Mix Challenge

https://www.dropbox.com/s/qigxfjbwtqyc4 ... r.wav?dl=0

My mixing is all done in the box. I used quite a lot plugins, as you'll see!

First I did was listening to the provided demo mix and master to get a first idea what the song is like. I decided to use the Crash track to create some movement and space.
Second, as alw ays, is to sort out the tracks and rearrange them in buses (voc, bgv, bass&kick, drums, toms, fx, keys, gtr, percussion) and normalizing all the tracks to -21Db LUFS.
Because the artist stated that bass, drums and vocal are most important, that's where I started.

Bass: Bass Professor II (enhance the higher Bass frequencies to make the Bass better audible), TR5 White 2A compressor (very simple to dial in and always sounding nice), and TDR Nova GE dynamic EQ sidechained to the Lead Vocal to make some room for the vocal, and finally ReaComp to duck the Bass when the Kick hits. On the Kick track you find Devil-Loc and Decapitator from Soundtoys for enhanced tone and grit, and JS:Transhape to shape the transients.

Drums: I did not use Overheads nor Room. I combined Hihat, Snare top and Snare bottom in one Snare Bus. On Hihat I put Spectre (eq and subtle harmonics) and Red 3 compressor. On Snare Bus: Snare Buzz (enhanced snare sound) and Rough Ride (compressor). The Ride got Spectre, Replika (delay) and TR5White 2A compressor. Replika is engaged two times in the song, to dense the Ride tempo. On Crash I put MAutpan, Lagrange (delay with some sound design) and TDR Kotelnikov GE compressor.
The Drum Bus is led through two compressors, TR5 Quad and TR5 White 2A.
I panned the Toms, and on the Toms Bus I put La Petite Excite and Decapitator, both for tone and grit, and TR5 Black compressor.

I routed the Artificial Back Octave to the Lead Voc. On the Lead Voc you find TDR Nova GE enhancing presence, TR5 White 2A compressor, Spectre and again a compressor: TDR Kotelnikov GE. The Vocal gets some reverb through Oril River reverb. At the end I fond myself automating volume on the Lead Vocal to get a more even performance/sound.
On Background Vocal Bus DC8C3, a nice sounding compressor with lots of features.

Every FX track got some plugins. Reversed Cymbal got Oril River (reverb), TR5 White 2A and Spectre. On Reversed Snare Long I put Oril River, and on Wahwah Stereo Touch (Voxengo).

Then we get to Strings: Fix Flanger to create a kind of broad landscape of sound (background noise, one could say). Organ: Nebula flanger, Replika (ping pong delay!) and Monofilter Elements, to centralise and reduce the lower spectrum (and more background noise). Saturation on piano with Unfiltered Audio Indent and on Rhodes with Tube Saturator Vintage.C

I did not use the DI-tracks on guitar. On Acoustic Solo I put the musical, saturating compressor MJUC. Acoustic gtr: FET Compressor and DC8C3 compressor. Electric Rhytm again DC8C3.
Electric solo DC8C3 and Rev Plate (a very nice plate sound).

Percussion Bus TR5 Bus Compressor. Belltree Blue Cat Gain 3, TDR Nova GE and TR5 White 2A. Claps: Transpire (transient shaper), TDR Nova GE, Vocal Doubler, bx-stereomaker and MStereo Expander. Tambourine: Decapitator and Red 3 Compressor.

Finally on the Mix Bus I always have DC8C3, where I mix into, and, when al balancing is done, Limiter No6 to fine tune overall level and sound (again a very nice sounding plugin).

I hope you can enjoy my mix. Comments are welcome!

Rob

Hello everyone!
I apologize for my English. He is not good.

@cristian_condrea, I want to thank you for making this song available. First of all, I really liked every detail of the thinking and production.

About the mix, before bringing any technical part, I want to talk about the process I was involved in:

I listened to the song about 57595750 times hahaha, and just keep thinking: How to sound different, with my fingerprint, without losing the essence?
Cristian himself commented in the post here that this song was a result of a personal experience. Automatically I thought: What experience do I have listening to this? Wow, this totally changed my way of thinking about the mix, everything flowed faster and more efficiently.

In short, I caught myself thinking that the elements to bring the feeling I was feeling would be reflected in the ambience, exactly as it was written in the song. That's when I decided: I need to bet on reverbs, delays, rooms and FX's. The basis of what you are all going to hear here comes down to this.

Now we can talk about the technical part. But keep the above context in mind.

