MIX CHALLENGE - MC073 February 2021 - Winners announced

[Jerze]

Hello all, here is my mix on this one. Thanks to the song writer for the chance to mix it

Wav- https://www.dropbox.com/s/9a0sjbz4kmjfj ... e.wav?dl=0

I ended up thinking empty room with this mix so I used med to hall verbs for most things.
I just used the mixed drums with not a lot of time to mix this one. Bass did some note alignment with kic
And some automation to add some dynamics

Notes:

Drum loops
Verse loop-not much some sub added also dup and added decapitator for some drive

Jembe tracks- eq and compression

Chorus loop- verb subs added eq dup used to add to the sides

Rest of drum parts some eq
Most of the the drums where sent to a verb Aux with Raum

Bass- re-amp with Amplitube svx amp little chorus, compression to tighten things up

GT- eq for some upper mids and highs phaser and compression along with Raum

Verse lead- some eq inline flanger, Raum and Quadravox for pitch shifting and delay

Everthing else just some lite eqing

If you have, any thoughts or questions let me know!
Jerze

[Vana]

Hello to All, i tried not to be too invasive with my work, simply to keep the integrity of their sound as much as possible. I tried to keep that feeling of tranquillity and in my opinion, their very relaxing composition is already transmitted with the feeling of the "ocean". I made the leads as central as possible making them speak, as to the fact that there is no voice, some automation to give movement, some EQ to give the right spaces, compressors only on bass, kick, snare and jambe and some saturator on guitar. In other terms, a not too complex job due to their great sound!
And old wise man once said: "there are many ways of going foreward, but only one way of standing still". This helped a lot not to "overdo it" which consequently makes it a "two-way street", which could make it less creative than others. Overall it was just a direction i wanted to take. I hope managed to emphasize their sound! Best regards and I wish you all a good listen.
Vana

https://mega.nz/file/NBoikSRT#QzXgEcw6x ... ZOlfj-kM2U

[Arthur Labus]

Hello everybody !
Very thankful for the oppurtunity and here is what i've done:

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

DRUMS:
Drum Bus - Thrillseeker VBL (light compression + trafo processing), Toneboosters Sibilance (harshness de-essing)

decided to mix the verse and chorus loops on my own.

VERSE LOOP
Kick 1 - Black Rooster Audio VEQ-1P Pultech EQ (kick trick at 30Hz), Cockos ReaGate (Gate)
Kick 2 (duplicated) - Black Rooster Audio VEQ-1P Pultech EQ (kick trick at 100Hz), Pulsar Smasher (1176 compressor)
Snare - no treatment, send to channel with Waves TrueVerb (Cathedral)
HiHat - Brainworx bx_console N, D16 Decimort bit crusher, Soundtoys PanMan for minor movement
Ride 1 - Soundtoys Effect Rack (Fat Bottom Drums) for bit crushing & phasing, Waves Brauer Motion for 3D movement, Stone Voices Ambient Reverb (Dark Ambience) for space
Ride 2 - Soundtoys Effect Rack (Fat Bottom Drums) for bit crushing & phasing, Waves Brauer Motion for 3D movement, Stone Voices Ambient Reverb (Input a cave) for space

CHORUS LOOP
Kick 1 - Black Rooster Audio VEQ-1P Pultech EQ (kick trick at 30Hz), Cockos ReaGate (Gate)
Kick 2 (duplicated) - Black Rooster Audio VEQ-1P Pultech EQ (kick trick at 100Hz), Pulsar Smasher (1176 compressor)
Snare - Hornet thirtyone EQ, send to channels with Arturia REV Plate-140 (chorus, solo) / u-he Protoverb (bridge)
HiHat 1 - Brainworx bx_console N, D16 Decimort bit crusher, Soundtoys PanMan for minor movement
HiHat 2 - Brainworx bx_console N, D16 Decimort bit crusher, Abletunes Space Knob for extra space, Izotpe Ozone Imager 2 for stereo spread
Ride - Soundtoys Effect Rack (Fat Bottom Drums) for bit crushing & phasing, Waves Brauer Motion for 3D movement, Alesis Microverb for space

BRIDGELOOP1: Caleum Audio TapeCasette2 for LoFi
BRIDGELOOP2: BeatSkillz Slam Dawg for audio crushing - send to channel with D16 Repeater in Bridge for stereo delay
CRASH - no treatment
BELL - Soundtoys PanMan for quick panning
SHAKER - Pecheng Tremeolo for host synced panning
JEMBE SM - Waves Brauer Motion for 3D movement
JEMBE AT - Izotpe Ozone Imager for stereo spread


