Mix Challenge

Hello here is my mix: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1F0vNnk ... sp=sharing

Some key points on my mix,
A lot of automation because of the dynamics and i guess no compression in the recording, to make it sound cohesive and with consistant low end ,from start to finish.

One ''trick'' for a phrase on the first chorus was to parallel the vocals with some fuzz pedal, spring reverb and lots of low end saturation to make them really fat to sit with the original vocal.
Also an interesting fx i created for the vocals was: saturation into a delay into a chorus then in a hall reverb and then some eq, that made the reverb have some extra depth without overpower with high end stuff.

mattaroni_and_cheese wrote: ↑

Thu Oct 07, 2021 20:44 CEST

UHLS wrote: ↑

Mon Oct 04, 2021 23:51 CEST

my computer only has 8GB of RAM

Man, I just want to donate you some RAM. Is it capable of using more than 8 ?

I, too am happy to contribute if it's Laptop-Style DDR3 you're looking for.

Hi, everyone,


Here's my mix:


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




KICK: split into 3 tracks, lo, mid, and amp dist, cla 76, stock eq, little bit of plate reverb


SNARE: split into 3 tracks, added some bottom on parallel track, cla 76, stock eq, some plate reverb


TOMS: added some stock eq and dbx 160, medium plate reverb


OVERHEADS: roll off some bottom, added some top eq, little bit of medium plate reverb


DRUM ROOM: as it is


BASS: split into 5 tracks, lo, mid, amp, drive, and some chorus, subbed into one track, added some sidechain comp., dbx 160 and some stock eq on mids


GUITARS: hard left and right, subbed into stereo track, added some pultec eq and some stock eq. litte bit of short and long delay, some modulation


VOX CINDY: split into 3 tracks, normal, oct. down, crush, added some delay and reverb


Automation




DAW: Ableton Live 10



Mixbus:
VTM Brit-N, UAD-Pultec, VTM



Bye.

Hi everyone, this is my first time joining the mix challenge. Big thanks to the staffs and everyone involved.

Here's my mix: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VElWN- ... sp=sharing

Such a great song, honestly. Heard about "Math Rock" before, this is my first time having a chance to mix it. It's a wonderful experience.

When I first listened to this track, I know it isn't that easy. Seems simple, not whole lot of tracks, but it's challenging in its own way. For example, a 7 minute song. In a mixing engineer perspective I need to think how to use creative ways to keep the momentum going, in other words make stuff interesting.

Make it sound modern, and surreal is the direction I decided to go for. Rather than sounding like a mid heavy vintage sounding song, by looking at the arrangement and lyrics translation I think this suits it better. So you can figure out that I keep the high end at its own place, also using unrealistic reverbs, delay and modulation effects.

I'll illustrate some of the things that I did.

For the technical side, mainly EQ compression saturation, don't wanna overdo it. One thing I find particularly hard is the "kick", in the demo mix the kick is so large and fills up the low mids. By listening to different reference tracks provided, I don't think that fits. So I go for a entirely different approach. Made it smaller and under control. Also I keep reminding myself this is a mellow song, therefore making sure the bass is soft and warm. Drums providing the groove but not overriding the show.

About the creative side, I DID A LOT. Most of them are subtle, some of them may come through a bit. Use all kinds of ways to create the atmosphere. I'll name three examples. Firstly, on the drum bus I put a analog emulation chorus plugin, acts bit like some kind of phase modulation and sweeping. I modulate the mix knob throughout the song, it sounds amazing on transitions, also feel like the drums are moving in a weird way that makes the track feel fresh. Secondly, by looking at the hint, "You can try "re-amping" in places", I put an amp on the bass and turn it on and off in different places, automate the drive. Create movement in the low end and low mids, not the same bass sound throughout 7 minutes. Thirdly, I put a flanger before the short reverb delay send, changes the vocal's vibe and feeling.

Mixing is art, art in some sense is subjective. Hope you'll like my mix! If you don't, feel free to tell me why, thanks y'all.

