Mix Challenge

While listening, I made a couple of notes to some mixes. The selection is very random, but at least there is a handful comments.

To keep it short, I focused on what might be candidate details to nudge it a bit, and try what's in.
The commented mixes all are legit, no harm intended.

This was a very useful challenge because it requires abilities in most disciplines and sound registers, and efficient use of busses and plugins because you end up with many tracks to digest for the DAW.
A weakness in any area, vocals, drums, bass, guitars, effects, will always severely hamper the outcome.
There were some mixes with good vocals but overall dull or boxy, and with some others, compression was too weak, so the midrange in the vocals together with reverbs practically shouted down everything else for quite a few phrases.

I imagine how it would sound in a pub, visitors might come with a girlfriend or try to find one
So you should be able also to talk to your friend, while a lush mix of this song is playing, but still can feel the drums and guitars rocking.
(hopefully, the social distancing nightmare will end in a few months)

spafles
very legit approach, good performance and feeling, because also very natural, though with some extra work, it could be a tad more polished at some moments, so far this would be possible at all without compromising the vibe.

square
the kick with the bus compressor hits very hard and cuts short holes into the general sound.
higher parts of vocals can sound nasal.
the snare sound is nice but it is missing some counterpoint from kick and guitars, these might afford some more brightness to keep up.

tom immon
very good overall sound. bass sounds great, but also a bit dominant against the chord guitars.
vocals well processed. the toms in the bridge part sound a bit thin. good game with the harmony vocals after that.
you might cut the fadeout a bit tighter, there are noises.

dora_de
good overall sound, but the guitar solo sounds a bit twangy, might afford some lower mid-range.
I like the smooth and soft drum sound. you might protect it from being drowned by the guitars with some sidechaining.
lower crunch guitars in the finale might also become a bit thicker and more bassy.

john
sounds beautiful, good drum processing, but I would also like to hear more of the room mics, to complement the stereo width of the guitars, and boost the depth. vocals may become a bit nasal in the tom bridge.
"Teode" seems very powerful. Explains a lot.

finnishcharm
I think the "radio" trick went quite well. good overall feeling.
at some points there is a little build-up that may sound boxy. a careful widening up the higher frequencies in the drums might improve this.

Pemberley
basically great ideas and details, and the drum kit as such sounds beautiful.
but while it may work in head phones, in a pub (this music is great for drinking beer) the drums and most other stuff might get drowned entirely in the reverbs, and the vocals might stick out in a distracting way.


Oba Ozai, thanks for your insight, these are strong differences, to some extent they might reflect different styles.
Warren Huart uploaded free tutorials about mixing of bass and kick (I hope it is legit to mention him, there are also many more great guys out there), he attenuates some frequency in the kick to make room for the bass, and another in the bass to make room for the kick. crucial might be 80, 60, 40Hz (depends on the tune and style) and then also a decision what instrument should dominate the subsonics.
optionally, there is side-chaining that ducks the bass for a few milliseconds a couple dB, while the kick hits. it is very delicate to tweak this.
for some EDM they go into oscilloscope mode and align every kick and bass note to start fully in phase sync (and they create the sound components under that constraint), and also use heavy pumping that leaves the kick in a dominant mode.
I use Noisebud Evouyn which is a meter for subsonics. It is very coarse, and says just safe, ok, or bad, red or green. At least for those without a woofer it gives some hint if you are in the ballpark.

For example, I controlled kick and snare with resonant hipasses at 42Hz and 135 Hz, using the resonance knob to tweak the intensity (and naturally, duration) of the low frequency. Find one that sounds good, this is crucial. For me SFilter works well, but I have it only 32bit VST2.

What is "better" depends only on the opinion of the song provider/challenge client. We saw totally different ways of thinking and judgement here. There are the technical limits to prevent that a mix becomes unusable, but different houses may well have somewhat different rules, so everyone must find their own ways through their careers.

I wanted to share my sorted import handling. It makes the job faster, because shifting around some 30 tracks is not too fast and kind of boring.

1) need some oversight. Fast media player that imports a 100 wavs in a second. And it plays within milliseconds, wherever I click.
After listening to the raw mix by the artist, I click through all these tracks to recognize what each one is, and ask my quick instinct about how I want to handle its elements. I might hear a hum etc. and note it down.

