Mix Challenge

Hello all, here's my entry:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/61hgcf0td7xql ... t.wav?dl=0

Screenshot:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/bsc08u92idj0z ... r.png?dl=0

The mix is done on Ardour, with plugins mostly from the LSP plugin suite by Vladimir Sadovnikov, the Calf Studio Gear suite, plus Dragonfly Reverb by Michael Willis and Rob vd Berg, TAL Chorus LX by Togu Audio Line, CHOW Tape Model by Jatin Chowdhury, GStereo by Graham Yeadon (GVST), TAP Chorus/Flanger by Tom Szilagyi, DR-14 meter and Stereo Phase-Correlation meter by Robin Gareus, LUFS Meter by Klangfreund.

Since the original already broke the genre boundaries, I cranked that to 11.
Instead of just mixing the wet tracks, or treating the dry ones, I overcooked most of the former in a "because why not" way, but without dramatically altering the original sounds.

As for the track processing:

- The drums are treated directly on the drum bus, with parallel compression, tape saturation, and reverb.

- The intro bass has delay and reverb to fill more space by itself.

- The poly stabs bass has delay and chorus for more presence.

- The massive bass has bass enhancement for a healthy dose of low end.

- The massive pad has a boost on the sides, 2 stages of tape saturation (yes, 2) from 2 different plugins, chorus, and further "V" stereo imaging (widening the highs, tightening the lows).

- The air pad has tape saturation, delay,and "V" stereo imaging.

- The alchemy and sylenth pads have a boost on the sides.

- The vocals already had delay, so they got an extra delay, chorus, and "V" stereo imaging.

- The violins have 2 stages of tape saturation and an exciter.

- The serum layers have chorus/flanger.

Overall, the tracks have EQ high-pass where and when needed.

Finally, the sum bus has metering and a disabled stereo tools, used every now and then for listening in mono, since I let the widening go quite crazy.

The peaks are at -1.1dB, the integrated LUFS is -17.2.

https://mega.nz/file/fgcwUK5I#xlnIT-FvT ... CutUu5f51I

Mixed in Reaper using a variety of Airwindows effects

Drums
EQ
Send
Blockparty

Added a trigger gate to a reverb to create a hat pattern

Also used glitch to create some transitions

Pads
EQ,
Send
Widened

Bass
EQ
Compression

Main buss
Clipper, compressor *2 more dry than wet, EQ & width
Youlean

Peaks @ -3 ish
17 on Youlean
Hopefully this is ok, including link

EchoOread wrote: ↑

Wed Aug 19, 2020 21:28 CEST

@Clueless.

Only seems to be MP3?
[/quote]

I have been having problems with google drive links being private/public, so the link I provided was just a test. It worked so I just left it there instead of getting another link for the wave. Tbh, I can't hear the difference bet 320bpm mp3 and wave anyway. Sorry about that. I can try to get another link for the wave if you want. Thanks for pointing it out.
[/quote]

I just thought rules require 48/24 wav or disqualification?

Hi all !

Here is my mix of the track :
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Jwy_rM ... sp=sharing

My approach was to EQ carve all the synth to fit the mix the way i feel it, looking for textures,
have a nice stereo while maintaining low energy in the middle, and add depth by the use of EQ and reverb/delays.

i used :
- SSL strip on each stem used to control low and hight content H/L pass + mids carving for each particular synth
- added saturation on some of them
- side chain compressor on the drum bus
- TaL reverb and TaL DUb as fx channels with additional EQ
- Stereo imager
- Glue compressor on the master bus

Hope i respected all the rules as i am new to this forum,
and look forward for your feedbacks,
Shuni

Hello everyone,

First of all, I would like to take a moment and pay my respect and tribute for this space, thanking everybody involved and also thanks for the opportunity to share this experience.

This is the first challenge I get into but I've listened to dozens of others competitions in the past few years, including all the incredible submissions to this one.

Here is the link to my Mix

https://drive.google.com/file/d/16QOKik ... sp=sharing

Some Images:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZjYV9r ... sp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1attW2Y ... sp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dPI3HG ... sp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1n9pow9 ... sp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vvm-pp ... sp=sharing


1 bar added at the beginning and 3 at the end


48khz/24bit file


16.6 LUFS (integrated) / / -1.9 True Peak / / LRA 2.0

DAW: Pro Tools Ultimate 2020

Explaining my Process:

I worked through out the past 4 days.


—————————————————————



First day: 04 hours of work



--- With all the files imported I started to get the song’s feel, making sense of each track and starting to choose from each alternative. I didn’t establish a preference, some tracks I got dry some I got wet and some I used both. For the drums I chose to work with the individual pieces.

