Mix Challenge

Posted: **Thu Dec 12, 2024 18:02 CET**

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_Sa_5- ... drive_link

Very interesting track. I was not certain if I could make this mix work at first but couldn't feel more happy to listen to it afterwards. It is a very passionate song with powerful rhythmic motives and a very classy usage of elements that made me a fan.

Integrated loudness: -17.6
True peak: -1.10
Time: 0:02:57

I mixed with in ear headphones from Westone with no acoustic treatment.

Most of the tracks had an 1176 and an la2a to create a nice gain stage plot
.
The kick was used as a sidechain source for hi hats and synths to create space and punch.

Some frequencies were enhanced in each instrument to create presence and low end was carved to create space for the subs and the kick.
The 808 had a distortion added in the mid and high lows to create more presence and 3 harmonics were pulled from the eq to enhance and provide more presence.

There was four main reverbs created with specific panning for space design, a ping pong delay, parallel compression busses an almost monophonic reverb nus in the center for the tunned with un tunned vocal section.

The hook vocals were treated with two pannings towards the sides and a center with distortion to add grit and noise. The main vocals are more present and full to generate more contrast and the synths were panned and placed around the space to generate an interesting texture.

The master bus had a BBE sonic maximizer, an eq and some la2a style compressors playing with the wet dry mix to enhance the dynamics without loosing the harmonic content. A limiter was used as well and most of the song was mixed with those enabled to make sure the excitement was not lost in mastering.

The mix is designed so that you can push it towards the limiter hard without loosing the vibe so the harder you drive it, the better it sounds.

There is a lot of work in the mix regarding the clarity and punch achieved with compression and eq and a lot of work in the space of the mix of the elements giving more relevance to the 808, the kick and the vocals.

The only edits done were on the hook vocals to make sure the phrases had the musical motif presented with the proper space, no element was removed, only gaps. A delay was introduced in one word of the hook twice in every exposition of the motif.

Hope you enjoy the mix as much as I enjoyed mixing it.
Happy mixing guys!!

Posted: **Fri Dec 13, 2024 16:06 CET**

Hi everybody!

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

Not really my cup of tea this one, but I thought I might as well try anyway. Tried to make it sound decent for different devices and support the story of the song.

For monitoring I mainly use Realphones by Dsoniq for headphone correction and fake space emulation since I don't have a treated space to work in

I normally test on DT770s, Samson SR850s, crappy earbuds, phone loudspeaker and my PC speakers (Creative Gigaworks T40s)

Mix Notes:

► Show Spoiler

Enjoy!

Posted: **Fri Dec 13, 2024 16:39 CET**

Hi all,

This is my entry fort he MC101. Thank you Mellow Browne for providing this track and keep the challenge going! It is a very good composed song with the right attitude for a trap song. The lyrics are cool and are performed really well. Just like the quality of the audio tracks. It was great to be able to work on your song.

This is the link to my mix:
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/mkflw7ih ... k3wz6&dl=0

LUFS-I: -16.1
True Peak: -1,4 (left) -1,3 (right)
Length: 3m 01s (I used the track lenght as provided)
48kHz / 24 bits render

The songprovider asked for some details about the mixing conditions. So I start with that:
I mix in my homestudio. The walls (behind and next to the monitors) are treated with accoustic panels from ‘Ekustic’. I use genelecs 1030A as my main monitoring. I also check the mix on Beyerdynamic 990 Pro (and I do the ‘car-stereo check’

). I mix in Reaper (with some outboard)

About the mix:

As you can read, I often use distortion on many tracks. Not to actualy overdrive things but I use it in a subtle way to bring elements more forward in the mix.

Drums kick: I experimented with some plugins to give it extra subpower but I removed those because all it added was rumble that muddied the mix. I wanted the kick to be present, so more information in the higher frequencies was needed.

Those plugins did work for the 808 however. I also doubled the 808 with added distortion (subtle fuzz to make it more audible on small speakers).

The snaretrack has got a compressor, a tube amb simulator and a transient controller because I found the ‘snap’ a bit too sharp sounding.

