MIX CHALLENGE - MC095 December 2023 - Winners announced

[EmClrk]

Thanks @Christoph_K for supplying such a well recorded and well arranged song for us this month. I tried to tread fairly lightly as I felt there was rarely any need for surgical eq moves but more like steering each section where it needed to go in terms of size, impact and ambience.

Here is my mix: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/p7cxsru3 ... b6iww&dl=0

My main aim for this mix was to exaggerate the size of the arrangement and be as dynamic as possible without it feeling uncomfortable. Delicate guitars with expressive vocals. Mellow and swelling electronics with sparkling hi hats. Punchy drums with spacious distorted guitars. Most important in my vision was to have the feeling of a cohesive journey that builds to the end.

I started by having a good listen to the original mix provided so that I could get a sense of how to balance each section and what parts were to be considered foreground and background. This was actually made even easier because on importing the audio files and bringing the faders up most of the tracks already sat in a very good place.

Because of the tracks all sounding good to my ears I went for a mainly top down approach. Once I had a good rough mix of levels from gain staging and initial balancing of background and foreground elements I applied a low ratio compressor with fast attack and release to the mix buss to help bring out some extra detail in the delicate sections, I also found that the low ratio helped things not to get too squashed in the louder sections, I did dial back the mix dial a touch to make sure not to over do it though.

It did seem odd in the instance to start with the drum kit but I did anyway because I had to start somewhere and who doesn't love mixing drums. I really liked the drum room sound and as I mentioned earlier all the parts fit nicely together more or less straight away so I gently shaped the parts around each other with some eq. I found that the Hi Hats, both live and the not live ones, needed a touch more sizzle so I brought out the top end a bit so they could sit nicely all the way through the arrangement. I decided to sort out the snare reverb fairly quickly as I wanted it to do some of the heavy lifting in terms of the top end of the track. I used one reverb to concentrate on the high sustain and another to focus more of the body and blended them together to get the right sense of depth and tone.

Once I had started dialing in the snare reverb I thought it would be a good idea to set up a warm long verb for the vocals and followed that with a shorter brighter verb that I could blend together to get a sort of Jeff Buckley inspired vocal tone. These reverbs were also very useful for the live recorded instruments to get them to sit in a similar space to the ambient sounds and swells. I felt like getting the reverbs set up earlier than I normally would have done helped me to balance the background and foreground elements without leaning on eq and compression as a first port of call. The automation of these reverbs were crucial to the sound to get a feeling of familiarity between sections but also a sense of progression and growth.

The vocals sound great to start and I mixed most of the song without touching them with eq or compression. I did send them to a parallel channel for compression and a high end boost to bring out the articulation for the delicate sections and to cut through in the denser parts. I also added a parallel channel of sides only microshift for width when needed. Blending these together and automating them took some time to get right but was key to getting the performance to shine through. For the backing vocal parts I used a similar approach leaning more on automation than plugins.

One of the main challenges I found was to get the acoustic guitar to sit nicely with the ambient sounds and the vocals. I wanted a delicate sound but not something brittle that would stick out too much. I think this was just a matter of automation and some slight compression and I hope I got it to sit right.

Most other elements I wanted to add excitement when they were there as that seemed to be their purpose so I used automation to get things to drift in and out but not stick out too much.

For the bass parts I tried to keep the sub 100hz region constant with some multiband compression and also to cut through in the mids around 700-1.2k with some upwards compression so it would only kick in when needed.

It took me a few listens between different speaker systems to get a balance I was happy with but I got there in the end and I hope you like it too.

As a note I did try to match the song length to the original mix provided as that was used as the benchmark last month,
Matt

[SDB_12]

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/lyg5mbb8 ... mcw5f&dl=0

Hi!

Thank you @Christoph_K for the really fun and well produced track this month, great way to end the year!

