Mix Challenge

Hi, friends!

Well, I really liked this song! Really! My wife caught me shaking my head with headphones while I was mixing, several times.

This is my edit:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lNf8x4 ... sp=sharing

Screenshots and gif:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1pwoDg ... S7HfGV72l8

ITB mixing; DAW Reaper.

Drums:
I didn't use only the track 06HiHat SM57.
On the individual tracks, I basically used gate, compression and equalization, as needed by each one.
Kick, Snare, Overs, Toms, Room and Crash were placed in subgroups for organization and specific processing of each piece. On the Kick bus I get a little low end boost with bx_subfilter.
Everything was send to a group channel, in which I used a Channel Strip (SSL4000E PA), a colored compressor (ACME), Phil's Cascade and Slam Dawg for a character and Lindell 354E for multiband compression. To save CPU processing, which in my case is limited, I printed the DrumBus output and turned off all processing of the bus and its channels. In the printed channel I still used character plugins (Oxide, BBE Sonic Maximizer and BlackBox), in addition to a little more multiband compression. Serial compression process was designed to control the kick and snare, as well as hold some of the harshness of the cymbals.
No processing was overstated here. Everything was subtle and it is the sum that is important.

Ambience:
Only two reverb aux channels.
In one of them, a convolution reverb plugin (Convology XT, which is free and very good) processing DI guitars with a long reverb. The IR used is the "Music Club" which is included in the free Big Gee's Lexicon 480L Reverb library. With the exception of the final part, DI guitars are located further to the left of the virtual stage. In contrast and to help with the stereo field, the reverb was panned to the right, bringing a very beautiful effect.
The second reverb receives the Drum Buss signal only to complement the room. It is the Drum Room 2 preset of Lexicon's MPX Native plugin.

Bass:
I used the DI and the SM57 tracks. The latter had the low end filtered and it was in it that I applied the chorus requested by the band. I used the excellent Acon Digital Multiply (free). Unfiltered Audio Dent2 for light saturation. In BassBus, a little more saturation with Exciter from Neutron3 and compression with ACME.

GTRs:
I used tracks DI, 112 and M/S in almost all parts.
The tracks DI and 112 were added in subgroups, which fed the reverb channel described above. Everything was sended to a main group, in which an equalizer was used to clear a resonance at 2.3 kHz, a small gain in the highs and also in the 90 kHz region.
The rest of the processing was minimal, with only some compression and equalization in certain tracks and subgroups, to maintain the original tone of the GTRs, which was very beautiful and consistent with the references.

Vocals:
The BV were grouped in a Bus in which they were processed with an equalizer for low freq control, a compressor (LA2A) and a chorus (Studio D). They were better positioned on the panorama.
Lead vocal was subjected to a slight pitch correction with Melodyne. Then, a few clicks were extracted with Waves' X-Click. An EQ for mid frequencies control (between 22hz and 2khz), SSL4000E for compression and a bit of character. A DeEsses to tame sibilance. Lead reverbs was inserted directly on the channel. As the vocals had to be almost in the background, the reverb had to be long and well embedded in the mix. I chose a spring reverb (PSP SpringBox) for its characteristic and the repetition effect. Next, I used Exponential Audio's Nimbus for the long tail, with a large hall preset. This plugin allows to duck itself, creating a space in the long tail of the reverb for the vocal phrases that will follow, which helps to keep the vocal in evidence.
In the vocal bus, only Acoustica Audio's El Rey was inserted for smooth compression.

Everything was recorded in an L/R file called PRINT, which was processed in a new project (gif attached). I applied a Pultec for a slight gain in the low and high frequencies, in addition to the BBE Harmonic Exciter and the 610-B and SSLBusComp for saturation and "glue". There was also a gain in volume to fit the rules.

I really liked the result!
Thanks Ady and Cheap Flights for the great tune! Hope you guys like my mix. Good luck to all fellow mixers!

hello,

thanks for the opportunity.

drums: some eq on the bus to push it a bit back, sga1650, tape emu and parallel compression,...
bass: wanted it to be steady and taking up the bottom end (lowcut the kick), pullteclike eq, fairchildlike comp, some chorus,...
git: didn't use all the mic's, preamp by nebula, api like eq
vocal: wanted it to be well dominant, some automation, compression, eq (tried a new eq from arturia), little doubling,...
bv: ampsim by ignite amps, some chorus,...
some delay and reverbs (but not too much)
masterbus: console sim by airwindows, flux bittesweet,...

if anybody is interested to know more in detail i'm happy to provide...

hope you enjoy!

https://www.dropbox.com/s/w4snnq4tn3ywk ... i.wav?dl=0

Hi folks, I love this cool song.

