MIX CHALLENGE - MC092 June 2023 - Winners announced

[O'MIX]

Hello,

Thank you for selecting my mix for the second phase, I implemented your remarks as well as possible with my own sensitivity, it's always difficult without having the musicians on site to validate the proposals, I made some automations on the volume of the banjo and also paid my attention to the final sound, because we can have a good balance and an average sound quality, I want to offer both, an "audiophile" type sound with dynamics and high definition, particularly interesting in this type of music played live with acoustic instruments and voices taken with all kinds of different microphones, a very complex but truly original challenge to achieve.

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

Very good listening to all,
O’MIX

[BenjiRage]

Hi everyone

First of all, apologies for not being very active in the conversation this month, it's been a busy one for me with various life things going on.

Thank you though to @Naturecord and the band for selecting my mix as one of the top 15 and for your comments.

For my revision mix I've focussed on a few things that became apparent to me after listening back to my first submission a fair few times:

• Removed Maxxbass from the Bass track, altered the EQ peak from 1.8k to 1k, chose a different compressor for less amplification of the instrument bleed - now cuts through better on smaller speakers and generally more audible overall
• Made the stomp track slightly louder
• Tweaked the gtr rake track EQ (less high, more mid) and made slightly louder
• Lead vocals 1dB louder to balance against the above adjustments
• Increased the master stereo width by 10%
• Added EQ on the master bus for a slight lift of high frequencies from 5k upwards to give the mix a tad more air

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

Nothing major, just small tweaks which I think improve the sound overall against mix 1. I hope it's to your liking and thank you once again.

Best regards,

Ben

[cpsmusic]

Hi Everyone,

Here's my mix for Round 2 of Mix Challenge 092.

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

The first thing I did was address the comments of the song provider.

The first of these comments was that there was something strange at 1:28 in the vocals, and from there on, it's a bit high. The initial problem was being caused by the sudden change in lead vocal level overloading the limiter. This in turn was being exacerbated by the Devil-Loc distortion which kicked in at this point. To fix this I reduced the clip gain level, especially the esses, and also reduced the amount of Devil-Loc. After this, I reduced the lead vocal level by 1.5dB for the remainder of the song.

The second comment was that the guitar could use some more low-end work. I decided to add a 2dB, 1 octave bell boost at 133Hz using TB Equalizer 4. This brings out the guitar low end without making it too boomy.

The third comment was that the fiddle needed a small HF cut of 2dB at 12k. This was done using PSP NobleQ.

I also made a couple of minor changes that enhanced the sense of detail and separation in the mix. Two of these I picked up from Mike Senior. The first is to blend in a small amount of stereo white noise to enhance stereo separation. The second is to use a multiband compressor with fast attack and release times but only doing a very small amount of gain reduction (virtually none, the GR meters were barely moving!) to bring out lower level detail. I did this using the Lindell 354E. I'm not sure how effective the technique was however I definitely think that this is a plug-in that has "box tone" (i.e. just adding it without doing any compression enhances the sound).

Specs:

48.0kHz/24-bit
-16.0 LUFS (int.)
-1.1 dBTP

Best of luck to everyone in Round 2 and thanks to the song provider!

Cheers,

Chris

[scottfitz]

Hi all,
Thanks again to the song provider and the band and to Mister Fox, it's been a very valuable experience for me.

In terms of the feedback on my previous mix I noted the comment that it needed to be more punchy as the most significant issue, so I set out to rectify this. I hope this updated version is more like what is wanted. Here's the link:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zLtFO5 ... sp=sharing

General Notes
---------------------

I made the early decision to work from scratch rather than to try to 'fix' the previous mix as when needing more punch from pretty much all the instruments, so many changes were going to be needed, that I'd rather begin fresh and make each decision with my goals in mind at the outset.

Some Specific Plugins/Settings
--------------------------------------

Acoustic Guitar
----------------------

I went with soothe to begin with on a preset called 'medium strum acoustic' which seemed to be acting mostly on a resonance around 5kHz. Then came an EQ with +2dB @ 2kHz, -2dB @5kHz and +3dB shelf @10kHz. After this I used Gullfoss which seemed to know very well about the resonance around 200Hz which I had addressed in my original mix. I used 27% recover and 27% tame. I find this plugin very awkward to employ well and often end up removing it later, but thought it brought some life into this particular audio. Finally I used SplitEQ with the 'Enhance' preset "strum and punch" which I tweaked to lessen the effect.

This instrument has a send to the altiverb drum room called "omnisound, nashville" which was where the acoustic guitar, banjo, violin, backing vocals and accordion tracks were all sent to. This is to provide a subtle ambience.

Violins
---------------

I began again with soothe, using the preset "De-shrill violin" on each of the mics which helped the violin to sit in the mix and then I sent both to a HPF @90Hz and then the Mike-E-EL9 Compressor-Saturator where it did around 3dB of GR.