I've been working on developing a newish template for months now, and this was a really great song to use in order to help with some of that. I just worked on it slowly over the month when I had time, and had a lot of fun with it

Rather than go through and list all the things I did to every track, I'll just say that my goal was to try to enhance everything into something that sounded slick/modern/polished, but vibey... in a way. @Christoph_K mentioned that it would be nice to hear a different take on the song, so I just wanted to try some things and bring out certain elements in the mix that I thought sounded good. Overall, I really wanted to keep the song moving throughout, growing and getting bigger as we go.

I love all the vocal effects in the intro, those were fun to mix in. As for vocals in general, I did a lot of cleaning up clicks/pops that I thought were distracting. Trying to keep everything sounding smooth and clean.

I'd say I spent the most time on the Main GTR track. I thought it would be cool to get it wider and go for a "Believer" by Imagine Dragons type sound for these. Fitting these in with the Piano plucks was fun, trying to really get everything sounding percussive and working together. I wanted this song to pump and groove, and get the listener moving. To achieve this particular sound, I used some transient designers to bring out the percussive sound in the tracks, as well as eq, compression, saturation...all the stuff. Then it was just about balancing it all together.

Side note: I have been working on and developing a mixbus chain for quite awhile now, so I mixed through it as usual. There is a limiter at the end...but I backed everything off for this particular mix so as not to be "mastering" the track. The limiter is hitting maybe -1db on the loudest kick/snare peaks...but it's part of the sound and taking it off I lose density, glue and punch...I use this instead of only having standard mixbus compression over the whole mix for a bit more glue and punch. Nothing was done just to achieve loudness at all in this mix...only to help get the mix the way I wanted it to sound.

Thanks again!

[Pingafuego]

Mix link:

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



Thanks Mister Fox for hosting Mix Challenge.

Thanks for @Christoph_K and Arno Kim Noah for the song. Cristoph shows he is a great mixing engineer and a great producer as well!

For this challenge I tried to keep the listener’s attention to all the moving production details.

All channels have the Brainworx SSL E channel, for eq, gating and a little compression when needed.

In the mix bus, Townhouse bus compressor (3 to 4 db GR), BX Digital for slight stereo width (automated in some sessions of the song), and UAD Pultec (loudness eq curve), Oxford Inflator for saturation, Bassroom low freq eq, and Waves L3 to catch peaks.

There’s a rearbuss aux (inspired by Schepps), and parallel compression in drums, bass and vocals.

Waves Silk Vocal was used in lead and back vocals for deesser. Backvocals have Soundtoys Microshift for some width.

All instruments were bussed to their respective aux channels, with some compression (UAD LA2A, CLA3A, DBX 160 in its aux).

Drum Rooms have reverb (Arturia Plate), toms have BX RooMS ambience reverb, vocals have Raum and the new PSP spring reverb, snare have Waves Rverb, and some instruments were sent to Bricasti room reveb IRs (Waves IR-L).

Vocals were sent to delay (Soundtoys) aux channels.

There are some automation in vocals and delay levels, and drum room levels in certain song sessions.

I hope I did well, thanks!

[rvalle]

Hey @Pingafuego

Something happened whit your mix. My guess is that, for some reason, only the side signal was exported.

EDITING: disregard the post. The mix is fine. Something wrong with my setup here. Sorry!

[njm255]

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1S-IVd3 ... sp=sharing

This is my first time doing the mix challenge and man, what a great song to start with! At first when I saw all the tracks I was overwhelmed and wasn’t even sure where to start, but once I dug in, everything came together very well. The song is brilliantly arranged and really didn’t take a lot to get a good mix with.

Drums
It was simple EQ and compression. I mostly used Sonnox Claro for the EQ except the snare where I used the SSL Channel Strip 2. I added slight compression to the drum bus and that was it.

Bass
More basic EQ, some compression and a little sidechain compression on the live bass at the end.

Guitars
For the main guitar I used the SSL strip again with some fast attack compression and added some delay. The electric guitars were just more basic EQ and compression and panning to clear room for vocals and the Bottle Solo.

Most of the other sounds didn’t need much of anything, just a little EQ here and there along with plenty of automation.

