Mix Challenge

Davias wrote: ↑

Mon Jun 30, 2025 19:54 CEST

Edling wrote: ↑

Mon Jun 30, 2025 19:22 CEST

Edling
Lovely balance between vocals/drums/synths, everything blends together really nicely. Well-chosen effects with a lovely sense of spaciousness. The spectral profile is a little thin sounding in general, it feels like there's a bit of an EQ tilt going on pushing the highs and reducing the low-mids/lows, but other than that it sounds great.

Thanks for the feedback @BenjiRage and for selecting me for the second round. I'll try to get some more body in the low-mid area without going the route of boosting them on the master bus (which seems like cheating ). On the upside, I now have an extra tool to increase dynamic movement between the different sections of the song!

Not saying your comment wasaiming at me, but since I mentioned it in my previous posts, I need to answer lol.

I was feeling that way before, and still :
I'm trying to balance the individual tracks at best.

But then I apply processing on busses, and then finally on the mix bus. And my reasoning is like "I applied this compressor on, for example, beat + bass bus, and I'm happy with the groove, the grit, the mids, the highs, but it lowers too much the lows, but I like the movement that I'm hearing in this part", so it is like an adjustment, a correction of the bus processing.

You could see it like boosting some freqs into a saturator, then lowering them after, to add some distortion where you want.

I did read that usually with Tapes, it was common to boost the highs into the tape. If you apply the tape on the mix bus, is it cheating to to boost the highs into it (and maybe lower them after ?), just my two cents

PS : I'm not an engineer, just amateur since 1996 for composition, and 2005 for mixing. So I'm just telling my current feeling about it.

Cheers.

Edling wrote: ↑

Mon Jun 30, 2025 19:22 CEST

Edling
Lovely balance between vocals/drums/synths, everything blends together really nicely. Well-chosen effects with a lovely sense of spaciousness. The spectral profile is a little thin sounding in general, it feels like there's a bit of an EQ tilt going on pushing the highs and reducing the low-mids/lows, but other than that it sounds great.

Thanks for the feedback @BenjiRage and for selecting me for the second round. I'll try to get some more body in the low-mid area without going the route of boosting them on the master bus (which seems like cheating ). On the upside, I now have an extra tool to increase dynamic movement between the different sections of the song!

Edling wrote: ↑

Mon Jun 30, 2025 20:20 CEST

Davias wrote: ↑

Mon Jun 30, 2025 19:54 CEST

Edling wrote: ↑

Mon Jun 30, 2025 19:22 CEST

Edling
Lovely balance between vocals/drums/synths, everything blends together really nicely. Well-chosen effects with a lovely sense of spaciousness. The spectral profile is a little thin sounding in general, it feels like there's a bit of an EQ tilt going on pushing the highs and reducing the low-mids/lows, but other than that it sounds great.

Thanks for the feedback @BenjiRage and for selecting me for the second round. I'll try to get some more body in the low-mid area without going the route of boosting them on the master bus (which seems like cheating ). On the upside, I now have an extra tool to increase dynamic movement between the different sections of the song!

Not saying your comment wasaiming at me, but since I mentioned it in my previous posts, I need to answer lol.

I was feeling that way before, and still :
I'm trying to balance the individual tracks at best.

But then I apply processing on busses, and then finally on the mix bus. And my reasoning is like "I applied this compressor on, for example, beat + bass bus, and I'm happy with the groove, the grit, the mids, the highs, but it lowers too much the lows, but I like the movement that I'm hearing in this part", so it is like an adjustment, a correction of the bus processing.

You could see it like boosting some freqs into a saturator, then lowering them after, to add some distortion where you want.

I did read that usually with Tapes, it was common to boost the highs into the tape. If you apply the tape on the mix bus, is it cheating to to boost the highs into it (and maybe lower them after ?), just my two cents

PS : I'm not an engineer, just amateur since 1996 for composition, and 2005 for mixing. So I'm just telling my current feeling about it.

Cheers.

No I totally missed your comment, I was only referring to my own process

Schwefelhard wrote: ↑

Mon Jun 30, 2025 20:39 CEST

However, after reading though the guidelines again, I have a quick question regarding "Micro-adjustments". Would it e.g. be allowed to mute one or more tracks for a few hits to emphasize the transition into the chorus or would this already be too much of an intervention onto the arrangement?

Here an example at around 3:55
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/5mmn1ba5 ... 9o3ln&dl=0

(haven't done it as i was too scared)