MIX CHALLENGE - MC101 December 2024 - Submissions until 21-DEC-2024 23:59 UTC+1/CET

[MFTWC]

Hei alle sammen.

Cubase 14 Pro was used to mix the song, I mostly used headphones to
mix the song together with the toneboosters morphit and ghz canopener plugins . I also used studio speakers with a sub. I checked the mix in the car, home cinema system and on different kinds of ear buds.

I started with the drums, some lowend boost on the kick and 808 and some dynamic lowend side-chaining on the 808 from the kick , it was then sent to a bus where I compressed it with a g bus style compressor. I also used a tape stop plugin at 2:05 and other automation fx throughout the track.

On all the vocal tracks I used the tb eq pro with a highshelf sibilance setting, i used a 1176 style compressor on every track, the supermassive reverb plugin was used with a short room on the verse and hook tracks and various automation with reverb and delay fx on different tracks. It was then sent to a bus to get compressed with a g bus style compressor.

With the synths I started mixing them togheter and prioritizing certain tracks with panning, reverb and eq, I used the volcano 3 filter plugin for some automation fx throughout the mix, I used a bitchrusher on the “Hook Bells” track, on the “Clean Bells” track I used the unfilterded audio silo plugin for a drone-like fx, it was then sent to a bus track where I used a g bus style compressor side-chained to the vocal bus.

On the fx tracks I used some reverb and delay automation throughout the song.

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

[jules666]

Hi All

Not my normal style of music here, but felt I should give it a go.

Mixed on Headphones: DT770 Pro (SoundID correction and CanOpener)
DAW: Reaper
Link to track: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OAi1bT ... sp=sharing

First Grouped all vocals into one folder, and further seperated the hook vocal tracks into their own sub-folder.
All other tracks went to a MUSIC folder with the 808 and Kick in a seperate "Low" folder so I could process together.
Both Music and Vocals folders have Waves NLS in the neve mode.

All Music tracks have some subtle saturation as first plugin:
808: Eq mainly rolling away the high end from around 250, limiter and clipper
Kick: EQ boost around 50 and pulling out around 150 and rolling off above 5k
Both are also being sent to a Distortion and a Devil-Loc Bus, all blended together with an 1176 and little clipping.

EQ/more saturation/Limiter/Clipper pretty much used on all other Music tracks:
In addition to the above the following tracks have:
Clean Bells/Bells Low: Stutter effect on for a few seconds around 2m10s (automated this a bit to try and keep subtle)
Low Lead/FX: chorus
HitHats: automated panning to give a sense of movement.

I created the following parallel fx busses for some of the MUSIC tracks:
Reverbs
1/4 Note Delay
Flanger
Various instruments are sent to these and sometime automated

VOCALS:
Similar chain on most vocal tracks which was:Deesser - Multiband compressor - Distressor - EQ - LA2A - Limiter and another deesser

Used the Autotune vocals track.
The AD's vocals did not have the long chain above, used Howard Benson plugin here as I wanted the width and space options it has, and then followed up with another widener
The Hook vocal bus had some more saturation and a widener on it.

FX Sends for vocals were:
Chorus
Delays (1/4, 1/8 and a slap)
Plate Verb
Saturation

Automation sometimes used to reduce/increase the amount sent.

Master Bus: Waves NLS again, Saturation, and townhouse compressor which i mixed into. Put an EQ on to push the lowend at the end and mutliband compressor to try and keep it all glued together

I have also used volume and panning automation in quite a few places.

Interesting challenge for me!

[Ronson79]

Hi, here's my mix. I'm always happy if there's a song in mixing contests that isn't Rock or Punk song as we really have enough of these guitar shredding stuff. https://drive.google.com/file/d/14kB4J1 ... sp=sharing

Drums
Sculpted the Kick with eq, saturation and transient designer to make it more round while retaining punch. Original kick was too midrangey imo.
Hihat - was panned, some subliminal space and some level movement to introduce subliminal groove. Decided to not pan it moving from left to right as find it distracting sometimes.
Open hihat - same treatment as hihat but (of course) without the groove thing. Panned opposite side.
Snare - some subliminal space and some level movement to introduce subliminal groove and in this case a touch of L/R movement
Clap - relatively common in these type of beats I did a Haas fx to spread the clap and make room for the most important thing - the rap.

