Mix Challenge

There is not that much to say here.

This is a clean-up topic which can be handled with a gate or "strip silence" and proper fade settings.



However, it looks like this particular topic needs to be further refined for future Mix(ing) Challenges, so that there is no misunderstanding.

Mister Fox wrote: ↑

Wed Feb 05, 2025 07:16 CET

There is not that much to say here.

This is a clean-up topic which can be handled with a gate or "strip silence" and proper fade settings.



However, it looks like this particular topic needs to be further refined for future Mix(ing) Challenges, so that there is no misunderstanding.

@Mister Fox thank you for clarifying, I figured it wasn't an issue but with the previous question being asked about the intro sound correction I thought I would double check. There is no point in needlessly disqualifying myself.

Halooooo!

Here is my mix - https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yWf1pN ... sp=sharing
-16.2 LUFS-I, -2.2 TP
Mixed in Reaper on Samson SR850 open-back and Behringer DT770 Pro closed-back using DSoniq Realphones correction / room simulation.
For sanity-check references I used 'Four to the Floor' by Starsailor and 'Mr M' by Four Day Hombre.

Very nicely recorded tracks and a good tune, was a pleasure to play with it!

I tried to go for quite a tight, intimate feeling to the mix. More silently screaming than shouting into the wind.
Didn't want to overdo the FX, there are plenty there but I tried to keep them fairly subtle for the most part. I added what I think is a nice squiggly delay on the synth lead, with the idea of thoughts spilling and spreading away from you.

The guitars already sounded decent so I didn't dick around with them too much - I did experiment with trying to make the distorted guitars L/R more mono compatible, but the trade offs involved ended up not being worth it. Got UAD Sound City Studios recently but am having trouble getting to grips with it. I stuck it on the acoustic anyway to try and give the sound a little more life and I think it turned out ok lol.

BX Console N (Neve VXS) on every track doing the base compression and EQ.
Instead of listing all the additional plugins I used here are some pictures of my groups you can look at if you're interested

Drums:


Guitars:


Keys:


Vocals:


Hope you like it, Byeeee!

Hello,

very nice song, I had a lot of fun mixing it and I learned so many things. Thank you @Edling for this fantastic production!

I used Focal Solo 6 Be + Focal Sub 6 in an acoustically treated room adjusted with SoundID.

My goal for this song was to keep the mix as clean as possible and avoiding the use of saturation etc. if possible. I wanted that every element has its own place and is audible with a cohesive front to back image in the sound stage with a nice low end. I also wanted to make sure that the guitar parts compliment the vocal performance during the verse, so that they interact in a playful way and to highlight the emotional and dramatic aspect of the song. This is how I at least understand and hear this very nice production.
The main goal was to create a powerful build-up so that the song reaches its climax where the guitar solo is playing with the string section in the background. I hope I did the song justice and created something the song provider had in mind.

This is what I did:

-Adjusting the gain of each track for a good working space
-Checking phase of the drum tracks and inverted it if needed. At this point, I used an EQ on the individual drum tracks to make room for the kick drum (low cut is around 70-90 Hz)
-Initial volume balance and panning of the drum elements, created subgroups (OHs, Snare, Toms, Ambience) and a Drum bus
-Applied some slight Flex Time and Flex pitch here and there on the vocal tracks (mainly for the chorus), so that everything is really tight. I just had the drums and the bass playing for this task to not get distracted by other elements
-Bringing in all other elements for gain staging and panning elements for a wide stereo image with a strong center image.
-Since I don’t like riding the faders I decided to go the clip gain route
-I created subgroups and individual busses and a dedicated instrumental bus to control things a bit better (mainly for the fade out) and to have better ovierview over the project
-At this point I decided to not use any reverb or delay and leave everything complete raw as it is
-I only used Linear EQ and TDR Kotelnikov to mix the song
-I did some extra work to find out which spot had some rogue peaks and adjusted things manually
-Final touch was a TDR Kotelnikov on the instrumental bus just barely kissing the kick for tiny bit of glew and also a Linear EQ with +0.2 @ 1 kHz, +0.3 dB @ 3,4 kHz and +0.5 dB @ 7,3 kHz as a high shelf for a little bit more shine, Vox bus has +0.7 dB @ 2,7 kHz

Here is the mix:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1iqMMU8 ... share_link

Hi!

Here is my mix: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1S4qY2e ... sp=sharing

Mixed in Pro Tools with a Behringer X32 as my interface and Yamaha HS8's as my monitors. My room is some what treated with insulation in my walls and 2 foam walls on wheels.I EQ'd my speakers with the stock graphic EQ from the Behringer.

I really just played the song, got a feel for it and dove in.
I usually start with balancing, then adding my master processing. (CLA MixDown and The God Particle). Then I re-balance and start mixing in the following order: Drums, Bass, Vocals, All other instruments. I am constantly checking the balance as I go. I focus on the low end first then the high end for a quick minute and spend most of my time in the midrange frequencies of the music.

