MIX CHALLENGE - MC097 April 2024 - Winners announced

[wkanegis]

Hi guys! Had a lot of fun on this one.

As far as the highlights of my mix process, I left the lead vocal pretty clean and tried to build the rest of the instruments around it. I employed some 'comb filter' like effects on various supporting instruments, like the strings, cello, and backup vocals. For instance, I used a 'static phaser' technique using the fruity phaser where you set the sweep frequency to zero, which gives a 'comb filter' like effect. The goal of this technique is to give sharp cuts intermittently in the frequency spectrum of some of these supporting elements to enhance clarity, in that each of them will have some frequency energy where other ones have a deep cut, and vice versa, so that all of them can be heard more clearly. I also used EQUO, an equalizer in FL Studio that lets you pan different parts of the frequency spectrum to your liking.

Also, since the lead vocal had a lot of energy in the mid range I did a bit of a mid range scoop on backup vocals, and also employed a 'guitar impulse' in the fruity convolver. The guitar impulse also gives somewhat 'comb filtered' effect, so that each vocal sounds a bit different and with the extra contrast each can be heard more clearly, and I blended the processed sound with the original, to keep the effect from being too powerful and muddying up the sound.

I struggled on the rhodes-like piano sound in the beginning. I like it okay the way I have it in the mix, but I do feel it could be more exciting in the first couple bars. Mostly, I did eq and some distortion with blood overdrive.

Since there were two tracks for the kicks I worked a bit with their relative timing using a free plugin called 'sound delay', so that by delaying one of the two tracks by something on the order of milliseconds I was able to get the two kick tracks to sum to something more satisfying to my ear, and I used an all pass filter in the fruit 'love philter' for this purpose as well. The snare was mostly eq and distortion, with some bus compression on top of all of he drums.

Here is my mix: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Y4M9LQ ... sp=sharing
Hope you like the sound!

[zed999]

To start with I noticed a fault with my old headphones doing all sorts of random stuff losing frequencies lowering volume and generally playing up so I've got myself a new pair this is my first mix with them so trying to get used to them and how they translate.
So goodbye trusted old Presonus HD3 hello Adio Technice MTX40 nearly went with VSX but can't justify the expense.

I hope you enjoy the final production I really enjoyed this one and it's managed to magnified how much I still have to learn I would appreciate any sort of feedback from anyone who has any comments on my version would be very much appreciated many thanks to all again and enjoy.

I'd guess your new headphones are quite bright but also with too much bass and/or you are mixing too loud. Do you use correction software or eq for headphones? I recommend DSoniq Realphones, it's same idea as VSX but for any headphones, they have good corrections and from reading, many people who have both rate Realphones highly and I think crucially, that also includes people that do not get on with VSX. Realphones took a leap in improvement at the start of the year so if you tried it previously to that it will be worth another look in my opinion. It's quite cheap too and they haves sales from time to time. I decided to spend similar amount to VSX on some nice headphones and use Realphones. Realphones also has a bug free system wide app you can listen to music from any source through it.

Try this eq on your mix bus:
Low shelf at 200Hz 6dB 0.7Q
Bell cut at 600Hz 8dB 0.7Q
Bell boost 3KHz 7dB 0.7Q
Move the cuts, boosts and shelf to fine tune to your taste of course, but this is more to show how uneven your overall mix frequencies are. Once corrected, even crudely like this, it sounds like a good mix to me. The answer of course is at track level rather than a rough and ready fix on he mix bus, you'll get a much better result unless late night/long day mix bus eq caused the imbalance in which case you can perhaps correct that.

Our brains, given long enough (a few hours?) will adapt to eq. It's a fact. Our brains will work like a graphic eq on auto-pilot. unknown headphones add to the confusion, too loud does too because you can hear everything too easily.

A semi-intelligent eq for example SmartEQ set to analyse your mix and adjust it match for example brown noise or pink noise can be a good sanity check to see if you are hearing what you think you are hearing. I did that with your mix, noted broadly what it had done then tried it somewhere between with a stock eq to get to the suggestion above. With both brown and pink noise the same frequency cuts/boosts were suggested because they are basically the same thing with different overall tilts - pink too bright, brown to soft, somewhere between is a fair start point to my ears.

This is just suggestion, other opinions may be quite different, so to be clear for you, I'm no pro, just like yourself I'm here to learn.
Best wishes.