Drums:
I really liked the room, overheads and ride sounds. I used the SSLChannel to "crush" and bring the box and kick forward, using the room channel. I focused my attention on the sum with the overheads and ride, then applied a corrective EQ on these channels below 70Hz, and heavy compression using the same plugin. I added this to a saturator and got exactly the feeling I wanted: "Being within the same environment".
Rack and Floor I used dynamic equalization and saturation bringing the skin sound well forward around 130hz and 3khz. Until then I had a very heavy environment and "wanted to make it lighter".
It was then that I decided to open up the snares. I just equalized using SSL and got a good result. I confess that just like in the main song, I would be happier with a replace/trigger hahaha. But I liked it.
The last element was the Kick, equalization and compression were the basis, and I also used the bx_boom in order to make the pulse of this ambience right in the heart.
Once that was done, it was time to get it all together in one place. I bet on the CLA76 and API-2500 compressions. Another gain here was an amazing coloration, which I did not expect. The "icing on the cake" was a plate type reverb, acting in specific regions in each drum part.
About the hit hat, as I decided to bet on the channels mentioned before, I left it a little deeper.
Finally, I had a "fat" sound, defined and colorful. Thus marrying the proposal of the song.

Bass:
How much good stuff there was to explore here. After some tests and based on the context, I decided to use an equalization focused on decreasing the amount of bass stuff coming from there, and highlighting the beautiful sound coming from the pickups. I then used the Virtual Mix Rack, with the FG116 combined with the Revival. That was it! That sounded great with the drums.

FXs:
I felt that they brought the balance that the song and its vibe called for. So I bet on opening the stereo image. S1 imager was used here, checking the phases at each moment. Now I had in my hands the vibe I needed to "have a glass of wine at night".

Acc Guitar:
I felt the riff needed a little more depth to bring the feeling of that night. That's when I went with Archetype Plini, using a Dream Clean. The great idea here was to use a delay in L and reverb in R. They are two sensations that complement each other during the whole song.

Guitars:
The guitars had a good role in that song. Nevertheless, I preferred to bet on the Acc Guitar bases and left the rhythm guitars a bit to one side.
On the guitar solos I bet on a little reverb. The only thing I missed. I used an equalization and voilà, the "kitchen" was well assembled.

Keys:
On that channel I also used SSL just correcting some frequencies. It was just fitting the timbres to the vibe of each moment of the song. I used some volume automations. Let the record show.

Voices:
Incredibly, I considered the "easiest" part of this mix. I already had a very well recorded and inserted vocal arrangement and a vibe that I created for the song. So I used this sequence for the lead vocal: Corrective equalization, Light compression, Heavy compression, Dynamic compression, Sibilance removal. This brought it right to the front.
The second part was to mix between reverb and delay on each backing vocal. You will notice a lot of movement in LR because of this. My bet here was once again to bet on the listener's feeling of living that moment in the lyrics. I registered that SuperTap helped me a lot to make this possible.

Mix bus:
I considered it up to that stage that I really managed to convey the experience I had listening to this music, in mix form. However, I did not consider that the music sounded uniform.
At this stage I used AMEK EQ to correct some of the frequencies that the saturation and reverbs brought up, as well as adding some that I needed to eliminate during the process.
What made me happy again with the result was some compression using Shadow Hills. Although discreet, it was fundamental for this.
Finally, I used L2, just to make sure that the peaks would not be exceeded.

That's it in a nutshell. It was a great experience mixing this.

Here is the link:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Coy9ow ... share_link

I hope you enjoy it! @timbrarbr

https://my.hidrive.com/lnk/xdyTWZaL

As always, i loaded all the tracks in my DAW. After that, I listen to all the tracks to see/hear what is given by the song provider. The first important step is to decide, what are the leading instruments for my mix version of the song. I always choose 3 instruments plus vocals (if there is any). For a genre like the challenge song, I mostly vote for drums and bass. In this case opted for the acoustic guitar as the third leading instrument.

In this mix session, I used for the first time a SSL bus type compressor for single tracks, like kick snare and the guitars and for bus compression on drums. The Eqing was done with a SSL console style EQ. In the master bus sits a bus type compressor and a tape machine emulation. Nothing special anywhere. The recordings are good, so no need for surgical interventions. One exception, the leading acoustic guitar got a multiband compressor. The only way to get it sounding like I wanted to.

The solo guitar was reamped. The given amped track had to much distortion for my taste.

All was rounded up, with a bit of reverb and delay. The drums got their own reverb. The instruments got a common room reverb, but different amount of reverb. Vocals got a reverb with ducking at loud parts and a bit of delay.

Hope you like it.

Hello,

I send you my mix, I was feel easy with this challenge, because the recording was perfect with good sounds and levels.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1y5xCmz ... share_link

I thank you about your challenges shared.