A screen cap of part of my automation. (Idk whether it works so I still leave a link below.)

https://ibb.co/j5FnQHr

Hi,

thanks for providing!


My mix
https://www.dropbox.com/s/e0dokse3o7uu1 ... e.wav?dl=0
48 kHz / 24 bit
-18 LUFS / -1.5 dBTP

This time I used NO mixbus processing at all. I compressed the instruments a bit more than usual for my approach and added distortion to all elements in the mix. I wanted to hear the band as transparent as possible and let the performances speak for themselves. Overdubs are usual these days and it seems to me that the band is used to play together, so I saw no necessity to 'glue' the band together in the mix. Far from it - I wanted that every element can stand out clearly.
I tested two bus compressors with different adjustments ... tape emulation, too.
In most cases I like an appropriate mixbus-compression followed by a mastertape emulation as part of the mix (if I master by myself, I'll do any processing beyond this in a 2nd step).
But I'm simply the mixer here, so I'm totally fine with leaving the mixbus empty.

I did no re-amping, because bass and guitars were amped already.
And I use no presets and no 'auto'-plugins in general.


Drums
I think this is a good example for how complex drums and drums recordings are. Because, although it's a nice and suitable recording in general in my opinion, it suffers from some problems:

At first there's a ride cymbal on Overhead1 which is way too loud in comparison to the rest of the cymbals. This can be both a matter of the cymbal selection and the microphone placement, I think it's the last one here. I fixed this with automation of the OHs and the room mic.

Some of the quiet Tom1 hits in the beginning aren't on the tom track, although they were played (I checked this with the overheads). The gate swallowed some of the quiet hits. I copied a suitable hit with the correct delay in there to resolve the problem.

On Tom2 I further cutted out some cymbal bleed and boom. The Toms are too boomy here in general, I think ... this always results in more postprocessing. It's mostly a matter of drumtuning, drumhead choice, performance, microphone selection and placement.

The kick is lacking some attack (for my taste), but this is a frequency thing here, which I encountered with both a broad cut and boost.

Apart from that I mixed them with my usual manner with EQ and compression mainly on the drumbus (more or less EQ on the single tracks as well, gates on the kick and snare top). I used the nice natural drum room, EQed it a bit, compressed it heavily and spreaded it a bit with a haas delay. On the other tracks I added some (parallel) plate reverb. I used parallel distortion (2nd order) on all tracks. Different send volumes to the parallel tracks ...
I resolved phase issues just with a phase shift on the snare bottom and aligning of the overheads to the snare top (the time relationship between the OHs is untouched).
Volume automation of the kick, hi-hat and toms; threshold automation of the snare top gate (rimclick). Volume automation of the drumbus.

Bass
Compression in three steps - 1st slight limiting, 2nd usual compression (with the SSL4000 channel) and 3rd soft clipping. The last one distorts clearly and is therefore adding brilliance in the midrange, which I emphasized with a broad boost at around 1 kHz afterwards. I added low end with Waves 'loAir', but without the actual loAir (just rising the filtered signal below 80Hz). Post-FX volume automation. I created some very subtle space with two parallel, EQed and panned delays here.

Guitars
I processed the guitars on two different tracks, panned hard left and right. Except the pre-FX volume automation (to feed the compression gently) and a 'chirurgical' EQ - for slightly cutting each one frequency (-2/-3 dB) in the midrange - with the same adjustments: Slight limiting, followed by slight LA3A compression and EQ (with cuts only) with the SSL 4000E channel. Sent to each one parallel, pre-EQed distortion track, also panned hard left/right, and to each one parallel room track, panned 50% left/right (sent also from the distortion tracks).
Post-FX volume automation.

