Mix Challenge

BenjiRage wrote: ↑

Sun Feb 02, 2025 13:08 CET

Hi all,

Wow, what a track we have the privilege of mixing this month! Thank you @Edling for giving us this opportunity. This is such an emotional track, it really resonates with me and regardless of the competition it's going to sit in my playlist for the foreseeable future.

Here's a broad overview of my thinking and some of the main mix decisions I made:

• The original mixes are fantastic so these were my reference
• The emotional content of the material made me want to preserve its truthfulness, so I refrained from using any pitch correction or making any timing edits as I might ordinarily have done. All the tracks are played exactly as provided
• I paid particular attention to the section changes between verse and chorus to ensure there's a big increase in energy. There are lots of little volume automations drawn in where the sections change, particularly on the drums tracks, which help emphasise first hits and give an emotive boost
• The mix was sub-grouped into Drums, Vocals, Guitars and Key with compressors on the guitar and keys masters side-chained to the kick drum, so they duck slightly to give the kick more space and apparent weight
• Tracks have been largely panned symmetrically, but I used an auto-pan plugin on the tremolo guitar track with an unusual "double-sine" pan shape so it seems to flow between left and right in a slightly unexpected pattern without being random
• I rolled off the low end on the vocals at 160Hz and the keys at 260Hz allowing the other instruments groups to fill the lower-end spectral area
• I usually always add reverb to drum tracks, however it just wasn't needed here as the provided drums sounded fantastic as is and really life-like with a great room sound already
• Reverb and Delay were added to the vocals in conservative amounts with automation used to increase levels for certain phrases such as "dig your own grave"
• I placed a "radio" effect on the breakdown vocals so it feels like the person singing is a shell of their former self, asking for a second chance. The effect then fades out as the final word "see" fades up back in its regular sound
• There's a little bit of saturation and compression on the master bus, which helps the impact of the drums in particular
• As usual, there's lots of compression and EQ used across the majority of the tracks with various different brands doing the work, but who wants to just read a list of plugins?!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fWW3q4 ... qBcaz/view

Edit: Some further notes regarding my setup for anyone interested - Mixed in Pro Tools using Genelec 8341 monitors and a JBL LSR310s sub (no GLM or correction) in a partially treated, non-square room. I also used Avantone Mixcubes and Beyer DT150 headphones for referencing.

Best regards,

Benji

Wow, the drums really sound super crisp, i guess the feeling for that comes with territory of actually playing them What kind of saturation do you use?

Mister Fox wrote: ↑

Sat Feb 08, 2025 22:44 CET

TomImmon wrote: ↑

Sat Feb 08, 2025 14:36 CET

@Mister Fox
Hi, just a technical question:
Normally we should deliver the master here in the same resolution and bitrate as the provided tracks.
The "General Information.txt" says they are in the following format:
File Format:
WAV, 44kHz, 16bit

I legit had to check multiple times that I didn't do a mistake with the TXT... and that was indeed an oversight. Apologies for for the confusion.

However, this wasn't completely off, since half of the material I got was originally in 16bit. Needless to say, that has been addressed in an update to the ZIP file. However, there is no need to re-download anything, as this only affected the "General Information.txt".

TomImmon wrote: ↑

Sat Feb 08, 2025 14:36 CET

But my audio editor reads the files as 44.1Khz 24 bit, Audacity even says it is 32 bit.
So what bitrate should the master have now?

I also checked this as well, just to be sure - the "TL;DR Rules.txt" and post #003 are as they should.

The delivery format is 44kHz 24bit WAV.

Hi Mr. Fox,
thanks a lot for clarification!
Greetings
TOM

Dudeism wrote: ↑

Sun Feb 09, 2025 00:17 CET

Wow, the drums really sound super crisp, i guess the feeling for that comes with territory of actually playing them What kind of saturation do you use?

Thanks , yes it definitely helps to an extent as you tune in much more to the drum sound when listening to songs so you know what to listen out for when you're crafting the mix.