Vocals
These were the biggest challenge for me and required the most work. Plenty of EQ, a good amount of compression and panning to keep the lead vocal clear. A lot of automation was needed for these too. All the background vocals were sent to a bus with some compression and the VX-64 Vocal Strip for some de-essing.

Almost all the tracks that didn’t already have fx baked into them had reverb added. I used a reverb bus with Seventh Heaven and just varied the send levels to try and keep some things more forward and push others back more. The lead vocal had its own seventh heaven reverb with a bit of pre delay to keep it more in front.

Master
I threw the Voxengo Teote plugin on there to get a little more balance and then added some slight compression, clipping and a final limiter with the TDR Limiter 6.

Definitely learned a lot with this song, it showed how easy a good arrangement can make a mix and how to play with depth to put tracks where I need them.

[WrightAudio]

Greetings all,

This is my first post after finding the mix challenge forum several days ago. I mixed the song in my free time, fairly quickly and sporadically and I had a limited time frame to complete it – making excuses already! All mixed 'in the box'

Firstly, I'd like to say thank you to Christoph K for providing such a dynamic, well recorded and arranged multi-tracks. The song really conveys emotion and feeling throughout. It was a real pleasure to work on. Thanks!

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

My process: As with any session I begin by organizing the multitracks in to a logical order (for me) and maximizing headroom so I don't run in to problems later. For this I use the channel meters and roughly aim for -18DbFS.
I then proceeded to get a quick rough balance to make sure that I'm not missing anything in the mix and to help detect any problems that may need 'fixing'. There weren't really any problems as such, so therefore I felt I could concentrate on being a bit creative and help serve the song. Once I'd done this I just tried to feel what could be right for the song. My immediate thoughts were to use panning, levels, various effects, mostly reverb and delay to provide space and depth.

All the effects I used were via sends from each channel so I could 'blend' in the effect level to suit

Vocals (Intro)

With this song I felt it best to start with the vocal. On the intro vocal I used Slate virtual channel > Air > CLA 2A > Soothe.
I used Air to provide a little top end, but this increased sibilance so I used soothe as a DE-Esser. The CLA 2A was only providing around 1dB of gain reduction, just to smooth the vocal, ever so slightly.
Effects wise I used Soundtoys Echoboy to provide some depth, Microshift to add a certain something to the vox which I liked and Slate Reverb, Large Plate. All blended to suit.

Lead Vox

The same basic setup as above but different blends of effects. For one of the parts I used a delay automation to create a kind of 'call and response' effect.

Far Vox

No processing other than a plate reverb and pan automation

BV's

These were grouped in buses and panned appropriately. Very similar setup effects wise, but with the addition of Decapitator blended. Also a CLA 2, very gentle just to help glue together. I did use an SSL EQ here and there to remove a little bit of low/low mids slightly.

Intro Guitar

Bussed together, SSL EQ low end cut, and CLA 3A very gently. Effects were Echoboy delay and Slate room reverb.

Main GTR

Used similar to the intro Guitar but.. used delay to create a little bit of space and a rhythmical effect.

Sound effect multitracks

Most of these were as they came. They added so much to the song, in so many ways!

Bazouki's

All three of these had SSL EQ to cut a bit of bottom end and then sent in to Slate Room reverb, and panned.

909 Kick

I sent this to Soundtoys devil loc to add some high mid/top saturation type effect to allow it to be heard properly. No EQ or compression. I then sent this to a sidechain (DBX 160 compressor) of the synth bass to help balance the low end when the syth bass was in the mix.

Synth Bass

CLA 3 and DBX 160 just to tame the low end slightly.

Elec Guitars

Bused and SSL EQ to cut some of the low end very slightly. Sent to delay and reverb and a Decapitator and blended to taste.

The piano's had some very gentle low end cuts to them with an SSLEQ

Bottle solo

Used both channels. The amped one had a low end cut and a mid boost. It was then sent to Decapitator, Echoboy delay, Room reverb and Microshift. Blended to taste. The DI? was EQ'd low cut and compressed slightly with an LA2A then sent to a room reverb and Decapitator.