2) In Windows, I do a in the command console. (Addendum: first time, then I use a cmd file with this content, that I throw into the wav directory.)
I import the resulting file into Excel twice, as adjacent blocks with 3 empty columns in between. Means, old track name, new name.
I add columns for the rename, which is trivial, but one special column goes before "new name". This will be the prefix, A-Z, that regroups my tracks.
Nothing is faster than typing a letter into a spreadsheet column.
While listening through the raw tracks, I decide the group, and write down problems to check, and things to do, in a column to the right.
At the end, I add the quotes and spaces in some columns, to get the command file. I export it to the text editor and remove the tabs.
Much easier to do than to describe.

My concept is usually similar to:
A1 kick, snare
A2 toms
A3 hihat
A4 OH .. or:
A5 room; OH?
B bass
C clean git; C1 clean git rooms if avail
D crunch git; lead?; D1 crunch rooms
E orchestra sounds
F keyboards
G harmony voc
H lead voc

3) Then we are ready with a tracknames.cmd file, it is here, throw it into your tracks directory and double click: With a double click, the command executes and renames the tracks.

4) Then I can get the sorted list in Windows Explorer, and drag and drop it into the DAW.
I can immediately start to insert the bus structures.

Oba Ozai asked a brilliant question, essentially: What makes a mix better than another? In my opinion there will never be a definitive answer since what we do is part technical and a mix of art, opinion and taste. Sometimes I leave technical mistakes alone since I honestly think they provide character and interest.

Here's a few things to think about, but all rules are meant to be broken. I'll poke fun at my mix along the way so you have audio examples...

- Technically the song should start and end clean. I left some little noises on the intro because I think it makes it more interesting and less sterile. Some might say I messed up, but I liked it so I kept it. Why? I don't know.
- For every genre there is an expectation of sub, low, mids and high frequencies, balance and space. So if the listener was jamming to this genre and your mix made it into the rotation it should sound like it belongs with the others. This too is a matter of taste with some rules that are meant to be broken. You must, must, must build a collection of reference tracks and ask your clients for reference tracks if you want a reasonable way to see if you're even close to the expectations. It's a game changer and I'm still working on it all the time, every time. Big tip: Use the solo button just to identify something, never use solo to get a sound in isolation. It's a complete waste of time. I need to hear things against the track to make decisions.
- A big goal of mine is to make sure everything can be heard. I'm not saying equally loud, but audible and fit together like puzzle pieces in a way that everyone likes. Imagine you are each player on the recording one by one. So I imagine I'm the drummer: Am I digging how I sound in this mix and am I supporting the song? Then I imagine I'm the bass player, guitarist, etc. It's a good exercise.
- Typically the vocal needs to float in front of the band so that every single syllable can be heard. I didn't want that vibe for this artist and I wasn't hearing the "loud up front vocal" style in the given reference tracks. So my gut told me to push the vocal back with volume and effects. I like it, it's got a vibe, but it could get me fired!
- Another big goal is to remove anything super annoying. This is part art and science also. One person's annoyance might be super pleasing and interesting to someone else. But is something harsh? Tame it. Is something poking out? Smooth it... Or not... Are there squeaks, hum, hiss or pops you can fix? Fix them.. Or maybe not... I've seen people in Youtube mixing tutorials actually turn these "problems" UP in the mix and it works!
- In some genres you are literally expected to add supporting "ear candy" effects, stutter the vocal, make the song pump with the kick, and also throw in super distracting effects! That wouldn't work here in my mind. For this one I took some chances with crunch and texture. I can totally understand getting mix notes like: "The snare is just too big and thick. Thin it out and remove the effects or lower the room mics." Technically that is right, but I was going for a vibe and took some chances. I liked the contrast of crunchy drums and bass against the somewhat etherial guitar and vocals. Again, this can get me fired or some snarky mix notes. If I get mix notes on these things I will happily oblige. In the end this song is their baby and I'm just trying to bring it to life as best I can and have no problem walking back some of my ideas when I get feedback.
- Last, in some genres there is an expectation that a pro mix will have something to "lift" the choruses or the last chorus. Sometimes this is just a db of automation, or saturation, or EQ change or all of the above. This is part art and science too. I quickly automated a lift at the end of the song but the artist and/or engineer also orchestrated extra guitars for just this purpose. That was a pro move on their part in orchestration.

I'm clearly not an expert, but I hope this gives you some ideas to ponder. I'm just a guy with a basement studio trying to get better every day.

Peace!