For the saturation, I only really use two plugins - PSP Vintage Warmer and Waves Kramer Tape. Vintage Warmer is amazing when you just push the Knee knob up a bit and turn the speed down, it starts to fuzz-up the material in a very pleasing way; I've used this in varying amounts across a few of the tracks (room mono, kick, backing vocals). I had Kramer Tape on the master channel just giving a little push too. I don't really like to use a lot of saturation as it starts to destroy the transients and everything ends up mushy and distorted but a little bit is quite pleasing; also with Kramer Tape you get an excitation of the high frequencies, which adds some air to the mix.

Interestingly, your question prompted me to look into just exactly what is Kramer Tape doing to the overall frequency response. This is a graph in Pro Q3 showing how the spectral profile of the mix changes when the plugin is added - you can see the audible high boost but interestingly there's also quite a considerable cut of the sub-bass.

Hello everyone!
I am delighted to participate in mix challenge again, after some time working hard on my own production.
I wanted to congratulate @Edling on his great vocal performance.
I liked the song a lot, and I have put a special focus on enlarging that voice and cleaning all the frequencies that could hide it.
I have also tried to make sure everything has its place, including the keys and the acoustic guitar that was behind the voice, a little covered.
I have used protools and pro q3 in all chanels, an SSL big six as an adder, and I have processed almost all the groups in stems through ssl fusion.
My intention has been to add clarity and brightness without being grating, since the reference mix was a little dull in my opinion.
My mix:
https://1drv.ms/u/c/873ff5106b23dd43/ET ... Q?e=l9BOPL

fercobm wrote: ↑

Sun Feb 09, 2025 12:17 CET

Hello everyone!
I am delighted to participate in mix challenge again, after some time working hard on my own production.
I wanted to congratulate @Edling on his great vocal performance.
I liked the song a lot, and I have put a special focus on enlarging that voice and cleaning all the frequencies that could hide it.
I have also tried to make sure everything has its place, including the keys and the acoustic guitar that was behind the voice, a little covered.
I have used protools and pro q3 in all chanels, an SSL big six as an adder, and I have processed almost all the groups in stems through ssl fusion.
My intention has been to add clarity and brightness without being grating, since the reference mix was a little dull in my opinion.
My mix:
https://1drv.ms/u/c/873ff5106b23dd43/ET ... Q?e=l9BOPL

I really like your mix, great clarity! It sounds like you've achieved exactly what you set out to, well done

One thing that does stick out to me though is the vocals sound like they're just a bit behind the beat. I wonder if this is due to induced latency from plugins and whether or not delay compensation is turned on within your Pro Tools session?

Wow,
what a great song with really emotional lyrics. I really like the atmosphere of the original mix, so I didn't try to imitate it. I wanted a somewhat modern sound without losing the vibes. A bit more pop, without giving up the dark atmosphere. I hope I've come a little close to that goal.

I liked everything about the recordings, except the drum sounds (but they're great programmed!). I really like Toontracks and used the Superior and Ez Drummer extensions myself a lot, but if I could, I would have preferred to edit or swap them directly in SD3.
But that is not allowed. So that's the challenge :-) and tried to get the best out of the existing drum tracks and put the most work into that.

I did a lot with FAB4 and its dynamic EQ on the kick and snare to give the sounds a slightly different character. For the snare I even used DevlLoc to get a smack effect (I had just tested a bit with the new Shure LeveLoc and the Chad Blake settings and tried to recreate it with DevilLoc, it didn't really work, but it's interesting too). I also compressed the snare a bit (AR1 from Kush) and tried to get the peaks under control using a limiter. Also, some non linear reverb is used on snare.

