Hi everyone!
I'm new here, I just discovered this site a couple of weeks ago and thought I'd try my hand at mixing Sorry Anyway for this challenge.
My mix has a range of about -21db RMS to -15db RMS. I did see a few spikes getting up to about -13 but they were only during that really loud part at the end. There was a couple dips to -23 in the quiet part before it gets loud, so it balances out.
The overall loudness is -16.2 LUFS-I, with a true peak at -1.2db.
You can download the song here in 24 bit, 48kHz wav
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1u76_k4 ... sp=sharing
The instructions say to have screenshots of the DAW. You can see the audio track settings and the bus settings here.
Audio Track busses and settings
Busses and settings
The contest description says to include detailed notes as a habit for recalls, I'm 100% in the box, so I just open the session for a recall, but I do have good notes on what I did to different things, I just didn't get into specific settings on much.
Mixed on Harrison Mixbus 32c. It has built-in compressors and EQ on each track, most of that will be in the screenshots. All bus sends also have tape saturation. I didn't lower it from default on any track, but I did increase it on some.
During mixing (not for the export) I had Ozone 8 on, by usually bypassed. I only wanted it because of the reference track playback (to A/B reference tracks) and the meters. I removed it before exporting the mix. I know not to do much on mixbus processing for the challenges, so I'm going to reiterate, I removed the plugin completely before final export.
Detailed notes
Each drum piece, not the overheads or the room, just the pieces, had a Scheps Omni-Channel by Waves on it.
I used the Omni-Channel to gate the drums and reduce bleed, I also used the EQ and compression on each piece tailored to the drum. Some saturation on all of them, but I used more on the snare.
The kick sounded really weak after I got into the mix, so I removed the Omni-Channel on it I added the SPL attacker first, then followed that up with the McDSP 6060 Ultimate Module Collection. On that I ran a parallel of an E671 EQ with very little on it, mostly for colour, on one half, then I ran D-100 distortion into the D359 compressor in the other half. Those 2 processes then get summed together to give the kick a lot more life.
All the kit pieces and the overheads got sent to 2 busses. One bus was just a bit of compression to tie the pieces together, the other was a parallel drum crush channel. The Drum crush had the Process Audio plugin called Sugar on it, and that went into the bx_townhouse compressor to crush the drums and make them fat and dirty.
The mono drum room was sent to its own stereo channel. On that channel, I added the Harrison Micro-Glide plugin to give the mono kit some stereo width. I then enhanced that with a bx_2098 EQ in mid/side mode to help the sides stand out more from the mids. The sides were boosted at 2.2 kHz and a shelf at 12.6 kHz to help give the cymbals some shine on the sides. The mid channel had a low shelf boost around 100hz, just to boost up that kick a bit.
The bass needed some work, but without a dry signal to re-amp, I got creative. Some compression and EQ built into the Mixbus channel got it started, and then I added the bx_subfilter to add some sub bass to it, and that fed into the Scheps Omni-Channel. The Omni-Channel had lots of saturation, with some compression and eq. The saturation really helped breathe some life into that bass. The bass was then sent to a bus and added tape saturation to the bus.
The horns were set up so that the sax and trumpet are panned to the sides. Only some EQ was using the high and low pass filters on the horns were used individually. They were sent to a bus along with the lead trumpet and compressed together.
The trumpet lead had some eq on it to get rid of some harshness I didn’t like and it was panned right about 33%. This was to add separation from the guitar playing the same part. More on the guitar below.
The guitar is heavy on automation and is sent to a bus that’s set up with a stereo delay on it called 3d triple Delay. On the guitar track, I applied some compression and EQ inside the track channel strip. I also added the Waves GTR Pedalboard to it with 3 pedals. The pedals were an Overdrive, Phaser, and Flanger. The Flanger was on most of the time but got turned off when the guitar and lead trumpet played together. At that point, the flanger got turned off, and the overdrive and phaser came on. The guitar got panned 33% left so that it was on the opposite side from the trumpet playing the same part. All the pedals are off during the phrase starting with “She says this isn’t like the other times”
The keyboard part sounded great and needed very little done to it. Since it had very little difference in the left and right channels, I used the Scheps Omni-Channel to convert it into a mono signal and ran that into a rotary speaker plugin called x42 Whirl. I wanted to add some more interest to the part and give it some width as well as depth.
The vocals were in good shape overall. The lead vocal got some EQ on it, and all 3 had some compression on each track. I panned the vocal double to the left, and harmony was panned right part way. All vocals were sent to a bus with some very slight compression on it and lots of tape saturation.
Now for the FX busses, besides the stereo delay that the guitar went to there were three busses for FX.
- The first bus is set up with the Abby Road Plate reverb on it for a short reverb. I also added some tape saturation from the channel strip to it. All the vocals went to this bus.
- The instruments, except for the drums, went to a bus for the “room” reverb with 2 plugins on it. First is the bx_hybrid V2 EQ plugin. There’s a high pass filter, and low pass filter on it. I also dipped some of the lower mids out and boosted the upper mids some. Then that goes into the MPXiReverb from Lexicon using the “Nice Studio” preset. This bus also had some tape saturation to it.
- There is also a bus set up for the vocal throws. The longer delays you hear at the end of a few phrases. It’s using the bx_delay2500 stereo delay plugin on it. There is some distortion and chorus setup in the delay plugin as well. The bus tape saturation was on and set fairly high on this bus.
Finally the master bus. Only 1 plugin on it, but I did use the Mixbus processing that’s built in. There is an eq with very slight “smile” settings, a small dip of -1.2 in the low-mids, with 1db boosts to the lows and highs. There’s some slight compression for “glue” on the mixes and some tape saturation. The only plugin on it is the Process Audio Sugar plugin.
If you're not familiar with the Sugar plugin, which I used in a couple of places, it's sort of a multi-band exciter/enhancer. That description isn't perfect, but it gives you an idea.