Regarding how to handle 80+ tracks, I'll give a short insight in my approach:

At first I always make a rough-mix project and sight all the tracks, to get an overview. Maybe I'll sort out some tracks at this point - in this mix 13 tracks.
I'll further sort the tracks and make some considerations (possibly with FX-tests), how to mix the song and how I've to adjust my mixing-template for the particular mix.

In addition I comped, respectively merged some of the tracks in the rough-mix project of this mix. More precisely: I merged the lead-guitar tracks until the second (doubled) lead-guitar starts at the end of the song. I used all the guitar tracks except the DI-racks.

So I ended up with 41 tracks that I copied into my final mix-project from my rough-mix project. Before the masterbus I've 9 main-buses (drums, bass, lead-guitar, backing-guitar, ending-guitar 1+2, lead-vocal, backing-vox 1+2) apart from some additional delay- and reverb tracks.

Regarding the question 'what makes a better mix?' ...
I think you should never forget what the goal is: to transmit the song with it's emotion and musicality to the listener. This is a sort of art!
This goes hand in hand with all the technical and physical stuff, of course. For example: how do I get a balanced mix, that will transmit the song with it's emphasises evenly in miscellaneous listener situations - from the poor phone speaker to the adjusted hi-fi system - ...? The main answer is in my perception, by the way: clean and present midrange frequencies! And good balances (which includes dynamics).

Hi all,

I’d like some help learning how to listen to, and evaluate, mixes. I’m not trying to offend anyone by claiming to know what other folks want to hear. I’m an amateur mixer, and I’m interested to know how you all feel…about how I feel…about these mixes.

So, I listened to the first 5 pages of submissions so far. Here are the 2 that stood out to me: Petrushh and LughSenderson. To me, they sounded pretty clear, balanced and separated. More important than that, I just enjoyed listening to each of them as a song. I found myself tapping my foot, bobbing my head, etc.

I also liked these mixes a lot: RichardClarke, UHLS, Romaingarnier & Sam V. They all had elements that grabbed my attention (like the drums, or drum and bass interaction, or the guitar or vocal treatment). There are elements in each of these that I wish I would have considered or could have achieved in my mix.

Then, there were these other folks, that as an untrained amateur, I thought took some chances and made some really interesting versions: Alavault, Trev138 & m_tree. These mixes grabbed my attention because they didn’t sound like everything else.

The few mixes that didn't match my feel for the song generally had more compressed drums...and one had a very pitch corrected vocal.

If these are your mixes, and you want to reply to my comment on them, that’s okay. More importantly, if these aren’t your mixes, and you can give me your opinion to help my learning, I would appreciate it.

Thank you,

-Cantus

Oba Ozai wrote: ↑

Thu Oct 22, 2020 02:07 CEST

"I now open the field for everyone to give each other feedback (highly encouraged)." Thanks Mr Fox !

Anyone can comment on this question, thanks,

As a audio mixing student i notice some people put a lot of emphasis on the low end of the frequency band (Kick/Bass). With some of the mixes im amazed as how much loudness they can acheive with respect of other instruments within the "mix" (and sometimes over the voice). How should I model the frequency/loudness spectrum so my mixes can improve (Should it be even trough all the spectrum ? Some bass/kick combinations sounded great, but I noticed some were a bit too much even for the subwoofer I have (not the greatest anyway, is part of a JBL .21 system).

Also, I would like to know what are the things people look for to declare a mix "better" than the "other". So far I only seen the technical specs we need to adhere to, but nothing on this issue

Hey Oba Ozari, here's my thoughts on your mix for what they are worth, hopefully this doesn't come off harsh, please keep mixing and keep trying, you will get there. You should be looking for people who tell you where your mixes have issues, these people are gold. If someone tell you your mixes are great and don't tell you areas you have problems they are not doing you any good. I've done a lot of terrible mixes myself and I'm trying to help you see what might not be working and give you a few pointers that might help. Keep in mind it really does take a long time to get good at this and you have to mix a LOT to get there and develop your ability to hear and you need someone who tells you when your mix isn't as good as it could be.

You need to make sure you have a way to constantly switch back and forth between your mix, the reference songs, and the production rough as your mixing. It needs to be as quick as a button push. I can't stress that enough. If you switch between your mix and the production rough and the production rough sounds better keep working on the mix, you need to do this constantly at every part of the song, you have to beat the production rough at every point.