For the kick I did a bit of saturation with the Kelvin plug-in.
Toms and OH also got a touch of saturation.
All the drums then got a bit of glue and character in the bus with DevilLoc. I also did parallel drum compression and used the SuperCharger from Native Instruments here.
For the guitars I used the AR 1 from Kush again (it's simply top in this discipline) and optimized the mids with the Helios emulation from Waves.
For the vocals, I initially used my own standard stack (Smooth Operator for 200 and 600Hz reduction, CLA 76 and LA-2 silver, plus multiband compression with C6, Deesser), but then tried out the Joe Chiccarelli Vocal Stack as a test and stuck with it. Additionally, Deeeser + some Fab Q4.
I did non-linear summing on all buses with either Neve or SSL.
On the mix bus, I used the SSL bus compressor and a little bass leveling from Ozone Impact. No limiter or anything like that. I was already at -14LUFs without the mix bus and therefore had to pull the mix bus level down to get to -16LUFS.
I mix almost exclusively on Beyerdynamic DT 900 Pro X and AKG K702 headphones. Finally, to control the bass, I use the CLA mix room in the NX plugin from waves.

Analysis (expose):
Integrated LUFS: -16.1 LUFS
Short Term LUFS: -14.7 LUFS
True Peak: -3.58dBTP
Peak: -3.62dB
Dynamic Range: 9.7 DR
Loudness Range: 4.2 LU

My Mix: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/dj22lx88 ... 6v8dn&dl=0

Greetings from Berlin
TOM

BenjiRage wrote: ↑

Sun Feb 09, 2025 13:24 CET

fercobm wrote: ↑

Sun Feb 09, 2025 12:17 CET

Hello everyone!
I am delighted to participate in mix challenge again, after some time working hard on my own production.
I wanted to congratulate @Edling on his great vocal performance.
I liked the song a lot, and I have put a special focus on enlarging that voice and cleaning all the frequencies that could hide it.
I have also tried to make sure everything has its place, including the keys and the acoustic guitar that was behind the voice, a little covered.
I have used protools and pro q3 in all chanels, an SSL big six as an adder, and I have processed almost all the groups in stems through ssl fusion.
My intention has been to add clarity and brightness without being grating, since the reference mix was a little dull in my opinion.
My mix:
https://1drv.ms/u/c/873ff5106b23dd43/ET ... Q?e=l9BOPL

I really like your mix, great clarity! It sounds like you've achieved exactly what you set out to, well done

One thing that does stick out to me though is the vocals sound like they're just a bit behind the beat. I wonder if this is due to induced latency from plugins and whether or not delay compensation is turned on within your Pro Tools session?

Thanks for your review!!!
I thinks its a delay i put on vocals traks, but i think its priceless

Hello,

Here is my mix:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1o61Wi8 ... sp=sharing

Drums: Kick- added highs and lows. Snare: only highs and a bit of low highs to get more tone of snare. Only bus drums i usually don't add something but this time overall i noticed that drum has too much mid frequencies, so i cut it a little bit
Vocal - reverb, delay, compression and some cut at lows. I didn't add highs. Maybe 1 db.. because it has already a very good sound.
Instruments - For me some of instruments has very harsh frequencies and was pain to ears. So i controlled it.

As a reference i had the original track all the time, which was also very well mixed, but when i checked with other popular tracks in this genre, it was a bit Lo-fi, what i changed and try to get more balanced and smooth sounding track.

Cheers!

Hello there.

The song was mixed in Cubase 14 Pro.

I went for a natural sounding mix that had a lot air.

I started with the drums, cleaned up the close mixed snare,kick,hats,hi tom and low tom with a hi-pass filter.

I added the “Drums_OH L-R”, “Drums_Amb L-R” and the “Drums_Amb_Mono tracks to get a kit sound. On the “Drums_Amb L-R” and “Drums_OH L-R” tracks I side-chained the low-end to the kick and the drum bottom to make it cut thru the ambience, then I added the shaker and tambourine tracks.

On the bass I took the “Bass_Amp” track and hi-passed it at 415,30 Hz, added a chorus fx (OSL Multi Chorus) and mixed it together with the “Bass_line”. The “Bass_Fuzz” track got mixed in during the guitar solo part.