Drums
Kick - Transient Shaper and EQ
Snare - EQ and Transient Shaper
EQ on all other elements or just volume balance
Drum bus - SSL 4K E
Some parallel compression

Bass - EQ and Compression

Vocals - Low Pass EQ, Compression, High Shelf EQ, De-Esser, CLA Vocals, Dynamic EQ

Guitars - NLS Channel and EQ

Keys - SSL 4K E and PS22 Spreader

I turned down the output from The God Particle by about -9db to make the -16 LUFS limit. It was really fun to mix this one! Hope you enjoy listening!

Hi there my mix: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1v96O5N ... sp=sharing
Mixed on beyerdynamic dt 990 pro corrected with toneboosters morfit into realphones in Reaper.
My goal was to replicate the airy vibe of the original mix but with more natural sounding drums and i think more or less i did it with revurbs and with not much processing on the drums. Instead of what plugins i use i will comment just the stuff that was hard to me. it was not easy to glue the drums with the rest of the mix for some reason may be the key was with proper balance of the room mics. The base guitar amp track got some resonanses in the lower registry i try to fix them with dynamic prossesing and with blending the di track not sure how well this go since i am on headphones and cant judje very well. Rithym guitars was very tricky too to sit well in the mix spend a lot of time eqing them back and ford to the point that i am happy. Strings got some volume build ups in the high registry that i dont like fixed it with saturation and compression. Melotron track was very harsh a lot of saturation on him and eqing.May be the easyest part was the vocals but i dont like the very strong tranzient in the begining of every phrase i gess its because the compressor that was used in the recording was with slow att speed and it takes some times to grab the vocal and the result is this. i try to fix it with one more compressor on every track that is corecting just this to a point. And finaly i am convist for my self for one more time that mixing rock songs with so much tracks at -16 lufs is just impossible. To do it you must make a choise to use saturation on tracks and on the bus and then to lower true pick a lot to fit in the -16 or not saturations at all and to be close to -16. I did this at some point just forget the loudness specs made it the way i wanted to be then i just normalize he finale mix to -17 but sins by doing this the mix was to be 23bit since no strong tranzients above -5 db i just put dither again in 24 bit to fil the gaps. I dont thing that there is real world scenario that anyone of us will mix at -16 unless its classical music or jazz or just audio books and stuff like that.Nothing agains the rules just sayng it because its obvious.

Thanks to @Edling for posting the multi-tracks and giving us all this opportunity.
Nice tune and production!

My goal was to add clarity especially to the chorus wall of sound and hopefully make sure all the elements were a cohesive whole.

I mixed in LPX in a well treated room with ARC Studio correction on a pair of Footprint 01’s.

Added a bit of rhythm to the ‘hum’ at top to get things going.

Verb and occasional delay on the lead vox as I thought the subject matter called for a bit of an ‘unusual’ space.

EQ and compression across the tracks as usual,. PA SSL E on drums.
Undertone Fairchild on VOX.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1-FyNJ ... p=drive_fs

Hello again and I hope to get this one right !!!

I truly enjoyed mixing this song and trying to do something different without destroying the energy
of this well recorded material. i mixed this one on reaper with minimal amount of plugins. I used my steven slate
vsx headphone from uad volt interface. I generally hp everything to where each track is just warm, then proceed to pan according
to instrument and weight of the tracks. my setup is super simple because i never change it.

[tracks]
fabfilter pro q3 on most if not all tracks to take out low nfo that doesn't fit

[main bus]
musick hack master plan on buttermaker preset with ns-10 eq curve preset

sonible smart limit on universal preset

fabfilter pro L on transparent preset with 4-5db of input gain

this setup has been good to me.

I love the warmness, brightness and swelling of energy of this mix with it's early 90s contemporary rock sonic tones!!

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

daw: https://drive.google.com/file/d/15Vi4lR ... sp=sharing

90% of all my tracks have this start point https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PVthkU ... sp=sharing

1st plugin on master bus:https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sPklRT ... sp=sharing

2nd plugin: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1srBchm ... sp=sharing

3rd plugin: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hsWPFU ... sp=sharing

I really enjoyed this track from @Edling it was really fun to mix it as I felt like it was closer to music that I write so I had a bit of an idea where I wanted to go with it from the start.

Here is a link to my mix: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NIYY_X ... sp=sharing

I mixed this track on my Beyerdynamic DT 990 Pros (no correction) and used my vehicle, cell phone and ear buds as listening references.