The rest of the drums, nothing special, a little eq to balance the sound a bit…oh and there is a 1073 eq on the hihat for some extra high frequencies.
The Bellstrack low; some waveshaping distortion (subtle), saturation (less subtle), hpf eq
Clean Bells: same as the Bells Low track
Hook Bells: no fx / plugins
FX track: waveshaping distortion and saturation + hpf eq
Key Flute: Waveshaping distortion, saturation and reverb
Lead: no fx / plugins
Low Lead: Waveshaping distortion hpf eq
Piano: eq (low end boost and mid boost), I mixed this track in with high volume….I think it is a powerboost in that way.
Softsynth: waveshaping distortion
Pistol track: Waveshaping distortion, sub harmonix generator sent to a stereo delay / reverb for a dramatic effect
Riser: No fx / plugins
Gangsta Choir: compressor, eq, delay, chorus (for more body and stereo width)
Vocals Hook 1,2,3, Ads Delay and Ads all sent to a busstrack with eq, saturation, de-esser and sent to a stereo pitch / delay effect for more stereowidth
Rest of the vocals: compressor, eq, de-esser and sent to a subtle roomreverb (PCM90).
The masterbus is sent to an outboard Warm Audio masterbus compressor.
For the effect at around 2.09 minutes I put a stereodelay effect on the snare, heavy delay on the vocals with a radio / bitcrusher effect.

I hope you enjoy my version of the mix. It was good fun anyway.

Cheers,

Jeroen

Posted: **Sat Dec 14, 2024 12:07 CET**

Hi everyone.

Thank you @Mellow Browne this was a fun one to mix. I hope I did the track justice.
Thank you @Mister Fox for your continued work.

This is the link to my mix:
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/g9g39cih ... 9i5e6&dl=0

What did I do?

Well, I didn’t mess with things much at all. My aim was to keep it reasonably raw sounding and what I wanted was to give it a little edge where I could and create contrast and depth mainly through levels.

I think it translates pretty well across different devices. I actually enjoyed listening to it in my phone headphones and also the car - so I thought that was a bit of a win.

My mixing/listening environment is a pair of Sennheiser HD300 Pros. Sometimes they sound right and sometimes they don’t. They are supposed to be a flat response which for headphone listening may not necessarily be the best way to go about things. Anyway, they are what they are. They appear to work better for mixing more electronic stuff than acoustic stuff…

I mainly used the Blindfold EQ for equaliser duties. So I don’t have a list of exact EQ frequencies to share with you all.

For the 808 I boosted the bottom end and took a little out of the LMF area added a little in the HMF put it through a bit of compression and then into an L2 limiter as form of clipping. I then put it through an FF ProQ3 with the EDM Kick 2 Sustain preset on it followed by an LA2A and then the Logic Sub Bass. I was just looking to see how big I could go. I’m not sure I completely nailed it, but it sounded great in the car.

The Ads and Ads delay just had a bit of Glow on them and I pushed a little of them into the vocal reverb I set up which I’ll include later.

The Bells Low had a Glow instance and they were boosted slightly around 200 and had a little bit of HMF taken out. I then put them through the Logic Stereo Spreader.

The Claps had an instance of FilterJam on them to shape them tonally a little.

FX and the Riser just had a bit of gain applied as they sounded great just the way they were. I aimed to get them reasonably up front and to keep the 3D effect they had built in.

The Clean Bells just a small boost int he LMF range, a small boost in the HMF range and wound the HF back a little. I just wanted them to pop a little, but also keep most of the noisy stuff. This was the core of the entire track so I wanted to make sure they were there, but not too much. I also put a little tape delay on them (I felt inspired).

The Gangstar choir just boosted a little in the mids. Not a lot. I decided not to force them out of the pocket that they were sitting in at the back.

The High Hat a little exciter on it and that was it really.

Hook1, Hook2 and Hook3 were bussed together, given a little bit of compression and then EQd with a 12db HPF to around 200Hz and a little dynamic on the 6-7 K area to just keep that zone under control.

Hook Add1 and Add2 had similar treatment and were panned Left and Right and mixed somewhat forward to add a little impact to the hook.

The Hook Bells had a little boost in the area around 700 Hz to help increase their presence in the mix. I wanted them to add a bit of impact to the hook area when they came in.