BASS:
buss: Waves Scheps 73 (clean bass)

Bass DI (Intro, Verses): Focusrite Red 3 compressor, Magix Vandal amp sim with Chorus, Bass Professor Mark II, Black Rooster Audio VEQ-1P Pultech EQ (bass trick at 100Hz)
Waves Brauer Motion for 3D movement, GVST GMonoBass for mono frequencies below 150Hz
Bass DI duplicated (Intro, Verses): Waves CLA Bass amp sim, Overloud Gem EQ500 for harmonics and extra clarity, Focusrite Red 3 compressor,
D16 Syntorus chorus, GVST GMonoBass for mono frequencies below 150Hz
Bass DI (choruses, outro): Focusrite Red 3 compressor, brainworx Ampeg SVTVR Classic amp sim, Wavesfactory Trackspacer 2.5 - dynamic eq sidechained from kick

RHYTHM GUITARS bus
Black Rooster Audio VHL-3C high/low pass filter at 100Hz/15kHz

GUITARS Verses
SM tracks untreated hard panned left and right
AT tracks with ToneBossters TB_Reverb (Echo sparkle) panned 70% opposite to corresponded SM tracks

GUITARS Chorus/outro
BUS: Wavesfactory Trackspacer 2.5 - dynamic eq sidechained from bass, Black Rooster Audio VEQ-1P Pultech EQ (Guitar trick at 60Hz/10kHz), Toneboosters Sibilance (harshness de-essing),
Black Rooster Audio VHL-3C high/low pass filter at 100Hz/4kHz, AudioFB Blanka exciter, 1028 Audio Reviber exciter, Variety of Sound ThrillseekerXTC blue exciter,
Overloud Gem EQ500 equalizer, Variety of Sound SlickHDR multiband compressor, Sonible smartEQ2 equalizer, Waves API-2500 compressor

SM tracks untreated panned left and right
AT tracks with ToneBossters TB_Reverb (Echo sparkle) panned 100% opposite to corresponded SM tracks
AT tracks muted in 1st Bridge

SOLO GUITARS
GTR SOLO Verse SM: Focusrite Red 3 compressor
GTR Bridge: no treatment - send to channel with u-he Protoverb reverb (Cathedral)
GTR Bridge2: no treatment
GTR Solo 1: SM/AT tracks with different settings of Waves Brauer Motion - which hits at second half of outro solo
GTR Solo 2: SM/AT tracks with Nugen Audio NG-EL Stereoizer for stereo spread
GTR Solo 3: SM/AT tracks, AT track with Izotpe Ozone Imager for stereo spread

KEYS
Bridge Riser: Soundtoys Little Radiator for extra dirt and grit
Chorus synth: Soundtoys Filter Freak (frequency sweep), 1028 Audio Reviber exciter, Black Rooster Audio VHL-3C high/low pass filter at 150Hz/off

PIANO
Chorus Piano: Waves TG12345 console (bright piano),Black Rooster Audio VHL-3C high/low pass filter at 250Hz/off, GVST GMonoBass for mono frequencies below 210Hz

Overall a lot of volume and pan automation

Master Bus:
NLS Bus (Neve) analog summing, Acustica CoralEQ (pulling down 350 Hz a bit),Waves TG12345 console with subtle EQ, Density MkII compressor (glueing), Toneboosters ReelBus tape sim,
Toneboosters Sibilance, Charly Limited analog gain, Youlean Loudness Meter

WAV: https://drive.google.com/file/d/19V7Hcb ... sp=sharing

WAV 24bit/44kHz round 2,5 dB headroom / loudness -16,2 LUFS

Good succes everybody !

[cpsmusic]

Hi Everyone,

Here's my mix of TREEEYE's Selga.

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

Thanks to the competition organisers and to the song provider/s for giving us an interesting challenge.

One of the main things I tried with this mix was to achieve a sense of "space" and 3D front-to-back depth. Hence the use (overuse?) of reverb and delay.

Something that I found difficult with this mix was getting the distorted rhythm guitars to sound the way I wanted - basically, powerful and full but not taking up all the space in the mix! Not sure whether I achieved this or not.

I chose to mix the drums from the source tracks rather than use the stems, mainly because I'm here to up my mixing game, so any practice is useful!

I mixed the song in Studio One Pro so took advantage of its MixFX console simulation (CTC-1) which I added a small amount (the Custom Console) of to all busses. I also used Softube's Tape as a MixFX on the Master Bus.