[Edit to add:] I just looked up the frequency response for your headphones. It seems that my EQ above is very roughly putting back frequencies your headphones favour that you may have over-reacted to. Hope that helps.

[SDB_12]

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/ixz2z5dk ... ywb4l&dl=0

Hi,

Really cool track. Thanks for the opportunity to mix it!

I decided to throw this out on the console and just have fun. Most things were eq’d on my 56 channel Crest X-VCA console. However, I printed everything back in pro tools and made final tweaks there, in which I used a few instances of Metric Halo CS for additional eq.

I’ll note a few things, but can’t really remember everything I did.

The lead vocal went through my Audioscape 1176 blue stripe, with console eq, then into an Audioscape Pultec EQ. I also used a little Metric Halo to touch it up once printed back in as well as some deEssing ITB. Toward the end of the mix, I decided to use Soothe2 to smooth it out some. FX on the vocal are a hardware Pioneer SR-202w spring reverb unit that I have, as well as the El Cap tape delay/spring reverb guitar pedal that is AWESOME!

Bass was my Audioscape V-Comp compressor with console EQ

Snare had a little of the Pioneer spring reverb mentioned above, as well as the 1176 blue stripe (Audioscape) and console EQ/Metric Halo EQ.

Kick was the Audioscape V-Comp and Console EQ

Wurli was my AML 52f50 compressors (Neve 2252 clones) and Console EQ. Once printed back in, I used some delay tricks to widen and Metric Halo EQ to touch it up. It also has my T.C. Electronics reverb unit on it set to one of the room patches…can’t remember which one.

All in all, everything ran through the console and some sort of hardware…be it a compressor, tape saturator, etc. Once everything was printed back ITB I used some plugins to help clean it all up and make things pop more…mostly Metric Halo CS, and the Digi Mod Delay 3 for spreading some stuff…I don’t like “widener” plugins typically…so I use delays more often.


Stereo bus is a hardware Alan Smart C1LA compressor into the CAPI BT 50 EQ’s, however, I’m not using any of the EQ…just running through it for the sound of the unit. I also have the new MDN P455 plugin on my mixbus, no EQ or Compression…just using it for the line amp and the summing sound.


Thanks and good luck to all

[TudorNacu]

Hello! Here is my entry for this challenge:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wo4Pt3 ... sp=sharing

Had a great time mixing this song and am looking forward to any feedback i might receive. Thank you!

[DIVESPANNER]

To start with I noticed a fault with my old headphones doing all sorts of random stuff losing frequencies lowering volume and generally playing up so I've got myself a new pair this is my first mix with them so trying to get used to them and how they translate.
So goodbye trusted old Presonus HD3 hello Adio Technice MTX40 nearly went with VSX but can't justify the expense.

I hope you enjoy the final production I really enjoyed this one and it's managed to magnify how much I still have to learn I would appreciate any sort of feedback from anyone who has any comments on my version would be very much appreciated many thanks to all again and enjoy.

I'd guess your new headphones are quite bright but also with too much bass and/or you are mixing too loud. Do you use correction software or eq for headphones? I recommend DSoniq Realphones, it's same idea as VSX but for any headphones, they have good corrections and from reading, many people who have both rate Realphones highly and I think crucially, that also includes people that do not get on with VSX. Realphones took a leap in improvement at the start of the year so if you tried it previously to that it will be worth another look in my opinion. It's quite cheap too and they haves sales from time to time. I decided to spend similar amount to VSX on some nice headphones and use Realphones. Realphones also has a bug free system wide app you can listen to music from any source through it.

Try this eq on your mix bus:
Low shelf at 200Hz 6dB 0.7Q
Bell cut at 600Hz 8dB 0.7Q
Bell boost 3KHz 7dB 0.7Q
Move the cuts, boosts, and shelf to fine-tune to your taste of course, but this is more to show how uneven your overall mix frequencies are. Once corrected, even crudely like this, it sounds like a good mix to me. The answer of course is at track level rather than a rough and ready fix on the mix bus, you'll get a much better result unless late night/long day mix bus eq caused the imbalance in which case you can perhaps correct that.

Our brains, given long enough (a few hours?) will adapt to eq. It's a fact. Our brains will work like a graphic eq on auto-pilot. unknown headphones add to the confusion, too loud does too because you can hear everything too easily.