Drums

These were bused and put through an SSL bus compressor with the needle just moving. I also sent a small amount to devil loc to help provide a bit of grit overall.

Snare

This was EQ'd (top end boost) and sent to a snare reverb. The snare reverb channel was gate>Room reverb and mixed in to suit.

Bass

The kick was sidchained in to a DBX160 comp to help bring out some kick definition (only about 1db of gain reduction) Then I used soothe as a DE-esser to help to smoothe the top end, and then in to a CLA 2A (needle barely moving)

That was about it really for the processing. Not much dynamics processing was needed at all in this song. I just tried to created depth and space, hopefully within the context of the song.

Drum loop

I used a filter on this and automated it.

On the stereo bus I used a slate tape emulator, some very gentle bus compression and a limiter to help tame the odd peak when the acoustic drums kick in.

The overall integrated loudness comes out at -16.8LUFS EBU R-128. TP less than -1db

If anyone has any questions please do not hesitate to contact me. Thanks again Christoph!

Merry Christmas!

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

[Havol]

Hello everyone !

Thanks to @Christoph_K for this beautiful song ! Complex in its composition and arrangement but fairly easy to mix as everything takes its place by itself.

Here is my mix :

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Wx_y2h ... sp=sharing

Vision
I really wanted an airy and pretty wet mix, playing with the reverbs and adding a lot of punch with the percussions

Drums
Nothing really special here. Just some EQ and compression (quite a lot in fact). I just used a pretty long plate reverb on the snare

Percs (Tambo, Shaker, Drum loop)
High pass and low pass and I removed some resonances at 4KHz and 8KHz

Bass
Boosted at 100 Hz and 3KHz and compression

Guitars and Bouzuki
Boosted at 3KHz and 8KHz and compression (more on the electric guitars). Everything sent to a room reverb and a big delay for the solo

Synths and "Pad things"
Boosted quite a lot the high frequencies and used a stereo enhancer. Eveything sent to a hall reverb.

Risers and Reverse
Nothing done here. Just balanced.

Vocals
Lot of compression. Boosted a lot highs and cut some 400Hz and 1KHz. De-esser. Everything sent to an automated big reverb and delay.

Master
Pultec style EQ and Bus compression

I hope you will like it !

Good luck everyone and merry christmas !

Havol

[rijavia]

just 1st try :https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xZMZ-G ... share_link

[unclesnuggles]

Hello everyone
here is my mix proposal for this superb song.

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

Mixing ITB / Cubase pro10.5 / FocalCMS40
I had a lot of fun mixing this song, the arrangements and vocals are superb! well done !
At the start of mixing I created a gain stage, so that my track faders were approximately at 0. I start mixing at this point.
On this mix I don't use much corrective equalization, everything fits together perfectly, thanks to a quality song. But this remains a mix that is far from simple!
I mainly used tape simulators on all individual tracks, StuderA800 and Magneto(Cubase). Everything is sent in dedicated Buss, which themselves go into several Mixbuss. I have my personal routing. I ultimately often work with the same tools (Tubetech Channel, / BritishClassA / Magneto / Ampex atr102 ...)

Happy listening to you!

[tiptoe3]

Hi,
thanx guys for those tracks. So many snippets... loved it. ;-)

The song came in at the right time. And went wrong for me. lol. Made eleven versions, just to saw that the first one had the feel, the rest didn´t.
As time went by i did so many things that there is no way back. Well, so with number 11...

Mix was more or less a console mix. Extra busses for drums: with limiter, dry, snare with ssl 10:1.
Guitars with la3a and -3db gr. 100 and 10k cycles +2db.
Vocals pushed into 1176, rencomp, deesser.
Sta-level on bass. -10db gr.

Everything into a bus. comp -3db gr, l2, ozone, reached -10LU... sounds great.

Take masterbus comps off... get -16LUs... changed the sound, but let´s do the -16LUs game.

My main goal was to get some good groove going in the last section and let the first half breathe.


https://c.gmx.net/@317237882228053658/e ... IrqClYeBLQ

cheers, tippy