Bass
added extra low information, saturation and bit of eq to make it fit. Also used automation instead of ducking to glue kick and 808 together.
After extensive tests with different ducking techniques/tools I discovered that automation is still king and sounds best.

Clean Bells
cuttet a nasty resonance, added subliminal movement in level to excite the groove and added L/R movement.

Key Flute
added subliminal movement with phase, delay and L/R panning.

Gangsta Choir
got no processing, just added reverb

Piano
only added low energy to make it felt more.

FX
added delay for space and more excitement/movement

Soft Synth
subliminal level thing again, chorus and phase for dimension and movement

Lead
stereo spread, delay

Bells Low
stereo spread, high and low cut eq to make room for other stuff

Hook Bells
low cut and changing the stereo spread in multi band

low lead
stereo chorus thing

Pistol and Riser
nothing

Vocals
level automation pre processing, stages of compression saturation, de-essing and saturation to make it upfront.
several reverbs/delay and panning on the ads to give it a genre typical feel

Edit 2.
Mixbus
equing with Cobalt2 and Wine, very light compression with Wine and Shadow Hills Mastering comp

Edit 3.
Forgot about to talk about the extra options regarding creative edits. Im transitions weren't necessary.
Just added a saturated vocal sound in that specific part where it was requested to do something.
I´m a sucka for these type of saturated vocals so I went for it there.

Processing completely itb.

Hope you enjoy that mix!

Gruß
Ronson

Edit: attach my render stats for documentation. Several software measures TP differently for some reason. Reaper said TP is fine....

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XLNg3Z ... sp=sharing

[Dodgingrain]

Here is my mix: https://1drv.ms/u/c/6b8275e712f941aa/Ed ... Q?e=lcOiOf

I'm not familiar with this style of mixing so I stuck largely to the 2nd production mix. The non-english lyrics were also a big challenge, hopefully the vocals are still understandable and the de-essing is reasonable.

Drums: Really didn't need much work here. A little bit of eq and compression and just level setting. The only other thing is a pan affect on the hats.
808: Not much change here either, just some saturation and a touch of widening.

The Drums and 808 are glued together with a little more bus compression.

The various instrumental tracks had a lot of saturation added, in some cases multiple saturators. There is some widening as well, mainly on the soft synth and low lead sounds. I removed some of the noise from clean bells and cut some of its low end to get rid of the excess high end noise that was distracting from the track. Other than that the instrumentals got the standard eq and compression and some reverb added. There was also a significant amount of volume automation on these parts as well to create some difference in the sections.

Vocals: Nothing particularly unique on the mixing end. I used a pretty standard set of vocal chains desser-> peak compressor-> desser-> character compressor + eq + saturation. On the verse autotune clean track I used autotune on its max settings. The lead vocals also have a little bit of exciter on them to brighten them up and give them some impact. I did add a little bit of delay in a few parts on the Ads Delay Throw.

On the mix bus I did my usual. Pushed hard into tape saturation and a glue compressor to make things sit together better.

[RobADAMO]

My Submission

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1k1rlmS ... share_link

Had so much fun with this Mix! I mixed in my studio - It's treated and used Tannoy Gold 8's running in Logic Pro X.

Mix-wise I kept it simple just getting a right balance and adding impact on instruments that needed it.
Bus compressed the drums and saturated the kick to give it more punch.
For the lead parts I used a lot of reverb and delay to space everything around and tried to make a really spooky atmosphere.
Vocals I tried to smooth them out and add lots of stereo information to the chorus.
I liked brining the 808 upfront and giving it some saturation to thicken the sound and add bounce.
I created a soundscape with reverb and delay and added some extra emphasis on the "Traphouse" word for added effect.

But yeah overall just some normal mixing techniques!

Thanks!

[Nbwltn2]

Cool song. Here's my attempt.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1AKj2rU ... sp=sharing

Bussed individual tracks to busses. Did most of my inserts on the busses. Very little on the individual tracks. Set levels, panned, then added inserts.