To help with preventing a muddy mix make sure you listen to the mix somewhere other than the room you are mixing it. A car is great for this, put your mix in a small rotation of other songs you know well. Listen to the other songs first before yours to get your hearing set. If when your song plays it doesn't sound good like the professional songs then you have work to do. (this is another reason why I don't agree with us mixing this quiet as its harder to do this).

For me you mix falls apart almost right away at 9 seconds in. When everything comes in it sounds like there is some strange phase issues going on and the bass sounds way off. The guitars go from bright front and center before 9 seconds to way in the background and off to the left which doesn't make sense to me. For me as a listener I'm anchored into the guitars right at the start of the song so my attention is there and when they suddenly fall into the background at 9 seconds it takes me out of the experience. To me the guitars never recover.

The low end feels like its missing. You have lots of low mids (too much actually) but the kick doesn't hit down low and there is no bass down low either, it almost feels like there is a high pass on the bottom around 70 or 80Hz. My general impression is its a muddy mix. That could be down to your room not being tuned or not listening on other speakers/in other rooms or just inexperience. As soon as you play your song in rotation with other professional releases you'll catch this right away.

The hats at around 37secs or so when the vocals start are way way to loud and to loud in the other verses. This one you should catch because you should be switching back and forth between your mix and reference tracks.

This one is strictly taste but to me the backing vocals are to loud as well, in the production rough they almost can't be heard. Its hard to say without asking but that might be intentional. Sometime we don't want everything to be "heard" and some stuff is support and filler that is only noticed when the track is muted. So on this its really down to what the artists intent was. Don't listen to the advice that every part has to be heard, that isn't true. Sometimes we only notice a track is there when we press the mute button and that is ok.

I think I would have picked a different reverb on the lead vocal, it feels a bit boxy or maybe less delay. The vocals also need quite a bit of tuning as they are off pitch a lot. Vocals are the focus of almost every pop song, its important to know how to hear and fix issues because most singers these days can't sing.

At 1:34 the guitars should be the focus, they are lost in the background and panned off to the left to much.
The drums overwhelm everything in the part around 3 min.
In the part around 3:30 the lead vocals should be the focus and they are lost in the background.
The last choruses don't lift or get wider, it needs to be the big climax somehow. Part of that is the arrangement but a big part of that is the mix.

I wouldn't bother with looking at frequency spectrum graphs all that much. Use your hearing, develop your hearing, get your room sorted out with proper acoustic treatment, none of that foam stuck to the wall nonsense. Listening to reference tracks is a far better approach than a frequency graph. Once your starting to get close and you have a good plugin chain for your master bus then start thinking about visuals like a frequency spectrum. When you have a stable master bus chain you'll start to notice where peaks are on your better mixes and what the spectrum looks like on your better mixes. That's when those tools start to be useful.

I hope to hear what you do in the next mix challenge, keep going!

Wow, thanks for your time and everyone else that has taken the time to offer advice ! A lot to digest, but I will try to get into it.

@Dodgingrain

I want to add that your mix is truly amazing. It be a while until I can achieve the quality of your work (if ever). It sounds much cleaner and way more detailed than mine. I would not dare to use the word "compete" here. However is a great way to reference, as you said.

As for where I do my mixing, is far from being a pro studio. It will never be because of its budget, location (noisy area) and physical dimensions; not to mention the "mixer". Tuning it as you suggest is beyond my abilities (at the moment). However I have my fun. I realize the art of mixing is a complex science and that is very easy to fool oneself into believing one has a great mix when in fact is lousy, when compared with 50 other versions (like here).

I will keep trying, but I won't assure anyone I be a finalist any time soon. I be happy if im just within the submission parameters of loudness and TP. (LOL!)

@Dodgingrain,
these are great thoughts, I thank you as well.

In this place, those who are still learning and experimenting (no one stops learning who stays in business, but some have not yet an established full pro studio), they cannot be too fast anyway.
For referencing, I import my mix into another project, where everything is volume- and time aligned, I just click solo this, solo that, during the play. So it is loud enough. I use a different program, so I don't mess up anything in the project DAW. In this track list there are also mixes by others, and some commercial reference song(s).
Just saying, I give myself a time budget for that, though it takes an extra minute each revision.
To listen in the car, I need to burn a CD which is a boring task.

There are comrades expecially in modern urban areas, that don't own cars at all (Denmark, Netherlands..), but perhaps there is a smart phone and still another friend with a modern car.