Did some relabeling, created some routing to specific busses and painted my group tracks with lovely colors.


--- After that I started gain staging all tracks to achieve easily the specifications and leave headroom for balancing volume, pan, saturation, first round of eq and compression were needed, using console one (softube). The important note here is to the fact that many synth tracks had too much high and/or too much low end. 


--- I cross reference the original and some other mixes, leaving some markers with ideas for the next day of work.


——————————————————————————



Second Day: 5 hours



--- Listened with fresh ears and spent 40 minutes doing some re-balancing. Mainly working with drums and bass relationship.

- Started to pay attention to the song parts, trying to create cohesion between then, that’s one of the main challenges with this mix, making all the different synth timbers correlate with each other and to the song’s purpose.


For exemple:



Pad air: hyper emphasized it’s transient and dislocated it completely to the sides, making it bright, sharp and bitty.


Poly Stabs: made it aggressive, rhythmic, open, not too bright controlling its excessive sharpness, turning it loud and proud.


Pad Massive: made it dark and ethereal contrasting with everything else, let it stay at second plain

--- Started doing some automation on sends and individual tracks
———————————————————————————————



Third Day: 7 hours



--- Spent 40 minutes doing mix revisions, changing overall bass tone and intensity, some general small volume changes across the other elements of the mix.


--- Spent lost of time enhancing passages between sections using manly stutter (izotope) and using some processing directly to the clips, mostly with soundtoys, timeless2 (fabfilter) and repeater (slate digital).



--- Created a hi hat trick with izotope DDLY

--- Did lots of editing at the vocal choppy track, duplicating it many time and cutting, doing different eq curves, different delays and panning.

--- Concentrated in automation on sends and individual tracks to create tension and release
—————————————————————————————————
Fourth Day: 3 Hours



Listened to the bounce in different setups, making notes. Came back to the room and made some revisions and some refinements in some specific tracks and busses.

Hi Samuel,

A very interesting bet this month: to mix a title that can be listened to on any sound reproduction system !

This obviously requires compromises and this will guide the entire mixing process.
Half of my mixing took place on my analog equipment (TASCAM 3200, Lexicon 300, etc ...)
and the other half in Samplitude Pro X5 from Magix with dedicated plugins.

I only used the original dry tracks. For this kind of music, you immediately realize that you cannot process
an instument alone without taking the others into account. This makes the process of the mix quite slow,
since each intervention on a track modifies the rendering of the other tracks.
That said, we can delimit four zones: the rhythm part, the bass, the continuous part and the various inteventions.

The real difficulty in being compatible "all listening" is to delimit the sound space: the width and the depth.
As a certain number of instruments are in the same sound spectrum, this placement allows to keep their original timbre
while avoiding interference with other instruments.
Easier to write than to mix ...

I tried to give a certain "fluidity" to the flow of the title so that all the parts are linked naturally.
In this regard, some mixers use plugins for a "glue" effect. This has the disadvantage of freezing everything.
When in fact we have to "bind" the tracks. There, at least the music breathes.

The sound possibilities for mixing this title are immense. It will therefore necessarily be a matter of personal taste.

Good luck Sam to choose the winners (I know what I'm talking about, I also went through there -songprovider MC061-).

Cheers

Franz

listen here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/chcno39j0oam8 ... v.wav?dl=0

p.s.: precision: I did not modify the structure of the title, I simply did not mix the drums during the first bars.

I’d like to thank Digital Sound Labs for the track. It was a lot of fun to work on and brought me back to when I was working on more electronic oriented music.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/czyb2nfw3w3um ... r.wav?dl=0

General Mix Notes:

• Mixed in Ableton Live 9
• “Dubstep” parts used a TON of automation mostly different instances of OhmForce’s Ohmicide and the Talk Wah in Guitar Rig Pro 5 to mangle the synths to get that ‘vocal’ sound
• I used uHe’s Satin on pretty much every track to mellow out the high-end a bit and try to add a tiny bit of a tape/analog vibe to the track
• Small vocal section in the track has a bit of parallel processing using Ableton’s stock vocoder for some added weirdness
• Other than noted exceptions below, most tracks were just EQ’d (highpassed) and compressed

Drums:
• Used Ableton’s stock Glue Compressor (Cytomic) for some parallel compression on the drum bus to fatten them skins up and make them slam
• Tightened up the snare with Native Instrument’s Transient Master by cranking the attack and removing a lot of the sustain

Synths/Bass:
• Parallel compression for sub bass/bass elements
• Used Ableton’s stock compressor for sidechain compression on the sub bass to let the kick cut through the mix more
• Some delay and reverb on some of the synths here and there
• Used multiple automated filter sweeps with Ableton’s stock Auto Filter plugin to create builds and transitions between the parts of the song

Master Bus:
• Nothing

Loudness:
• Metering via YouLean Loudness Meter 2
• -21.2 LUFS (integrated)
• -1.5 dB True Peak

It is the 22nd August 2020, 00:15 UTC+2/CEST - the first Mix Round has officially ended

Another very warm welcome to all new participants. A huge thank you to everyone that is spreading the word about the Mix Challenge. Please help get the Songwriting Competition as popular (3 days left).