Used the SSL G Channel strip on busses.
A few I used an API 2500 plugin after the SSL.
Drums I did smash with a Fairchild plugin, and used the parallel mix to blend the dry.

Vocals I used the SSLG, a desser, a smoothe plugin, the Fairchild and then tape.

On the mix/stereo bus I used a SSL G Channel again, with the API 2500 for glue. Used a tape emulation at the end.

I wanted the bass to hit hard, and feel the 808s and the kick. I wanted the piano, synths, and bells to be clear and clean. One of the bells has some artifacts, I figured for effect. I tuned that out some, but tried to keep a little without it sounding too dirty.

[Mellow Browne]

Cool song. Here's my attempt.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1AKj2rU ... sp=sharing

I cannot access the file, you need to change the rights. Thank you!

[Mellow Browne]

Hello all,

please do me (and yourself) a favour and check your links before posting it here, sometimes I cannot access the files.

As more and more mixes are coming in, I begin to lose overview of this thread which link is working and which is not. If your mix is not downloadable at the time I'm trying to access the file you pretty much missed the chance. I will not check your link again (I don't have endless time for this)!

This is the first and last time I will remind you! Please read the guidelines.

Thanks in advance.

[Mister Fox]

A friendly reminder:
Including today, 14 days left to submit your mix.


So far, we have 13 entries (compared to 73 Mix Pack downloads -- now in standard ZIP form, that doesn't need special apps).
Please continue to pay attention to detail (see bundled TL;DR Rules.txt and/or post #003)

[Christoph_K]

Thanks to @Mellow Browne for providing this cool production. I really enjoyed mixing it!

All tracks are treated with SSL4k in my Softube Console 1. Mixed in LUNA.
Notes for my mixing environment: I work with Barefoot Footprint 01 and PMC twotwo6. I have applied a ton of acoustic treatment in my room and I use IK Multimedias ARC4 System for correction. I additionally check my mixes on my Neumann NDH30, AirPods Max and in my MINI

Drums
I enhanced the Kick with KNOCK.
I used the transient shaper section in console 1 to get more smack out of Snare and Claps. The claps have a nonlin reverb in certain sections.
All Drums are summed to a Jaycen Joshua style Drumbus with a Waves Studio Rack Patch: https://pluginplug.io/blog/cradle-orion-drum-bus. This supposedly sounds like the Cradle Orion Plugin. A parallel copy of the kick with Sonnox Envolution and a high pass filter to get even more knock goes directly to the mixbus.

808
I first splitted the track to control one higher note which stood out too much. I low passed these two at around 120hz, added a L1 Limiter and used Waves Vitamin for further tone shaping in the subrange. Two more copies of the track go to saturation channels: ToneProjects Kelvin for midrange saturation and a UA TubeScreamer to get more saturation in higher frequencies. I bussed them all together and used soothe2 for sidechaining only the fundamental of the kick and added ToneProjects Basslane (free) for stereo enhancement.

Synths
The Clean Bells have a Soundtoys Phasemistress and the Low Lead has a Soundtoys Crystalizer on it. The Bells Low go through a Waves Brauer Motion for panning effects.

Vocals
UA Avalon737 on the main vocals (Verse and Hook)
I used Pro-Q3 for a high pass filter at 90hz and dynamic corrective moves for resonances.
FabFilter Saturn for saturation (only the fundamental)
Waves L1 Limiter to catch the peaks
UA1167RevA for compression
Weiss Deesser
AutoTune X for the Autotune Track Clean
Slate Fresh Air on the Vocal bus
Stereo spreading the verse vocals just a tiny bit

Effects
Eventide949
Liquidsonics Seventh Heaven
Eventide Blockhole
UA AMS RMX
Baby Audio Crystalline
Process Audio Ripple Delay

Stutter FX
Done with CablyGuys ShaperBox 3

Mixbus
FabFilter Pro-MB
Outboard SSL style Compressor
FabFilter Saturn
Softube Widener (only used in the hook sections)
Schwabe GoldClip
Cradle God Particle

https://www.dropbox.com/s/qzd25l3fxxt4m ... K.wav?dl=0