The flute just had a little minor boosting in the mids and then just panned a bit to the left.

I did a similar thing with the lead, but panned it to the right.

The kick had a little boost at 60hz and I took a bit out around 700 - compressed a little and then EQ’d a bit more out of the low mid region.

The Low Lead had an instance of Saturn to give a bit of mild saturation and then just pushed into the mix so it would work just under the Hook vocal.

The Open Hat almost got forgotten - I just put a gain plug in on it and balanced to taste.

The Piano had an exciter placed on it and then boosted a little in the low end. It had a small amount of compression placed on it as well.

The Pistol had a boost in the higher mid range and was panned to the left to give it a bit of impact and contrast.

The snare was just as it is - basically.

The Verse vocal had a FF C2 in vocal mode and then a similar EQ to the Hook.

To the vocals in general I sent them to an instance of PSA1000 Jnr to provide a little edge and I used the recently added Quantec Room Simulator for a bit of reverb. I used a fairly short reverb time and tried not to make the reverb too prominent. I kind of just wanted to make it sound like it was in a room.

The percussive pieces also received the PSA1000Jnr treatment for a little parallel noise.

The master bus just had a little compression and limiting placed on it.

I hope the result makes for an enjoyable listen.

Good luck to all.

Posted: **Sat Dec 14, 2024 19:42 CET**

Hi all!

I found this site, in my pursuit of my dream of being able to mix professionally at some point. I found it hard to find a proper site to practice real life scenarios, but I finally made it here

So thank you @Mellow Browne and Mix Challenge, and the community for the challenge, and the possibility to listen to so many different mixes

Listen to my mix here:
https://soundcloud.com/lars-huusom/trap ... al_sharing

Gear:
MacBook Pro M1 and Audio-technica ATH-M50x headphones.

Software:
Logic Pro X, native Logic plugins, Mastering The Mix Reference 2, Waves SSL Compressor.

"Mental" prepration:
Time to rest ears and sleep between reviews...

Tries:
- 1st: with many Waves plugins from the Gold bundle
- 2nd: native Logic Pro X plugins, and 2 third party. (was better in the end, since I believe it's better to get good with the basic stuff, and then advance for more advanced plugins.

Thoughts before and during project:
- Stay true to the original song
- Keep headroom and make the changes small
- When adding effects, make them subtle
- Don't overcompress the sound
- Keep @Mellow Browne in focus all time

View my process and actions during the mix:

!

Bonus Info

Process (short):

1. It took about 14 days, with daily listening sessions. Some short, others longer. But I know from making my own music, it's better to sleep on the track, and review the next day (especially with mixing).

2. I then organized the mix, to make it easy to navigate the stems

3. Finding the right volume levels, panning, EQ and effects afterwards. Making sure there was headroom in the mix.

4. Then compression on tracks, including sidechaining on the 808, to make it come through, and

5. Finally tricks on the master bus

5.a. The Reference 2 plugin was great throughout the project, to compare other trap songs to this project, and make sure they were in a comfortable level.

6. Lastly I "glued" the song together with the Waves SSL compressor.

Posted: **Sun Dec 15, 2024 01:01 CET**

A friendly reminder:
Including today, 07 days left to submit your mix.

So far, we have 29 entries (compared to 89 Mix Pack downloads -- now in standard ZIP form, that doesn't need special apps).
Please continue to pay attention to detail (see bundled TL;DR Rules.txt and/or post #003)

Posted: **Sun Dec 15, 2024 03:59 CET**

elements wrote: ↑
Sat Dec 14, 2024 12:07 CET
Hi everyone.

Thank you @Mellow Browne this was a fun one to mix. I hope I did the track justice.
Thank you @Mister Fox for your continued work.

This is the link to my mix:
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/g9g39cih ... 9i5e6&dl=0

What did I do?

Well, I didn’t mess with things much at all. My aim was to keep it reasonably raw sounding and what I wanted was to give it a little edge where I could and create contrast and depth mainly through levels.

I think it translates pretty well across different devices. I actually enjoyed listening to it in my phone headphones and also the car - so I thought that was a bit of a win.