A semi-intelligent eq for example SmartEQ set to analyse your mix and adjust it to match for example brown noise or pink noise can be a good sanity check to see if you are hearing what you think you are hearing. I did that with your mix, noted broadly what it had done then tried it somewhere between with a stock eq to get to the suggestion above. With both brown and pink noise, the same frequency cuts/boosts were suggested because they are basically the same thing with different overall tilts - pink too bright, brown too soft, and somewhere between is a fair start point to my ears.

This is just a suggestion, other opinions may be quite different, so to be clear for you, I'm no pro, just like yourself I'm here to learn.
Best wishes.

[Edit to add:] I just looked up the frequency response for your headphones. It seems that my EQ above is very roughly putting back frequencies in your headphones' favour that you may have overreacted to. Hope that helps.

Thank you very much for taking the time and effort for all your information it is very much appreciated I will look into your recommendations and see what happens and again thank you very much

[cpsmusic]

Hi Everyone,

Here's my entry for Mix Challenge 097.

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

Thanks to the song provider and to the challenge organisers.

In terms of mix style this ended up being a funny one. I initially wanted to make it sound more 70s however the further I got into the mix, the more it became 90s pop. This probably happened because I preferred cleaner "jangly" guitars over something that was more distorted.

As with previous mixes I tried to limit the number of plug-ins used. Claro was used on most channels for subtractive EQ-ing, along with Studio One's stock compressor for basic compression duties. The drums used a dbx160 to add a bit of punch.

I decided to use both kick drums however the final tone relies more on the "kick" with a little of the "alternative" added. These needed to be carefully aligned as quite a few were flamming. As there was no overhead track I decided to create a "fake overhead" by combining the close mics then emphasising the high end. This was then sent to the drum reverb (see below).

I experimented quite a bit with the tone of the guitar solo before settling on a cleaner tone with a Hammond rotary effect to add some character. A small amount of the provided effects track was also used.

For the quieter bridge section I wanted to create a different space so there's a fairly radical vocal reverb change for the first section before it goes back to the primary vocal reverb. The main vocal reverb is the T-Racks CSR Plate while the shorter bridge reverb is the Lexicon 224. There are also a couple of reverb "splashes" on key words in the bridge.

Overall, I tried a different approach to spatial effects for this mix, following Daniel Dettwiler's approach (highly recommended!) of using two reverbs for each source or group of instruments - one for early reflections and one for the reverb tail. For the early reflections I used Eventide's SP2016 with the Vintage Room preset. For the "tail" reverbs I used UA's Lexicon 224, although I also used The Farm Stone Room enhanced with Devil-loc for the drums. The Wurlizter was a primary track so I used my SRV-330s "Dimensional Space" preset to give it some space without moving it too far back in the mix. The brass used my SPX990's "Presence Reverb" preset which seems to enhance brightness without moving the source too far forward.

For this mix I wanted to get the mix as close as possible to the final product without relying too much mixbus processing. As a result, all I used was bx_townhouse doing a small amount of compression, and Reelbus in Master Mode providing a small amount of tape saturation. I probably could have left both of these off as they weren't doing a great deal, just a small amount of levelling and a touch of tape saturation.

Specs:

24-bit/48.0 kHz
-16.5 LUFS (int.)
-3.1 dBTP

Good luck to all contestants and once again thanks to everyone involved in the challenge.

Cheers!

[TomImmon]

My approach was to give the song a suitable atmosphere regardless of attributes such as vintage or modern (which ultimately don't have much impact). For me it was more of a quiet, calm song, with a clear focus on the female singer's wonderful voice. The first thing was to give the synthetic/digital sounds (of which there were quite a few, especially the brushed drums) a sound that was as analog sounding as possible.
I therefore worked quite a bit with the UAD Soundcity rooms and recreated "real rooms recorded with microphones" for most of the instruments, e.g. "overheads" for the drums. In addition, I mostly used plugins that colored the sound in an analog way, i.e. tape and tube saturation. The UAD Capitol Echo Chamber was also used on the vocals.
Furthermore, a lot of small fader moves were automated.

All other editing was standard, as almost everyone does. A detailed explanation of it is therefore rather boring.
In summary: Gain staging, bus groups, subtractive EQs against resonances, additive EQs for sound optimization (I worked a lot with API here, plus Neve and SSL where it was a better fit). Still classic FX: Slap on Git and vocals. Plates on Snare and Vocals, ducked 1/8 delay on vox and Git.
In the master the SSL bus compressor for the glue, a little limiter to prevent annoying peaks and some EQ adjustment with Pultecs and Ozone Master EQ.

