neve 33609C, Pultec without EQ, BX V3) and the BX Bettermaker with boosts at 10k and 100hz.
On the Masterbus I had the ATR102, Acustica Audio Celestial and the Oxford Limiter.

Mixed with LUNA (Neve Summing on Groups and Studer 800 on the single Tracks). LUFS@-16.3 (measured with Puremix LUFS Analyzer)

Good luck everyone!

- Chris

[AskAndy]

hello , i hope i have done this properly as far as rules and guide lines. forgive and instruct if i have failed.
Selga- deep blue , vast, aquatic, organic, swirlly at times, images of ripples moving out and reflecting and reflecting agian, colorfull coral , cavernous grottos, very few hard lines. these are the emotional images i try to bring out/through the piece, as very briefly described by the band. So gratuitous use of reverbs on delays on reverbs for specific instruments and sections to give a real fluid feel. the first verse is that beautiful, first immersion into a tropical reef ; crystal waters rich with life and colors, eddies and pulses of the environment.
Chorus spills us into the great vast blue ocean ;we are overwhelmed ,tiny, vulnerable, life is gigantic and mysterious.
verse Two , you spill into a huge grotto , entombing (en"womb"ing), alien . Then back to the deep blue ,great whales, schools of yellowtail.

so i tried to convey this feeling that the piece conveyed to me. needed rich semi nonlinear reverbs ltterally for depth and alien space. delays for the motion of water. then combining the rvb-dly-rvb for a mental feeling of water and neutral buoyance.
Nothing on master bus . plenty of compression ( a thousand thimbles) spead around to most tracks, with parallel comp for each of the stems( i wound up with about 11 stems) should be plenty of headroom for mastering. a]
Thank you Mix Challenge for this opportunity, and Thanks to the band for the awesome piece.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_5Hb9j ... sp=sharing
just measured it . DAMM. miss it thouight i was at -15 LUFS turns out itis -9 LUFS. super fail. sorry. live and learn

[harryc1344]

Hello everyone.

LINK: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ag53agfp08cvv ... 4.wav?dl=0

Thanks a lot to the band for submitting the song! I've not really mixed anything with electronic drum parts before, so it was fun and interesting to try something new.

Firstly, I put the whole song on a loop and spent some time creating a balance using just the faders and pan pots. I like to mix into my mix bus processing, so I continued to listen to the track on a loop whilst tweaking the settings on my mix bus chain - Logic's channel EQ, bx_townhouse compressor (a couple of db. at 2:1), Kramer Tape/True Iron (see which I prefer) and a Pultec eq (adding lows and highs). I generally go back and adjust the mix bus after adding anything major to the mix.

Drums
I’m using a lot of parallel processing on the drums. There are a few parallel compression auxes, a thick boomy tape aux, a sansamp style (PSA1000) distortion aux, and a few different reverb auxes.
I thought that both kick tracks were lacking a bit of bottom end, so I added some extra lows with the free Wavesfactory Sub Kick plugin, I used Echoboy on the snare tracks so that they didn’t seem so bone dry compared to the kicks, the shaker has been doubled, pitch-shifted, and panned, and the Jembe tracks have been bitcrushed and sent through a Copicat style tape plugin.

Bass
I split the bass into two; the ‘low bass’ (heavily compressed and limited) and ‘high bass’ (lighter compression, chorus, distortion), I automated the volume of the high bass track whilst keeping the low bass track at a constant level. I felt that the chorus of the song didn’t kick in with enough impact, so I removed a few bass notes prior to the choruses and threw the final bass note before the chorus to a long reverb - make the big bit seem a little bit bigger by making the small bit before the big bit a little bit smaller. Simple.

Guitars
Most of the guitar tracks have been eq’ed and compressed where necessary and are being sent (in varying amounts) to some reverb and delay auxes. The chorus rhythm guitar tracks felt a bit flat to me, so I sent them through a sort of parallel exciter in order to bring out a bit more of the fizzy/attacky pick noise. I also put the rhythm guitar parts that are played just before the choruses onto new tracks and put them through a telephone style eq. Again, make it small to make the big bit bigger. The solo guitars are going through various combinations of distortion, reverb, and delay. The printed guitar tracks have just been high/low passed and sent to some of the parallel reverb auxes.

Keys
I struggled to pick out the piano track in the choruses, so I used Quadravox to mix in a small amount of the octave up. I increased the attack of the synth track with a transient designer.

Mix Bus
After referencing a few tracks, I felt that the elements of my mix were still sounded quite disparate. I tried adding more compression but I didn’t like the effect so I instead tried putting a reverb plugin on the mix bus. I tried out various reverb styles/settings at different points in the chain and I eventually settled on a 1.5second hall reverb at 15% wet just before my final Pultec eq. I haven’t really tried this before, and I doubt that I’d try it on most mixes, but I feel like the reverb got all the elements sitting in the same world and gave the entire mix a bit more cohesion. Finally I made a few little tweaks on the channel EQ (mainly cutting out some harshness around 3.5k).

Good luck to all.

[Loopwook]

Thanks to the gentleman for providing the song.

I mixed this on a 2013 laptop on Studio one 4 with Edifier PC-speaker in a non acoustically treated room . I liked the percussion sounds and I used the individual tracks to be able to eq them but also used the premixes, Auto-Aligned them to the individual tracks and crushed them with 1176, omnipressor expansion and reverb for some agressive parallell saturation .

I mostly use Fabfilter pro-Q3 for Eq. It was tricky to find places in frequency and space for the many different guitar tracks. So most of the mixing was me trying to sound design those to their own space with eq, delays and reverbs.

I had some random compressors on the channels mostly to level because I used bus compression on subgroups for each instrument group. Drums/percussion group had 2-3 dB soft clipper and limiter to avoid ducking compressors in a future mastering. Kick drum ducks the bass around 80 Hz and I duplicated the bass and used spectre for harmonics in the midrange and then added a leveler before the bass bus compression.

I hope someone likes the mixing ideas. It was fun. Here it is:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1T3IPC_ ... sp=sharing

Cheers
Loopwook

[simola]

Hi! Here is my take on the song Selga by Treeeye.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1H6Gl42 ... sp=sharing

Drums
- Cut away boxiness from the tracks and routed them to a drum buss with some Decapitator saturation
- Added delay on the snare on the verses

Percussion
- Added stereo width with Waves doubler and compressed with CLA-76

Bass
- Ampeg amp modelling on the DI track
- POWAIR for compression and loudness leveling

Guitars
- Cut away nasty frequencies with waves F6
- Some tracks were sent to a plate reverb buss

Synth
- Cut away offending stuff and compressed with puigchild

Master
- Some bus compression from bx_townhouse and Kramer tape as the last insert

[Ade Mahardhika]

Hi everyone..
its pretty cool to mix this song, a lot work for gain staging for this project to make sure all tracks have same tone colour grading. I used compressor, Eq a bit, reverb to make separation for instrument, send to 4 group and going to Stereo Bus for Print.

Gears :
MacPro 2009
Digidesign 192 i/o HD3
Pro Tools HD9
Waves Plugin (CLA76 - RReverb)
Fabfilter (Pro Q2)
Pro Tools (D-Verb - Trim - Eq7)

Thanks for the band who want share their tracks, hope u all enjoy it

Link :
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UIBHSj ... p=drivesdk

[Mister Fox]

A friendly reminder:
We're in the final 24 hours to submit your mix