My mix session summary :

DAW : Reaper
Drums : UAD 1176, 1073 on single tracks, Pulteq, Slate VTM on Bus, Desser on cymbals, UAD Plate Verb and Echoboy Jr Delay for Ambiance
Bass : IK Compression, UAD 1073, Waves Distortion
Guitars : Slate Digital VMR Eq-Compression Bundle, Slate VTM
Vocals : UAD La-2a, Pultec, Nectar 3, Slate VTM, Echoboy Jr Delay

A lot of automations.
A lot of subtractive eq.

Lastly, some gentle compression and EQ with Acustica Audio Strip, Slate VTM on Master Bus

Here's my mix :
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1StKPw ... kK6EY3uMka

Hello everyone,

First a big thanks to Ady and Cheap Flights for making these tracks available for us to mix. It's a cool track, I especially like the guitar textures. It was a fun one to mix.

My Mix:
MC070__Cheap_Flight__Waterfall__john.wav

Drums:
I used Boz Digital's Gatey Watey gate to isolate the kick and snare in the close mics.
PSP's NobelQ (pultec emulation) to shape the kick and give it some analog flavor.
Softube's Saturation Knob helped give some added punch to the snare - I've been going to that a lot recently for that purpose.
I pulled the ride mic out of the mix and used the overheads for all the cymbals, and a healthy amount of it too.

Bass:
I split the bass at 220 Hz. I high-passed the DI at about 220 Hz for articlation, with Klanghelm's SDRR saturation plugin for some fuzz.
I Low-passed the AKG mic at 220 and used that to fill out the low-end.
I didn't use the SM57 mic
The summed bass channel had the PSP NobelQ again to shape to overall tone, with a bump around 700 Hz for articulation.

Vocals:
I used the Sonimus Satson channel strip on the lead vocals, and a combination of Klanghelm's MJUC and FabFilter's Pro-Q3 on the harmonies.
Cableguy's free Pancake was added to a couple of the harmony tracks to give them some added movement.
Reverb on the vocals is courtesy of Waves Abbey Rd. Plate.
Lots of delay on the vocals in various spots, slapback, quarter note and half note, all courtesy of Boz Digital's Imperial Delay.

Guitars:
I didn't do a whole lot to the gits. Some processing from the Sonimus Satson channel strip in places, but not much. Also a bit of reverb from IKM's CSR Rooms.

Lastly, on the master bus, I used the newly released Voxengo Teode, which is, in their words, an "automatic spectral balancer". I demoed it for a few days, and put my money down this morning. I think it a very useful plugin, and would encourage anyone interested to look into it, and demo it.

Thanks again to all those involved in the mix challenge. Any and all feedback greatly appreciated from anyone who has a chance to listen...

Take care all,

-John

hi, this is my first mix here,
and exuse me, my english is very bad...
i routed the drums to a bus.i used waves req and rcomp there. all the guitars went on a bus too. i have cla guitars there. backing vocals also went on a bus. I used cla 76 there. main vox also has cla 76 and la2a. bass: req and rcomp.
effects: a lot of readelay, reaverb and waves hdelay, really loud for stereo effect.
2bus: vertigo sound vse2, waves ssl comp, l2, and youlean meter (free). my file has 48khz / 24bit and is trimmed to -16 lufs (youlean free measure). no automation was used, as well as no parallel compression at all.
let's see what the second round says. then i can use automation and p. comp., if necessary.
cheers

https://workupload.com/file/xbQyTsmDsRM

Hello everyone, here’s my submission:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/altqqya08o47t ... m.wav?dl=0

I learned about the competition quite late, which felt a bit unfortunate at first but then I decided to treat it as a good challenge where I needed to consider time constraints. Therefore, I started working on the song on Monday, took 3-4 hours to sort out the drums, bass and guitars, the next day I focused on the vocals and today I tried to polish everything up This was a very nice learning experience overall.

When it comes to the mix itself, I relied heavily on saturation (using IVGI by Klanghelm) and reverb (Valhalla Plate), using it on all tracks to a different extent to create this kind of a dirty but ethereal vibe. I treated the drums with parallel compression and actually got rid of the hihat and ride tracks as I felt that these two cymbals were already present enough in the mix. When it comes to guitars, I layered 2-3 guitar sounds depending on the part and applied some chorus and phaser to make them a bit thicker. On bass, I used a bit of distortion and chorus.

Now, the vocals… I think this is the most controversial decision I made, but it just felt right to me. To achieve this old radio effect, I used Izotope Vinyl combined with some EQ and compression and then mixed in the unprocessed vocal which was mainly used as a send to the reverb.
Finally, I couldn’t resist adding just a little bit of production candy: subtle risers made with inverted vocals and guitars and a bit of extra delay on certain guitar parts to fill the space.