I also took the opportunity with this mix to use some plug-ins that I picked up in last year's sales (MH Character, Elysia mpressor, Black Box HG-2, bx_townhouse, LegacyQ) and recently SSL's Channel Strip.

Each instrument section (Drums, Bass, Keys, FX, Rhythm Guitars, Lead Guitars) was sent to its own bus. All sub-busses feeding the main busses had Metric Halo's Character set to American Solid State.

On drums and percussion I used Harrison's LegacyQ and where needed, Elysia's mpressor. Kicks and Snares also had BOZ's Little Clipper for a bit of transient enhancement and "bite".

For the drum "space" I used my three hardware units - a TC M300 for ambience, an SPX990 for a drum room (Bamboo Room) and an SRV-330 for a long reverb (Stereo 140 Plate). For the main drum bus I used Townhouse, Black Box, SlickEQ GE and Nova GE. The Nova GE was used for some multiband upwards expansion to try and breathe some life into the drum loops.

The bass treatment was fairly straightforward. First Metric Halo Character, then Black Rooster's VHL-3C for high-pass/low-pass filtering, followed by Flux Solera for levelling then Nembrini's PSA1000 Jnr for distortion, Ampeg SVTR Classic and finally Flux Elixir for more levelling.

For the riser I used Metric Halo's Character, then Unfiltered Audio's Instant Delay for a "delay sweep" and finally SPL's Vitalizer for some stereo width.

The piano and synth were compressed separately with LDC2, then together on a bus with Elysia's mpressor. I tried to put these sounds into the background and used AudioDamage's Dubstation 2 delay for this.

The different guitars took up most of my time for this mix. I grouped them into four types - clean rhythm, distorted rhythm, clean lead and distorted lead.

For the guitars' spatial processing I tried something a bit different. I created a "master delay" and "master reverb". For the delay I used two mono busses panned hard L/R with Instant Delay set slightly differently on each bus. I used this delay on the distorted rhythm guitars to try and give them some 3D depth. I did this by sending the right guitar to the left delay and vice-versa. For the master reverb I used three mono busses panned LCR. The L and R busses used Arturia's REV Plate-140 and the C reverb used Flux's Verb Session set to a Medium Hall. The two plates had slightly different settings in an attempt to enhance the stereo effect.

The clean rhythm guitars were processed with SSL's Native Channel Strip and then Acon's Multiply for some chorusing. The clean bridge guitar sounded a bit thin too me so I tried to thicken it with SPL's TwinTube and IVGI2. Then I used a "stereo-ising" preset courtesy of Craig Anderton to spread it out a bit.

The distorted rhythm guitars gave me the most trouble. I spent a lot of time trying to get them to fit in the mix, and in the end I'm not sure how well they turned out. To me, initially, they were too thick and "wild" and needed to be tamed so that they'd fit with everything else. To do this I processed L/R with Guitar Conditioner and Trash2. The L/R bus was then processed with TB EQ 4 (some cuts to get rid of the "wooliness") and a dynamic cut to reduce midrange "boom". I tried a lot of different plug-ins to get the distortion character I was looking for and eventually settled on Nembrini's PSA1000 Jnr as it has a lot of tonal control. The distorted rhythm guitars were then processed with bx_townhouse.

The first clean lead guitar had a lot of percussive content so I used two limiters to control it, and then some chorus to sweeten it a bit. The second clean lead guitar was compressed with Elysia mpressor and Opticom XLA-3. It was given the same "stereo-ising" as mentioned above.

The main lead guitar was treated with SSL Native Essential's Channel Strip and then the Guitar and FX bus was processed with an LA-3A and a Limiter (Frontier) to keep it in front of the other instruments.

For the mix bus I used bx_digital V3 (only for the mono maker), MH Character (tone), bx_townhouse (glue), Lindell TE_100 (smiley face EQ), TB EQ 4 (some M/S HF widening), Nova GE (upwards expansion for dynamic movement), and Vertigo VSM-3 (Hifi Your Mix).

Specs:
44.1kHz/24-Bit
-18.6 LUFS
-3.9dBTP

Best of luck to all participants!!!

Cheers!

[TomImmon]

This was a very special challenge. Never mixed such kind of music, but was really fun
.
Mix 44.1Khz/24Bit
https://www.dropbox.com/s/eklaiyii46yng ... n.wav?dl=0

I used all the drum loops, but send them over Tape Compression and some Tube Saturation (HG-2). For he chorus loop I take the raw snare track and send to an Reverb without using the dry part.

The bass was send through an Ampeg emulation and compressed with SPL Iron.