My Mix: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/988o7mhz ... n6jev&dl=0

Expose readings:
Integrated LUFS: -16.1 LUFS
Short Term LUFS: -13.7 LUFS
True Peak: -2.38 dBTP
Peak: -2.42 dB
Dynamic Range: 9.7 DR
Loudness Range: 4.3 LU

I can't help but say that the female singer's great voice reminded me a little of Abba (Anni-Frid?) and a little of the Carpenters

Greetings from Berlin
Tom

[AskAndy]

https://www.dropbox.com/t/1ELOncrsKTz0itFa
Nice Piece. I tried to keep things simple . I only used 4 reverbs, for a close, mid, and far feel, and a vocal . If I had more time I would change the pan on the keyboard off of center and spread the strings across the space rather than off to the rightish. MIxed this in mono.

[fcamp]

Hi, here is my mix:

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

I tried to keep things simple, find a good balance between all the elements and then enhance some of them.
Drums: Used Lindell API channel strip for the kick and snare. Parallel compression of the kick with a 1176 style compressor and MJUC and compression of the snare with the 525 compressor of the Lindell channel strip. Added some Lexicon reverb to the snare, and glued everything with the ADR compex compressor of Lindell 69 and UAD studer tape plugins.

Vocals: For the lead vocal used Fuse VQa-154 and Klanghelm SDRR to give some colour and saturation, then compression with klanghelm DC8C in punch mode, Lindell deesser, levelling with the SOftube TLA100 and finally more eq with the PSP E27. Sent it to a Lexicon reveb, delay, a doubler and some SansAmp distortion. Treated the other vocals with klanghelm SDRR, Lindell 50 channel strip and som eplate reverb from Fuse Audio labs. Also balanced the choir with klanghelm MJUC, E27 eq and Audiority Space Station reverb.

For the rest, kept things natural, electric guitars and acoustic guitar wide panned except for one acoustic and the e-guitar solo in the center. The Wurli is important also for the song, it is in the center, and has some doubling and little panning action.

It was a pleasure to mix it.

[sthauge]

Thanks to Per Bellener for providing the tracks and to Mr Fox for doing the job with these competitions.

I'm not going deep into technical details on plugins settings etc. If someone needs to know what I've done, I'm glad to inform about that, BUT, I'm gonna tell about the challenges with this session and my priorities mixing it. I'm also elderly and did a lot of FOH jobs in the 70's and 80's, so this mix is mixed as I would do back then.

So, what does the sound of the 70's mean for the soundscape:

1. the vocals are up front
2. it's possible to hear the lyrics
3. the drums are balanced, audible but not to loud
4. the kick and snare are not that 'in your face' as often in todays mixes
5. kick and bass working together to make a good foundation
6. The bass is indeed present, but not to much
7. the mix is wide and has good dept
8. it has air, space and good separation
9. there's no 'glue' technic used, it will destroy what achieved in post 6 and 7 over

Some of the tracks provided have been previously processed, that gives challenges to get them sound right in this mix. I prefer clean tracks that's not processed, but with these I got some extra challenges.

Some thoughts:

1. I've simplified a lot, blending clean guitars just with a touch from the distorted guitar, just to bring in some character to the clean guitars. This means that I have less guitar voices to place L/R so it's space for other sound sources.

2. Some stereo tracks are made mono for the same reason as over.

3. A lot of automation is made on guitars, bass, brass and vocals to get a good balance throughout the mix and to bring the small and nice parts out to the listener.

4. Mid/side EQ processing is done to get instruments out of the way of the vocals.

5. The lead vocal was a lot of work. The track starts dull/woolly in the first few bars for then getting brighter and more pronounced. To fix this I had to automate some extra plugins and the DAWs EQ. The lead vocal also have a little bit of lisping in the start, may be because of to extensive use of a de-esser on the original track(?). I have correct it to some extent.

Software used: Harrison Audio Mixbus Pro 10.0 DAW, the tracks was mainly processed with the DAWs internal channelstrip(gate/expander, compressor, 32C or SSL 9000J EQ) and the included Harrison Audio plugins. Extra plugins are mostly freeware as LSP(Linux Studio Plugins) and MVerb.

Here's the result:

MC097__Bellener_and_Friends__Get_A_Grip__sthauge

Format 48 kHz/24 bit
- 16.1 LUFS (from export from DAW)
- 1.8 dBTP (from export from DAW)

Best
Steinar