@Oba,
my idea for you would be, get yourself a cheap pair of old DJ headphones, like the AKG K-55, they are very loud (if you want that for a minute), and the bass goes very low, so e.g. the car or professional woofer is required only below 35Hz or so. They lack a bit in mid-range but then there are the home speakers and the notebook speakers, and the point is, these little gadget speakers are part of your audience anyway.
But car stereo is important too, when you aim radio play.

I use a gaming notebook, I got 107 tracks here (fullblown bus tree structure of everything), and the CPU is around 50%, but when I continue to refine stuff, I will approach 70 or so. I spent perhaps 500 (~USD) on plugins on black fridays, and nothing on the DAW because I do only rock mixing and the freeware does absolutely great (avoid that stock EQ haha, but there is TinyQ). So that's nothing impossible, given time and ambition.
So with what I can learn this way, I have been a good helper in a "real" project studio for a release.


@ mina-san,
now back to the tech stuff,

1) I would beg for comments on the vocal tuning in my mix, can I get away with that? Ady?

2) While the recordings are generally good, I believe the vocals have been recorded a bit hot, and in the display it looks like a complex preamp (perhaps even valve), so that a primitive declipper does not help, because the edges are not on top but in the middle of the waveform, all over the place. I made that experience with a singer, he could not work without this hot sound in his headphones, but I was not the engineer, else I would have done a split, record both, and for some songs use the more direct signal (with a neutral preamp or direct desk input, or the other half of the stereo preamp run with very conservative settings. My thought is, it sounds "cheaper" and more outdated when it is that hot.)
The distortion is quite toxic in laptop or smartphone speakers, and probably in cars, in the bigger monitors or vintage home stereo, it can be somewhat tolerated.
So far, I did not do enough about that. I still mitigated some resonances.
I got one helpful factor. I did a detune stack, 8 copies with clip-pitch +/- 3,6,9,12 with strong de-esser, and where the automation has set the volume of that stack higher, it dilutes the harshness. But I turned it down in the tomtom bridge part, and here we are, vocal gets either sharp or else dull.

So I would be thankful about some more comments about own experience with the lead vocal, how far did everyone go to defeat the distortion, how well did it work? What techniques proved best this time? Can Soothe or Gullfoss catch it, or a recent iZotope processor?
You can hear what I want to do with it, but it fails without removing the harshness, in other words to make a strong distinction between air band and the overdrive harmonics.
Many mixes just don't enhance the air band that much, but stay in the "alternative" mid-range sound, some even further narrowed that. I was leaning more towards that baltic symphonic rock.

@White Punk OD

Thanks for the kung fu (time/effort) of listening and commenting. I was (finally) able to download your track, my download speed here is test of patience. I live on a remote location and I use an external antena to "grab" a distant wifi signal from a hotel.

Download speed https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZAEVx4 ... sp=sharing

The first thing I noticed was the clarity of sound definition and the powerful punch of the low end. Similar to Dodgingrain in quality (in my limited view/experience). I shy away into giving too much of my opinion into what is a "good mix" because I realize that is a very difficult task for an amateur, im glad im not the one deciding; it probably would be unfair to many.

Times change fast and Mac's don't seem like the best option (unless one has the top $'s to keep buying their newest models each year). I though myself about gaming PC's.

As for headphones, I need to use them more often. But is not that I can't appreciate the greatness of a mix when I listen to it (or see it in a graph), like yours and Dodgingrain; and a few others I have listened to, is that I really have not achieved the ability to create a mix that is to the level that you both present. Is not easy, that's what make it interesting. Is an art and a science that takes a lot of time and effort to polish. Is a great opprtunity to compare our work with the ones a few very highly skilled people offer so kindly here.

The graph that comes out for your mix and Dodgingrain is similar. This is something I just learned to see AFTER I posted my mix. Im using a trial version of Wavelab. Surely I can hear the difference, but it helps me to also "see" what is happening. I suppose others find benefits because if not a tool like that would not be a part of WaveLab

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zIV4Dt ... sp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gXd9_C ... sp=sharing


I find the hardest to achieve the low ends, and to be honest, everything else. I often see my meters peaking and is not even close to the level of loudness in others people's mix. I find that amazing, to be honest.

I want to give special thanks to Mr Fox, this is an amazing forum and I dont know of any other forum like this one.