Most oft he guitars were eqed with a Focusrite Console emulation. The solo git tracks got multiband dynamic enhancement through ProAudio DSM.
I used a lot of Delay FX made with Echoboy. Fort he reverb i used Waves Epic and some convolution rooms.

The keybords got some heavy eq to integrate them and bring them to front in the chorus.

The instrument i liked a lot was the Djembe, so i give it some focus. I used a limiter to eliminate some peaks, compressed a bit with DX160 and send it through HG2 to get some tube saturation.

On the masterbus i used Townhill for the glue, a basic eq and a limiter just to kill some nasty peaks.

Integrated LUFS: -18.7 LUFS
Short Term LUFS: -16.0 LUFS
True Peak: -2.5 dBTP
Peak: -2.6 dB
Dynamic Range: 13.4 DR
Loudness Range: 8.1 LU

Cheers
Tom

[kirurg]

Hello everyone,

https://www.dropbox.com/s/8qxu6sdhn6fiz ... g.wav?dl=0

Thank you the band Treeeye for this challenge.
There is kind of a nice chillout mood in the song.
I grouped the tracks basically into two ones - guitars + keys and
drums + bass.
There is more or less EQ and compression on every guitar track, mostly
cutting form some frequency areas. All guitars bus got Acustica
Audio Pink pre-amp and EQ to add some shine, Pink compressor as well.
Form drums/percs the most processed one is the kick. There is saturation by
Vertigo VSM and also Eventide transition shaping tool used. Added a small
room verb to all the drumkit.
UAD culture vulture to the bass for mid-lower frequency saturation.
Eventide Blackhole used for some soloing guitar parts getting long ambience tails.
A bit UAD EMT250 reverb for couple background guitar tracks to get wider room feeling.
Slate Virtual Console, Acustica audio CelestialMB and UAD Neve 33609 in
the mix bus.

[Matik]

Hi everyone,

Here is my submission: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ndev0akmhnfnu ... k.wav?dl=0

First I made some buses and set rough levels.

Drums:
I didn't use premix and made my own sound here. Especially I like a "snare" sound on verse I made with delays and reverbs. Generally I wanted to change drum sound to more clean, a bit darker, wet and spacey.

Bass:
Compressor - quite fast attack and release, 3:1 ratio. Then Ampeg aemulation and eq to better scoop the tone.

Guitars:
Most of the time I blend more "SM" tracks, but on solos there is more "AT". First I taked out out low end and some mudiness. Then I set some reverbs and delays on my busses to make it more interesting. For solos I cut with eq a lot of "annoying" freq and control it with compressors and transient designers. Oh, also I add some more distortion in choruses.

Piano and synth:
Eq for clarity and Movement plugin for movement


I made also "Reverb and Delay aux" with all instruments and automated it on end of the song.

Cheers

[Cubaland]

Night bars are closed so i spent Saturday with my laptop and headphones. Used basic Logic X plugin gear.Enjoy it!
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gXuHup ... sp=sharing

[loupi]

thanks for the opportunity! here's my mix:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/oj3niin1bnt36 ... i.wav?dl=0

drums:
gate, eq and saturation knob on the kick
izo vinyl and eq on snare (softamp 3od in chorus)
kicks and snare-bus with sga1566
cymbalsbus: saturation knob and taking a little edge off with bitter-sweet
djembe: eq, saturation knob, loudmax
bass: antress firechainer, eq, thrillseeker vbl, some chorus and pulltec like eq (for low and mids)
guitars: eq, nebula alex b digi preamp, firechainer, thrillseeker vbl, elysia niveau-filter for more body
distorted guitars in chorus: nebula alex b rojo preamp, codered, sga1566, thrillseeker vbl
keys: la2a type compressor, saturation, widening wit a1
expander fx receiving a balance of kick snare bass to get them working together
doubler with some snare and guitarsolo
2reverbs short one and longer one (70ms predelay) both ir of real rooms
masterbus: airwindows channel7, tdr slickeq m

thx for listening, hope you enjoy!

[odistdan]

Thanks for sharing this track I like to work with post rock genre.



I used eq on every track.



Bass I compressed so it can be audible from the beginning. 


Drum bus has gentle compression.



I struggled with the fuzz chorus guitars but i mixed then using just eq and volume automation.


Solo distorted guitar layers sounded dull so I used Eq and made a buss of them and used tad bit m/s eq on low mid and compression. 



I used Saturn on snare to give it sparkle and also on entire mix to glue it. 


I used plate reverb, custom setting on Pro R reverb and sound toys stereo delay


My mix bus goes to maximum +1db on vu meter occasionally.



https://drive.google.com/file/d/1AuMP2l ... sp=sharing