Bye, a french crazy mixer.

Hello all!

I'm new here and I would like to start participating in all mixing challenges going forward to hone my skills. That being said, I'm still new at mixing and would love any feedback from the community.

Plugins used:
EQ: FabFilter Pro-Q 3
Track Compression: FabFilter Pro-C 2
Transient Shaper: Softube Transient Shaper
Saturation: Tone Projects Kelvin, Softube Overstayer M.A.S.
Reverb: Arts Acoustic Reverb

Kick:
Decreased the sustain and increased transient for more of a thump glued to the bass guitar. A bit of saturation and a slight eq cut around 46hz to allow a bit more room for the bass guitar's sub frequencies.

Snare:
Similar to the kick, decreased sustain and increased transient. No EQ or further processing.

Toms:
Some compression on the group, a bit of saturation and EQ to cut low frequencies.

Claps:
Decreased sustain, EQ to cut low frequencies.

Cymbals:
EQ to cut low frequencies.

Room Track:
Muted.

DRUM BUS (just drum heads):
Some saturation with Kelvin, and a bit of compression. Parallel compression to add some punch.

PERCUSSION BUS (drum heads and cymbals)
Saturation with Overstayer on low bandwidth. Sends to a bit of reverb to put it in a room.

Bass:
Awesome DI. Saturation with Kelvin to give a little more presence. Some compression, and slight sidechain compression to the kick under 200hz.

Guitars:
Acoustic: No processing, just sends to reverb.
Electric Rhythm (amp): Compression.
Acoustic Solo (amp): Compression, Eventide Blackhole, some EQ, and Wavesfactory Trackspacer to make room for the electric guitar rhythm.
Electric Solo (amp): Compression, Softube Saturation Knob, EQ, Ableton Echo, and Fabfilter Pro-R.

GUITAR BUS:
EQ, and Wavesfactory Trackspacer to make room for vocals. Sends to reverb.

Keys and Strings:
EQ and compression on each track.

KEYS AND STRINGS BUS:
EQ, and Wavesfactory Trackspacer to make room for vocals. Sends to reverb.

Vocals:
Compression, EQ, Softube Tape, and Softube Weiss Deess. Sends to reverb and delay.

MASTER CHANNEL:
Softube Tape, Softube DS1-MK3 to compress the low end and high end, Elysia Alpha Master to boost the sides, EQ, and another MK3 as a limiter at the end. Ableton Utility to mono under 200hz.

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

Here is my contribution:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/lvd86z5kpgfwo ... 8.wav?dl=0

I had a lot of fun mixing this song. I spent some time, in the beginning, working on the sting instruments and shaping their sound. And then I tried different reverbs and delays to add to the vision and sound that I had for the song, and then I spent a lot of time trying out different bus compressors to find the one that gave the song the best vibe/feel to me.

MIX BUS: UAD SSL G-BUS, UAD Studer, Fab - Saturn2
DRUMS: UAD Precision Bus Comp and Multiband on the drum bus. Otherwise just standard eq and compression on the individual tracks
BASS: I used 7 different plugins to shape the sound. Nothing special but different compressors and eq's
KEYS: Organ - Decapitator for vibe/distortion, Piano - some slap delay, Rhodes - Neold Warble for vibe, strings - eq, and volume automation
GUITARS: I used the DI tracks and went with UAD Fender Amp. Echoboy on the solo and Microshift on the riff.
VOX: UAD 1176 Rev A, Elysia Karakter (20%), A small dip at 250hz and a little boost at 1khz, bx_limiter, UAD Fairchild 660 (parallel), 2 x delays and 2 x reverbs, Eiosis De-Esser.

That's pretty much it. Hope you like it

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing

Hi
Thanks for providing these tracks for mixing.
This was a fun experience.

A little about the process,
I've taken a top down approach to the mix, as I usually do.
I usually stack multiple compressors together each for a different purposes, here I've used a dbx 160 and a PA vertigo VSC 2 on the mix bus,
I also use a lot of saturation on the mix bus like a PA VSM 3 and where I'm saturating the sides a lot more than the mids, (I'm also using the clipper module from the Tokyo Dawn Labs 6GE)

Before going to the mix bus I all my tracks into three different channels a. Percussion and bass b. music(all tracks except drums, bass and vocals) and c. Vocals.
I start with percussion then bass,
Here I compress first again with the dbx and then cut some resonances with TDR nova on the drum bus
after this I treat the individual tracks in the bus
for basses I Have used Izotope trash and additionally little radiator from soundtoys for saturation and some dynamic eq

For the guitars I have some broad stroke eqs and saturation plugins like trash and radiator, Most compression is on the guitar bus which feeds into the music bus,
For ac rhythm guitar there is a lot of volume automation to remove the guitar squeek(while changing chords)
There is little processing on pianos and keys, mostly carving the tone with eqs only
The string are processed with the dbx and mid side eqs
For vocals I have again stacked multiple compressors with varying ratios and attack release settings each for a slightly different purpose than the last(mostly the dbx ssl g bus and PA VSC 2) there is also some saturation and eqs

I have used a lot of effect sends on the track, there are a couple of choruses and phasers, a few reverbs and a lot of delays

I hope you like the mix,
Feedback from everyone from the forum is very appreciated

thanks
Avneesh

Hi all !