My mixing/listening environment is a pair of Sennheiser HD300 Pros. Sometimes they sound right and sometimes they don’t. They are supposed to be a flat response which for headphone listening may not necessarily be the best way to go about things. Anyway, they are what they are. They appear to work better for mixing more electronic stuff than acoustic stuff…

I mainly used the Blindfold EQ for equaliser duties. So I don’t have a list of exact EQ frequencies to share with you all.

For the 808 I boosted the bottom end and took a little out of the LMF area added a little in the HMF put it through a bit of compression and then into an L2 limiter as form of clipping. I then put it through an FF ProQ3 with the EDM Kick 2 Sustain preset on it followed by an LA2A and then the Logic Sub Bass. I was just looking to see how big I could go. I’m not sure I completely nailed it, but it sounded great in the car.

The Ads and Ads delay just had a bit of Glow on them and I pushed a little of them into the vocal reverb I set up which I’ll include later.

The Bells Low had a Glow instance and they were boosted slightly around 200 and had a little bit of HMF taken out. I then put them through the Logic Stereo Spreader.

The Claps had an instance of FilterJam on them to shape them tonally a little.

FX and the Riser just had a bit of gain applied as they sounded great just the way they were. I aimed to get them reasonably up front and to keep the 3D effect they had built in.

The Clean Bells just a small boost int he LMF range, a small boost in the HMF range and wound the HF back a little. I just wanted them to pop a little, but also keep most of the noisy stuff. This was the core of the entire track so I wanted to make sure they were there, but not too much. I also put a little tape delay on them (I felt inspired).

The Gangstar choir just boosted a little in the mids. Not a lot. I decided not to force them out of the pocket that they were sitting in at the back.

The High Hat a little exciter on it and that was it really.

Hook1, Hook2 and Hook3 were bussed together, given a little bit of compression and then EQd with a 12db HPF to around 200Hz and a little dynamic on the 6-7 K area to just keep that zone under control.

Hook Add1 and Add2 had similar treatment and were panned Left and Right and mixed somewhat forward to add a little impact to the hook.

The Hook Bells had a little boost in the area around 700 Hz to help increase their presence in the mix. I wanted them to add a bit of impact to the hook area when they came in.

The flute just had a little minor boosting in the mids and then just panned a bit to the left.

I did a similar thing with the lead, but panned it to the right.

The kick had a little boost at 60hz and I took a bit out around 700 - compressed a little and then EQ’d a bit more out of the low mid region.

The Low Lead had an instance of Saturn to give a bit of mild saturation and then just pushed into the mix so it would work just under the Hook vocal.

The Open Hat almost got forgotten - I just put a gain plug in on it and balanced to taste.

The Piano had an exciter placed on it and then boosted a little in the low end. It had a small amount of compression placed on it as well.

The Pistol had a boost in the higher mid range and was panned to the left to give it a bit of impact and contrast.

The snare was just as it is - basically.

The Verse vocal had a FF C2 in vocal mode and then a similar EQ to the Hook.

To the vocals in general I sent them to an instance of PSA1000 Jnr to provide a little edge and I used the recently added Quantec Room Simulator for a bit of reverb. I used a fairly short reverb time and tried not to make the reverb too prominent. I kind of just wanted to make it sound like it was in a room.

The percussive pieces also received the PSA1000Jnr treatment for a little parallel noise.

The master bus just had a little compression and limiting placed on it.

I hope the result makes for an enjoyable listen.

Good luck to all.

As someone who is here to learn more about mixing and improve my own skillset and my ears; I just wanted to say thank you for taking the time to give more details as to what you did with your mix. I think its really useful to get information specifically about the frequencies you treated it was refreshing to see all that.

I appreciated your approach to this mix it was pretty opposite to my approach where I tried to control everything quite a bit. I also tried to keep the vocals really front and center which forced me to push the instrumental track quite a bit out of the way but it was interesting to hear your mix with everything turned up. Goodluck with your entry, thanks again!

Posted: **Sun Dec 15, 2024 09:25 CET**

Hello All,

As usual a big thanx to @Mister Fox fox and @Mellow Browne for making this MC101 posible!