In general, I had a great time working on the track, the drums were recorded beautifully and I really enjoyed the shoegaze’y/post-rockish style of the band

Hi all, here's my submission to this month's contest:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hFwxjh ... sp=sharing

This one is among my favorites! Really liked the challenge of keeping the guitars and vocals in balance especially. If anything, I may have the vocals a touch too hot, but I've been making the opposite mistake lately so I decided to leave it. Here's what I did:

BASS:
As requested, a bit of chorus, along with some EQ and compression keyed by the kick drum. Eventide UltraChannel for all these; really useful plugin. Followed by Boz The Wall limiter to give it a final squeeze.

GUITARS:
PSP oldTimer MB followed by PSP E27 on the bus, this sound seemed to work really well to my ears. Some sends to a spring reverb from individual guitar tracks. I generally kept all tracks from each guitar part, mixed and panned in various ways, with the DI signal often going through an amp sim (bx_rockrack V3 in "brit mode" usually). Saturn 2 on the heavy guitars, and Soundtoys Radiator on the dirty guitars.

DRUMS:
Man, what a pleasure it was to work with these drums. Drum bus had the new Tone Empire Model 5000, which seems to suit it well. Decapitator on toms. Purple MC77 (plugin alliance version) on OH. Little bit of Devil-Loc on the hihat. Kick and snare each through a channel of my Aphex Aural Exciter Type C2 (it was $30 a few years ago, but sometimes I just like it). Little bit of gated plate reverb (PSP 2445) on the snare as well. Roof Boom was muted; couldn't make it work for me. Room mics are SMASHED with a pair of DBX 160X in -5:1 mode, mixed conservatively. Also a send from room mics to tube saturation, that ramps up into the second chorus.

VOX:
Light touch, overall, due to great performance. Lead track gets Black Rooster VLA-2A into PSP Twin-L. Whole bus gets my Foote P3S in RMS mode, 2:1 ratio, with the output stage near saturation. Sends to a spring reverb, and to ValhallaVintageVerb in Dirty Plate (a favorite).

MIX BUS:
bx_saturator v2 for a bit of vibe (not mastering!)

Looking forward to hearing any thoughts or feedback!

Hi everyone,
I had some break from challange, but I'm back this month (althrough I started working on mix yesterday ;p).

Here is my entry: https://www.dropbox.com/s/2819zqa9s6omj ... k.wav?dl=0

I started my mix with setting balance of tracks and pan. After that I taked look on drums. I grouped drum tracks and start making adjustments with eq and later with compression. Nothing big, but sometime I use few stages of compressors for more control. On bus I used tape emulation for some glue and bit dark sound.

Next was bass. I used all tracks - like everywhere. No compression here (already nice compressed), but I used eq and saturation. I automated chorus from TAL (mix and width).

For vocals I used deesser, few stages of compression and eq. Later I send it on auxes with reverb and stereo delay. I also tuned vocals a bit later. I used delay for special effects.

A biggest part of work was guitar sound. A lot of time take me getting right balance between tracks and properly pan them for nice width. I reamped DI signals with Amplitube and used some tremole and auto pan in few places to create movement.

Good luck everyone!

Hi Ady,

thanks a lot for this mixing opportunity! Here is my attempt for this round:

WAV

I mixed in the box in ProTools, using FabFilter Pro Q3 and C2 on almost every channel, also Decapitator on Kick, Bass and some of the guitars.
On the drums, I used a little less of the room mics and instead put some extra reverb on the snare. On the bass I put away the DI channel and used only the other two.
For the guitars, I put away the MS-channels and also the DI and blended the rest together. I had to invert phase for some of them to match the others.
For the vocals I worked a lot with trying different reverbs, at the end I landed using also FabFilters Pro-R. Tried with some Delay, but found that of no use and put it away again.
Used a side chain compressor on the guitars bus, ducking the guitars a bit to the side when the vocals come in. This way, I could remain a reasonable level on both guitars and vocal. My goal was to mix the vocal in a very soft and smooth way but still in front of the guitars.
I put a small notch on the sum bus at ~800k, as I found this frequency a bit disturbing at the end.

I can provide screens or more infos on demand.

Hope this mix is to your liking!

Cheers,
Arne

Attached my mix:

mp3: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Ju1sig ... sp=sharing
wav: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xnHOFV ... sp=sharing
capture: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1f2MbNV ... sp=sharing

Was a pleasure. Referenced the band Holy Motors as well as some Chevelle! Real track, kudos to the band.

GB Real