Vocals
Pre-FX volume automation to feed the compression gently. Processing of the vocals in the following order: Sucked out some lower mids and bass with a broad shelf, sucked out 4dB at 4kHz. Limiting of the highest peaks. Blue 1176 compression with 4:1, attack and release on 5. SSL 4000E channel: low cut at 120Hz, -4dB (Cut) with the HF at 8kHz. Manual de-essing with automation (very few annoying esses here ...).
Parallel tracks:
Two pre-EQed delays, panned 50% L/R -> both sent to a plate without pre-delay and early reflections.
Parallel distortion (3rd order), sent to the delays.
All these tracks go into a main vocal bus with volume automation.


Good luck to everyone.

My mix:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1y98ZrC ... sp=sharing

Drums:

I tried to keep the whole mix as simple as I could. I started with putting the individual drum tracks through UAD Oxide tape. Then I checked the phases of the drums and flipped the phase on the kick, bottom snare, 2nd tom and room mic. Then just simple channel eq, expansion and compression from Lindell 50 API channel strip and a little saturation from lo-fi. Also used some multi band compression on the overheads to tame the top end. On the drum buss I used some slate VTM and some compression from shadow hills Opto compressor and some parallel compression on the New Old 76. I also automated some mid range eq to make the drums cut through the busy sections at the end of the song. There is also another parallel compression for the kick, snare and the bass with a little classic 1176 action.

Bass:

For the bass I added some Ampeg svtvr amp sim on the side and feed the two tracks to a single buss with some decapitator distortion, Lindell channel eq and compression and also the classic boost attenuate the low end trick using the Pultec EQP-1A. Both the drums and the bass feed in to the same DNB buss with some Blackbox saturation and VTM tape saturation.

Guitars:

No special trickery here, just some Oxide tape, Lindell 50 channel strip eq and some LA 2A compression on the individual tracks. Both tracks feed to Music buss with a little more Opto compression from Shadow hills compressor and a slight 1K eq boost on the Neve channel strip.

Vocals:

Again some Oxide tape, Simple De-Essing from Nectar 3, compression from UAD LA-2A, Lindell 50 channel strip eq, 1176 compressor for bite and little saturation from the decapitator to make the vocals cut through a bit better. For the FX I only used a little bit of UAD Pure plate on the vocals.

Masterbuss:

Here I have some more VTM, and a little bit of smiley face and low end roll off from the BAX eq, A little bit of compression from the Townhouse compressor and finally just a touch of color from the New Old 76.

If anybody want’s to know specific plugin settings don’t be afraid to ask!

Also, here is a screenshot of the session,
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TCC4aI ... sp=sharing

Hi! I consider myself mostly a beatmaker with a hip-hop/RnB approach, so i guess my mix is more punchy and dry mostly on the drums, on other side, I've tried to make a kinda "dreamy" and psychedelic version of the song, mostly using saturation and long but discrete reverbs and delays.

My TRAck: https://drive.google.com/file/d/19jxrE- ... sp=sharing

Here's some info about how I mixed the tracks.

Drums: kick and snares highly gated (a lot of leaking and strange frequencies in the kick), then some eq, compression and saturation
Room mic: distorted and filtered (boxy and unwanted frequencies) I also made a lo-pass, letting this joint to the overheads.
Overheads: hi-passfilter and a touch of saturation (avoiding aliasing). Added spring and plate reverb on the snare. Toms filtered and distorted.

Bass: EQ'd, remove 300, and compressed, added distorsion in some parts of the song.

Guitars: Eq'd compressed, and flanger in the left one. then some more distorsion and comp.

Voice: Eq'd, comp, Distorted, and quite a lot of FX on it, maybe too much, anyways I like the dreamy feeling of it.

returns: Like 4 diferents reverbs and some delays, a lot of automation

I work with Ableton Live on a 2011 Imac, 12gb of RAm and quite a lot of plugins, I like fabfilter and PSP audio.


I hope you like my Mix, Cheers from Barcelona, sorry for the bad English

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Hey @stefanos,

Just wanna let you know I tried to listen to your mix, and I can't access the file without requesting access. You may need to open up access to "everyone with the link" in order for your mix to be downloadable/streamed.

Just a Fyi.

hello, its shared public now i fix it.