Thanks for this great song ! I had a lot of fun mixing it !

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1S_ng8z ... sp=sharing

My approach for this song was to have a wet, punchy and brigth mix with a really brigth bass.

The tracks provided were quite good so I did not a lot of things. My classical FX chain on every tracks is :

• EQ

• Comp

• Desser (for vocals)

• Exciter

• Limiter

Just a special treatment for drums and bass. I added a bass enhancer and used an aux for parallel compression.
And every track are sent to an aux for reverb.

Finally, on the mix bus, I used a SSL comp for glueing everything up and a pultec EQ.

I hope you will like my mix !

Good luck every one !

Havol

Hi everyone, this is my mix:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yBdGvw ... share_link

Hi All,

Here is my take on this months track - again out of my confort zone which is good
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CIU15y ... sp=sharing


I went with a wamer (possibly darker) vibe, and also wanted to add more width to the guitars/vocals....hopefully acheived that!

Drums:
Saturation on every track

Kick - EQ/Compressor and limiter
Snare - SSL EQ/Compressor, then a transient designer to push the low and high, and suck out some of the attack in the mids. Then another EQ for a small boost around 8K before a clipper. Sent also to a verb.
Toms - Just some EQ and then into a verb
OH - Removed everything below 1k and above 10k, and a dip around 1.5k - into a 1176 then Decapitator to regenerate the high end.
OH2 - Duplicated original OH track and removed above 2k, compressed hard, into reverb and decapitator to generate a second "room" track and blended actually above the original room track.
HiHat/Crash/Ride - EQ removing low end mainly
Room - crushed the hell out of this with Decapitator and Devil-Loc. EQ removing below 100hz and shelf around 4k to reduce top end. Sent a bit to snare verb as well. Blended quite low in mix
belltree- left this and just sent it to the snare verb. Claps - Took some lows out with a shelf and then just put a clipper on to keep the peaks consistent - sent to snare verb.
tambourine - just EQ removing everything below 1k


Used a few parallel compressor buses for the drums as have been playing with different ideas here, all blended to taste.

BASS:
Duplicated the track and processed one for hights and one for lows the other I overly distorted - was going to bring up for chorus but it sound fine quite far back in the mix all the time so just left it. Used SSL channel strip for the Highs and a Gallien-krueger amp sim for the lows/(low mids).
Sent higher bass to a chorus type of effect - valhalla Space mod for a little movement.

Guitars:
Acoustic - Duplicated panned L/R. EQ and a plate reverb. One side also got a chorus, the other delayed by 20ms.

Acoustic Solo: Used both clean and Amp. Clean just had a sansamp plugin to get the tone. The amp version actually got re-amped, mistake on my part using wrong DI, but liked the sound so kept it. Basically it got put through a compressor and Roland Jazz emulation. Bussed these together and added a plate then into a delay.

Electric rhythm: USed both amp and clean, panned L/R. Just a little compression LA3A on Amp. Clean had a roland Jazz emulator on it (similar to acoustic tone as I quite liked it).
Duplicated Clean and added a little more distortion on this track and left it in the middle.



Vox:
My usual chain of compressor - EQ - second compressor then limiter followed by a de-esser. Pretty much used the same settings on all the other vocal tracks. Did run a a stereo delay on on some of the backing vocals for a bit more width.
FX sends were a slapback delay/verb/saturation


Keys/Strings:
Piano - saturation, EQ removing some low end and sent to a plate.
Organ - just some hi/lo roll off
Rhodes - some hi/lo roll off EQ - tape and saturation.


The FX tracks just had some saturation to warm them up.

Groups above sent to busses with Waves NLS on and the drum buss had another clipper.
Plenty of automation in various places also.

MixBus
Using the rear bus technique, then into my master bus which has
SSL style compressor - which I mixed into.
Little EQ, stereo widening and mono making with Plugin Alliances Digital V3
Second compressor (API 2500), low ratio 1.5 and doing around 1db of gain reduction

Hope you enjoy!