MIX CHALLENGE - MC070 October 2020 - Winners announced

[pabloAT]

Dear all,
Please find below my mix for challenge MC070:

[Dropbox link to mix MC070]

DAW = Cubase 10.0.60
Integrated LUFS = -16.4
True Peak = -4.2 dB
exported WAV file: 48kHz, 24bit

Mix Preparation
Preliminary raw balance: cleaning-up, setting levels, panning/stereo spreading, check/invert phase, HPF where needed.
Quite a lot of automation for the final steps of the mix.
Drums
Drumkit mixed on the top of the OH. Gate on OH to minimize bleeding and API-250 compressor with small ratio and fast attack. Grouped room tracks and applied extreme type-76 compression.
Reverb for size for snare. Parallel type-76 compression and reverb for blend and size on the drumkit. A touch of distortion on the drumkit for body and extra blending.
Bass
LA2A compression on all tracks. I’ve used the DI for body, the AKG to apply the chorus FX and the SM57 with a bit of distortion.
Guitars
LA3A compression on track groups and mostly Pultec-type EQ. I didn’t use all the provided tracks. Delay and reverb for size, blending and space. Shimmering FX for more sparkling on some parts of the song. A lot of automation to emphasize the growing vibe of the song.
LV
76-type and LA2A sequential compression. Pultec-type EQ and a bit of pitch-shifting to reshape a bit the tonality. “Manual” de-esing and a touch of distortion. Reverbing for space.
BV
Parallel LA2A compression. Pultec-type EQ and a bit of pitch-shifting to reshape a bit the tonality. Reverb for blending and space.
Master Buss
Smooth SSL-type compressor, Tape machine and Pultec-type EQing. On the top of that, a send channel with size reverb.

All the best to the participants,
Best wishes,
Pablo

[d8bflup]

Hi All

The song was mixed on my Sountracs CM4400 using mostly outboard...

Drums Kick tracks, Snare tracks and overheads were aligned using Sound Radix Auto align

The Kick Front was only used for some low end, and only some light EQ was used on the desk. The AKG Kick however was heavely processed using (in this order):
The Desk EQ (moderately)
Drawmer gate
SPL Transient Designer
Lindell Pultec style EQ
dbx 510 subharmonic synth

Both snare channels were EQed on the desk and then pun in a group, This group was compressed using a dbx 560A compressor. A SPX 990 provided a plate reverd (via AUX)

For the Toms I only used the top mics. Both channels were EQed on the desk and then sent to a SPL transient designer and a Aphex Aural Exciter, where the Transient designer accented the attack and the Aural Exciter delivered the low end thanks to the "Big Bottom". I first sent both channels to the same plate as the snare, but in the end A TC Electronic M3000 provided some warmer reverb.

All the other drum channels were only EQed on the desk. The room channels are very low in the mix.

Bass DI was reamped using Pesonus Ampire (I use Studio One) to get a less wooly sound. Some distortion was also added in Ampire. As per request of the bass player, a TC Electronic 1210 (plugin) provided some chorus. This was blended with the SM57 and compressed using a dbx 560A. The D112 track was not used.

Intro/VRS/Dirty guitars are reamped using Ampire. I'm really changing the sound of the song, the song provider said he was curious what direction the song could take... I felt the distorted sounds I created gave the song a different (for me better) vibe.

The other guitars are a blend of the provided tracks.

The Intro and ARP guitars are sent to the TC Electronic 1210 (spatial expander preset)

Vocal Harmonies are balanced in the DAW and come into the desk as a stereo pair. Some light EQ and liberal amounts of Reverb and a sprinkle of Chorus

Main Vocal is compressed using the 76-KT, some light EQ on the desk. A little bit of delay (TC Electronic D-Two on the 2290 preset). A lot of reverb (TC Electronic DVR250, using an AUX send from the desk)

A Focusrite Mixmaster lives on my master, in this mix however, the multiband compressor was bypassed and only a subtle high shelf was added.

I would really like to do some more work on this mix (mainly do some automation). However,since my paying job wil keep me quite busy between now and the end of the deadline, this will have to be my final submission.

Nonetheless, I hope you like it.

MC070__Cheap_Flight__Waterfall_d8bflup


regards,

Philippe

[Dodgingrain]

Hey, here's my submission.
https://1drv.ms/u/s!AqpB-RLndYJrj9xO0C2 ... w?e=WlvgU5

Thanks for letting us work on the song, its well recorded and a great piece, really dig it. Also thanks for the references, it tuned me on to some good stuff I have not heard before. I went in a little bit of a different direction and made the vocals more prominent, hopefully everyone is ok with where this went.