Mix objective:
Nice fat low-end, punch when kick comes in with 808
more distant vibe on the hook vocals and up-front "spitting" with lead verse
Most synth like elements in the background and the piano works as a exclamation mark, being more up front

Busses:
I routed the tracks to: DRUMBUS, BASS BUS, KEYBUS, FX BUS, VOX BUS. Those are routed to the MIXBUS via MIX A, B, C and D. Yes, it's a Michael Brauer like template I use.
MIXBUS has a plugin version of SSL Fusion (transformer, vintage drive and violet eq) and a SSL bus compressor
All Busses have an SSL 4k E channel strip on em.

Tracks:
Most tracks have a pro Q with small adjustments, merely high passing and cutting some boxy stuff

Lead vocal 1176 followed by a LA-2A gives nice consistent up-front vocals with attack

Hook vocals I mixe L, C and R. The left end right channels have a SSL modulate plugin on it. They change in volume so you get a slight movement of the hook in the stereo field, bit of delay and reverb sets the hook vocals a bit back, contrasting the verse.

Reverb:
I used 3 reverbs
- Gen room (piano, flute and some 808)
- Lead vocal reverb
- Background vocal reverb

Listen to my take on this song: LowlandsWave mix

Posted: **Sun Dec 15, 2024 13:13 CET**

Hello guys, thank you very much for the opportunity to mix the song by Mellow Browne.
I'm an old rocker and don't listen to hip hop music at all, but I tried to mix the song out of pure curiosity.
So I focused on Hcomp and Summit Audio Grand Channel for playback and on uad 176 for vocals, together with Waves Deesser.
808 was compressed with UAD 176 pre fader and routed in GemMod post fader.
I used F6 on all track and busses as eq.
As effects I used Waves SuperTap, UAD Lexicon 224 and Waves GTR Stomp (panner, phaser and harmonizer) in various places.

Mix download:

https://workupload.com/file/WxPh8dxjvbv

(LUFS: -16.0, Peak: -1.4 dB)

Posted: **Sun Dec 15, 2024 14:30 CET**

hey guys here is my mix:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ugb6TI ... drive_link

I colored the melody instruments with some FX like chorus bit crush phaser saturation and applied some reverb to them to give them some life.
Than apllied general eq and compression, some transient shaping on kick clap 808 and also saturation on the 808.

On vocals I applied a bit of normal compression and multiband compression than applied some dinamic eq compression on the highs to tame the harsh frequencies and very little reverb.

Grouped drums, 808, instruments and vocals and applied a bit of bus compression and on the mix bus I just cutted of from 100 hz below on the sides, added a little bit of mid side saturation and a clipper to cut the transients tail.

Also added some delay on vocals on certain parts.

Cheers guys

Mix Challenge

MIX CHALLENGE - MC101 December 2024 - Submissions extended until 24-DEC-2024 23:59 UTC+1/CET

Re: MIX CHALLENGE - MC101 December 2024 - Submissions until 21-DEC-2024 23:59 UTC+1/CET

Re: MIX CHALLENGE - MC101 December 2024 - Submissions until 21-DEC-2024 23:59 UTC+1/CET

Re: MIX CHALLENGE - MC101 December 2024 - Submissions until 21-DEC-2024 23:59 UTC+1/CET

Re: MIX CHALLENGE - MC101 December 2024 - Submissions until 21-DEC-2024 23:59 UTC+1/CET t

Re: MIX CHALLENGE - MC101 December 2024 - Submissions until 21-DEC-2024 23:59 UTC+1/CET

MIX CHALLENGE - MC101 December 2024 - Submissions until 21-DEC-2024 23:59 UTC+1/CET

Re: MIX CHALLENGE - MC101 December 2024 - Submissions until 21-DEC-2024 23:59 UTC+1/CET t

Re: MIX CHALLENGE - MC101 December 2024 - Submissions until 21-DEC-2024 23:59 UTC+1/CET

Re: MIX CHALLENGE - MC101 December 2024 - Submissions until 21-DEC-2024 23:59 UTC+1/CET

Re: MIX CHALLENGE - MC101 December 2024 - Submissions until 21-DEC-2024 23:59 UTC+1/CET