My mix process is to go top down, and from there I usually like to target the drums next. I wanted something punchy that opened up a lot in the chorus to take advantage of those room mics. I tried to blend the shaker and tamporine into the mix more as a flavoring to acompany the drums. I did struggle a lot with the snare sound and I'm not fully happy with it in the end. The tone of the drum sounds out of tune to me, far too much snare wire sound and a lot of harsh frequencies. There is also a shot every so often that sounds like a drummer miss hit the snare and a significant notch had to be used to keep these under control.

For the bass I did split processing, I used the DI with a low pass and compressed it pretty heavily then a high pass on the amp and fuzz tones and just blended them together. There was some EQ done across each of the tracks as well as required and I side chain my bass with the kick drum so it ducks to make room for the kick transients.

Guitars required some cleanup, had some whistle frequencies. The main tracks were hard panned 100% left and right with the crunch staying center and a fair bit quieter. The crunch track needed some treatment around 2150 Hz. My guitar bus has some eqing done to it and has a multiband eq that is side chained to the vocals so it ducks from about 1k to 4k to make space for them as well as Izotope Imager to widen the stereo image a slight amount due to the hard panning.

The wha and solo tracks were added to a different bus with similar but slightly different eqing, I also added some saturation to the tracks as I felt they were a bit harsh, dry and dull sounding. For the solo track I also added some delay and cut the noise in between the notes. The Wha track was panned mid left

For Clean guitars the Tremolo was panned mid right with some eqing done to it but not a lot just taming some 3k and 4k and some 600 Hz. This was one of my favorite sounds in the project. The acoustic was also really great sounding but I thought it was a bit boxy so I cut some 788 Hz and some 230ish Hz with a high pass filter around 57 Hz to clean up the low stuff.

For the synth and orchestral stuff it was mostly tweaking eq on them to help everything have some space and blend together.

Soothe2 was used on almost every bus to help control harshness.

For vocals it was a matter of getting the compression and volume levels for the most part. I did do some eqing here and there to control the tracks but most of it was flavoring such as the radio effect in the verse. I am constantly changing the amount of delay and reverb being used across the track for flavoring and vibe. The chorus harmonies were panned left and right 55% and had a fair bit of eqing done to them to help them just hug the main vocal and fit around it.

Working with PonySho last SWC really helped me understand the dynamic of guitars, bass and vocals in my mix which really came in handy here. This time I learned a bit more about balancing all those sounds EQ and volume wise and paying closer attention to overusing Reverb and Delay. Overall I'm quite happy with this mix but I don't believe its perfect by any means and I hope to get some good feedback to make a better mix next time!

Edit: Forgot to give feedback on the mood and feels I was going for..

So for each section I tried to give it something unique.

The verses have a radio effect on the vocals and the width reduced with key words having much more delay on them for vibe. The bass is reduced a db or 2 and the reverb and room mics on the drums are reduced a bit as well to dry up the drum sound. I did this for contrast especially to help make the chorus pop out but I felt like it follows the feel of the song as well at thia point you are kinda fallen into yourself.

For the chorus I basically undid the volume reductions to bring everything up, making the bass louded and really making the drums sound huge and wet. The vocals are much wider as well. Really trying to let the wall of sound shine through here.

For the bridge leading up to the solo I really wanted the orchestral and synth parts to come forward and lead into the solo. The guitars felt way more supporting here to me to be quite so upfront.

The solo itself I think just needed some vibe on it so I added some saturation and delay to make it a little more interesting especially with how I setup my rhythm section it needed a bit more to really shine.

The bridge after the solo I changed the reverb used on the vocals to be a lot smaller and tighter to try and make that part be a bit more intimate.. but as it transitions to the ending I automated a swell into larger and more reverb and more delay like the voice is falling away from you.

I like to look at these mixing challenges and ask myself, how would I want this to sound if it was my song? And go with that. I'm not afraid of trying to spice up a sound while still keeping the idea the creator was going for such as using saturation, eq or reverbs for flavor. Hopefully you enjoyed my take on this song.

Thanks for listening and goodluck to everyone else's entries!

kombainera wrote: ↑

Thu Feb 06, 2025 09:59 CET

May be the easyest part was the vocals but i dont like the very strong tranzient in the begining of every phrase i gess its because the compressor that was used in the recording was with slow att speed and it takes some times to grab the vocal and the result is this.

Fun fact, the vocals were recorded dry without any compressions. We'll just have to blame the singer (me) for the strong transients

kombainera wrote: ↑

Thu Feb 06, 2025 09:59 CET

And finaly i am convist for my self for one more time that mixing rock songs with so much tracks at -16 lufs is just impossible.

I agree that this is very hard. In many cases I think the issue is that the sound we hear in our heads and want to achieve is how our favorite rock-records sound, but the problem is they were all recorded and mixed at a time when -16 LUFS wasn't anything you were aiming for since they were only to be mastered for CD. And to get that "sound" the easiest way is compressions, and the more compression you use the farther you get from that LUFS goal.