“Vocals_Lead” track was compressed with a la-2a plug-in, used a deesser (Lindell 902) and the steinberg envelope shaper to tame the attack on some starting phrases, I used the ssl x-orcism 2 for the reverb. On the “Vox_Bg_Verse” I used a Haas type fx mixed in with the original track.
On the chorus vocal tracks I used some deessing.

With the guitars I started with the “Git_Dist L+R”, it got side-chained to the “Drum_snare_top” track with a dynamic eq (tb equalizer pro with a narrow Q), the “Git_Crunch” and “Git_Wha” tracks got some reverb (klanghelm TENS), the “Git_Tremolo” track I added some delay. The acoustic guitar track got some hi-pass filter only. On the “Git_solo” track I used some spectral dynamic eq at the high-mids to tame the frequencies a bit (pro q 4) and some action panning.

The Keys tracks got some compression and some hi-passing

Hope you like the mix.

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

Drums: Basically the Drums were directed to 4 buses, Kick, snare, toms and Resto where I already have some processes in my template like compression and saturation, in turn these go to the Drum bus, where I have a hornet vu meter so that the drums always hit at -6 peak to the processes that follow, back box, tr5 comprexxor, coffeepun, and a soft Clipper, also some parallel processes like distortion, parallel compression and reverse. There is automation in the volume of the overheads in the striillo to give it more emotion and also in some of the parallel processes.

Bass: I adjust the volumes of the 3 bass tracks, and send everything to a bus where I compress everything very strongly, equalize, also some parallel processes like compression, some early reflections to give it some depth, and distortion.

Electric guitars: use high and low pass filters at about 120 and 8k, use some boosts to emulate cabinets, Crunch, Dist L and Dist R I send them to a bus where I cut around 400hz to give them clarity and add a waves metafilter that increases 0. 5db in the strong beats and in some weak beats to give it movement, it is very subtle, for just use studio one pedalboard and add a couple of pedals to give it more presence on the sides use a chorus pedal, reverb and a delay in 1/8, the GTR Tremolo, it has an automation in the panning, I increased it about 5db in 3k so that it overdrives on that side and I put it at a fairly low volume, wha gtr, has an Autopan at 30% and I put a limiter that I really do not remember why I did it, in the guitars there is a lot of automation of volumes because between verse and chorus sometimes they were in a plane that seemed to me that it was not the right one,

Keys: I equalized them more than anything to take them out of the middle of the guitars, to leave as much space as possible for them, in the keys bus, I filtered the sides to 227, the phase meter of studio one gave me phase problems, I put a tape emulation of ik multimedia to remove a little digital color, compressed with idx, and put a high pass filter at 10k.

BG Vocals: I only compressed them very hard with bx opto, in BG Verse as in the lead voice, there were some consonants with too pronounced transients, I tried many ways to control them and finally I ended up smoothing them with a transient designer, in the BG bus I used a bus compressor, an ott, denise bad tape to give it color and I controlled it a little with dynamic eq.

Lead: the lead vocal I divided it in 2 tracks, one for the verse and another for the chorus, to save me some automation, but basically the 2 are the same, what changes are the parallel processes, the 2 are compressed and equalized in the same way, only the chorus has an increase in the 200k zone, the parallel processes are enough, there is parallel compression but by bands, there is chorus, 3 types of reverb, 3 delays, and a lot of automation in the lead vocal bus, I tweaked a little the eq and added tape saturation.

All this goes to 4 buses, Drum mix, Bass Mix, Musica Mix, and Vocals Mix, in which I gave some eq tweaks, that goes to the mix bus and 2 different types of parallel compression, in the mixbus there is a compressor bus, a multiband compressor, use hornet thrust to clean up peaks and increase the overall loudness, and I think nothing else.

I would like if some charitable soul could give me a feed back, especially of the bad things to have a reference for a next time because so far I have never been selected, I leave you my mix below ---> https://drive.google.com/file/d/1W6q-3X ... VxVj2/view