STATISTICS:

• If I didn't miscount, we have merely 35 submissions this month (the lowest amount in over two years / since June 2018)
• We have 0 submission after the deadline
• We have 1 submission that could not be downloaded by the time of this post and is therefore disqualified
• Overview of Submissions - is your entry within given parameters? (PDF - updated: 22-AUG-2020, full sheet)
• Overview of Submissions (disqualifications only) (PDF - updated: 22-AUG-2020)

INFORMATION:

Until the end of 2020, I will provide a data sheet each month showing all entries and what values they have in terms of loudness (LUFS ILk), maximum signal strength (dBTP), if they are in the correct bitrate and sampling rate, if they were downloadable, etc. This data sheet is not an automated process. You can read about the whole process here

Since I've downloaded all entries pretty much as they came in, the results in this PDF will be based upon every upload prior to 22-AUG-2020 0:30 UTC+2. I will post separately once I have the data sheet prepared and uploaded (which will be linked to from this post you're reading right now).



I now open the field for everyone to give each other feedback (highly encouraged). This will be independent to the client feedback however.


Please watch this spot for the client feedback and Mix Round 2 participant announcement.

Good luck to all participants.





The Songwriting Competition 36 (SWC36) is still in full swing.
The deadline is 24th August 2020, 23:59 UTC+2/CEST. The genre is "Drum and Bass"

Please spread the word!

Here are the data sheets for Mix Round 1 and it's follow-up evaluation process.


As mentioned last month, this data sheet is used for giving an overview of all entries, and whether or not they are within given parameters (loudness, sampling rate, bitrate). Please take note that creating this is not a fully automated process. I am using Wavelab 10's "Batch Analysis" tool, but the layout and highlighting the issues, is time consuming.


OVERALL STATISTICS (to be adjusted above):

• we have 35 submissions this month, this is 74 entries less than last month and the lowest participation since June 2018
• We have 1 submission that could not be downloaded by the time of the deadline
• We have 10 disqualifications overall due to the inability to download these mixes, and/or technicalities

That is a 28,57% ratio of disqualifications. In comparison, that is 10,88 % lower than the 39,45% from MC067 / July. My hope is that we can drop down to a roughly 10% ratio (+-1%) by the end of 2020, no matter the contestant amount.


I assume the low participation is related to the multiple heatwaves that haunted the northern hemisphere in the last couple of weeks. Our planet is also finally slowly "rebooting" (economy, work, schools, etc), so a lot of us also had to re-adjust to the new daily norm. I am not blaming the provided content at all. It was/is perfect for a creativity challenge. We can't have access to "vocal productions" every month.

It is good to see that a lot of you (especially the newcomers to this forum) stick to the established Rules and Guidelines. I would still love to read a bit more details with your documentation however. This might be exhausting to you, but to this day this is actually essential for "mix recalls" (don't trust your hosts' "Total Recall" capabilities!). Having a screenshot of - for example - your vocal chain, or or one specific custom special FX chain, does not only help you reproduce a mix but also add to the community and the learning factor. People can learn from you, and maybe point out possible things for you to improve. Posting a screenshot of your mix console good and fine - but if it's only showing "<virtual console> Channel Strip" and nothing more, there is not much to learn. Just something for the future.




Here is the "Data Sheet" in PDF Form for Mix Challenge 068 / August 2020

Overview of Submissions - full data sheet
Overview of Submissions - disqualifications only



I will update the thread and the "Global Statistics" on the homepage within the hour.

The Songwriting Competition 36 (SWC36) is still in full swing.
The deadline is 24th August 2020, 23:59 UTC+2/CEST. The genre is "Drum and Bass". Please spread the word!


Thank you for reading.

Hi all,

thanks you for your participation in this contest. I am going to listen to your tracks the next days and try to provide you a feedback as soon, as I am finished.

I find it is a pity that around 30% are disqualified, because just rules were not followed. So please give more respect to that rules the next time, because your time and effort is too worthful for just wasting it then afterwards, due to such unneccessary stuff.

So thanks again for your contribution and I am curious, to compare the different submissions.

BR
Samuel@DigitalSoundLabs