Accordion
----------------

Firstly low shelf @200Hz adding 7.5dB then into the UA 176 using ratio 4:1, slowest attack, slowest release, finally I quite aggressive HPF @93Hz 30db/octave. I found the position of that filter difficult to judge as the song provider specifically mentioned the low mids on this instrument, but I did also want to leave some room for the upright bass.


Thanks again to all and good luck to the remaining mixers.
Cheers

[DavidB]

Hello all,

I am glad for being selected to second round amongst other great entries and I had tried my best to address the requested changes as well as improve some bits that I found along the time that should be fixed too.

+ bringing up/in the vocals to the focus
+ better volume balancing of the mix elements overall
+ adding a bit automation to the banjo volume so it is now more prominent during some passages where it talks nicely with fiddle:)
+ brought up some mids for the upright bass (I think it is more massive now:).
+ I had also worked bit more on the stereo placement and balancing

Generally I think this version is much better than first one, so I hope you guys like it.

Here is my entry for round 2 - enjoy:
https://1drv.ms/u/s!AtpzKIYuNN-3lKMire8 ... Q?e=GflYO4

Good luck everybody - looking forward for the results and final comments!

All best, David

[Mister Fox]

A friendly reminder:
We're in the final 24 hours to submit your edit for Mix Round 2.


So far, we have 7 out of 15 entries (plus 1 withdrawn entry), with a bit more than 23 hours left on the clock.

[rvalle]

I'm happy and grateful that my mix is in the second round of this challenge.
In addition to the modifications pointed out in Naturecord's feedback, I also tried to analyze some other mixes and feedbacks in order to gather more information in search of the best mix to the client's taste.
One thing that caught my attention was the importance of the choir for this sound. So, I tried to give a little more emphasis to this element, improving the positioning of the voices in the panorama and also adding a bit of a reverb fx with Eventide ShimmerVerb.
I also improved the equalization of Magnus' voice in the mid-low region to correct the boxiness and give it a little more body. As for the delay pointed in the voice, it was probably caused by some delay compensation error, since the file was perfectly aligned with the rest. I used Cream2 from Acustica Audio on this channel, which inserts a good amount of latency in the processing, which may have generated this error. To fix it, I manually advanced the file in some samples. To clean up the voice, I reduced the amount of Shmod in the Cream2 compressor because it was oversaturating. I also changed the Neutron compressor, which was acting as a de-esser, for the ProAudioDSP DSM V3 which seemed to work much better.
I better controlled the low-end of the bass in order to emphasize the top-end.
I worked on volume automations on the banjo and fiddle channels to improve the interaction between these elements.
The accordion and guitar have been better positioned and are showing up better in the mix.
Finally, in the mixdown project, I inserted the amazing PSPAudioWare VintageWarmer2, which I recently acquired, to find that glue in the mix, which was required by the song provider.
I really enjoyed making this mix! The music is quite fun, which makes the job easier to do.
All the best and good luck to all!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1P79QQQ ... sp=sharing

[dstra]

Hi everyone,

Many thanks to Pål and Magnus for the feedback. Here is my revision:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Uttjp5 ... sp=sharing

According to the feedback I have made two subtle changes:

• In order to have the fiddle less "anonymous", the volume of the track was increased slightly and additionally increased by a few dB in the intro.
• Giving the bass "a tiny bit more top" was a challenge. Plan A - simply boosting the attack frequencies with an eq - failed because the other instruments on the track (bleeding) began to mask the lead vocal. Plan B - creating artificial harmonics by means of distortion and filtering out the desired ones - did not provide satisfactory results. So I ended up with plan C: Creating artificial harmonics by shifting the pitch of the bass up 2 octaves (in an additional track), filtering out the desired frequencies, shortening their decay with a transient designer and then adding them back to the bass sound.

I hope you like the result!

[MartialFromentin]

Hi!

Thanks to have chosen my mix for the round 2, first time for me, I am really happy!

"The mix is okay, but could use more separation. It seems a little wet. The vocals sound good with the right amount of grit and nice tube saturation. The banjo could be more present. The guitar disappears behind the drums. The fiddle seems like it's not laying in the right place in the mix. The drums seem very mushed together. The accordion sounds good with nice grit. The bass could use a bit more compression and makeup gain."

The plate reverb has been replaced with a much more natural reverb.
Some panning, comp, and volume settings have been modified to try to fit the SP remarks.

The R2 mix link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jCEZH4 ... drive_link

Good luck everyone!

Martial

[monjeco]

Hi Everyone,

Very excited to make it to the second round.

here s the link.

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


So... first of all i did some changes at the request of the song provider.

did some automation on the banjo and the fiddle.
added some emt140 to the vocals in general.
Just tried to keep the song s energy alive and exciting.

Good luck to everyone.