This one was an experiment for me. Normally I use softube console emulations but this time instead I used Neutron heavily so I could get a chance to learn how the system works, so a few of my notes are in regards to that specifically. I found that neutron does a decent job at some stuff but it still requires a lot of tweaking all over the place, it definitely doesn't mix for you contrary to what Izotope claims. Neutron completely fell down dealing with panning tracks on the visual mixer. I didn't spend time tracking down the issue but it seems with cubase the visual mixer can't pan both mono and stereo tracks, one of the track types doesn't work. For reverb I used Neoverb as well, it sounds good but doesn't seem to have much character, I think I need more time with it. I think one of the goofiest things about neutron is the mothership lets you have multiple eq's, compressors, etc but still only one side chain source so often I ended up with multiple motherships on a single track. I know this is probably a VST/DAW limitation but still its odd and the workflow isn't quite there yet.

Drums:
I went with a more upfront snare but volume automated it down in a few sections. Typical heavy use of eq, compression, and transient shapers. I ended up using the room tracks for the reverb on the drums but added additional reverb on the snare. It was a bit challenging to figure out the high end with a vocal that was more muted than normal. I also did a little bit of ssl style glue compression on the drum bus. The room carried a lot of the work on the drums which isn't how I normally mix.

Bass:
For the bass I used each track for a different purpose. The DI track is high passed up at 280hz but before that there is distortion added to make it grungy. The bass DI is mixed fairly low. The SM57 track was used for the low end with bx_subsynth to add a decent amount of low end harmonics. The AKG was distorted and handled the bass low mids along with being routed to a chorus. Bass bus has a little bit of side chain compression triggered by the kicks.

Guitars:
I didn't use the DI tracks, there was enough here to work with already. Most of the work on the guitars was panning and eq. The low end of the guitars are being ducked by the bass. Interestingly on the guitars I did very little at the individual track level besides panning and level, and most of the work was done on the 7 guitar busses.

Vocals:
Lots of work here, by far this is where the majority of the mix work was. While the performance was nice and the singers voice is pleasant and well recorded, the vocal tracks needed quite a bit of work. The vocal track editing was decent, better than I usually get but the singer was off pitch a lot, drifted off note a lot, and needed quite a bit of tweaking to get her sounding good. Most of the work was done in melodyne (thank you ara2!) along with using nectar 3+ as a final push on the pitches. I also had to do some work in melodyne to control a few spots where the singer temporarily looses the note or drifts substantially off pitch at the end up a sustained note. Beyond the fixes there is heavy use of reverb and delay to push her vocals back. I also used a lot less of my high end pop vocal track template. I stayed a lot lighter on add track compression as well. Towards the end I'm hitting the delay pretty heavily to create size and automating the vocals to keep them from getting to loud.

BGV's:
Not to much interesting here besides the usual dynamics control and eq and panning.

Pre-Master Bus:
Standard stuff here I do on every mix. Some tape emulation with cross talk, a little bit of ssl glue compression and the rest is metering. I'm finding total balance control 2 handy for a quick check when my ears are getting tired or I'm loosing perspective to make sure everything is going in the right direction and I'm not way off on something obvious.

[VasDim]

Hi all,
this is my attempt to mix:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/xzagetrp9u5z4 ... m.wav?dl=0

For all track are used:
- Waves Q10;
- Waves C4;
- Db ProComp.

AUX Effect;
- Waves TrueVerb;
- Waves SuperTap;

Good luck to all.
VasDim

[JonasLasse]

Hey there,

this is a a great tune.

My tools were phase allignement and phase shift. Also MSED for MS Decoding. After that is used some EQ/Compression/Reverb by FabFilter. I also needed a lot of distorion tools by Soundtoys. The Vocals had a vocalrider an a bandcompression for "air" . Thats it!

Bass has chorus


WAV
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MNmSc0 ... sp=sharing

Mp3
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Q5UL7k ... sp=sharing

Edit: I'm not quiet sure if the level is okay.

J

[dnlptn]

Hi Everyone, Here is my submission, thanks for letting us mix it. Here’s some of what I did.

Vocals:
Comp, EQ, Delay and Reverb
Drums:
Bit of Parallel Saturation (UAD Raw)
Kick:
Comp, EQ, Small amount of Devil Loc
Snare:
Comp, EQ, Decapitator&Vertigo VSM3
Bass:
C1 Chorus, La-2a
LittleAltarBoy to add more low-end
Harmony:
For 27 and 28, I used PanMan so it moves a little left and right.
Ocean Way for ambience
Guitars:
Mostly kept simple with EQ and Reverb. No DIs used.
Bit of delay on the intro guitars
Some Little Altar Boy on tracks to blend in an extra octave for the choruses.
All guitars going through a UAD Studer A800
Master Bus
Fabfilter L2 just to bring up the level

Submission (MC070):
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lz-dhb ... sp=sharing

Thanks, good luck all!

[doobop]

Hey everybody!
I've tried to give some kind of atmosphere for this one.
For the guitars I've kept only the Riviera mics, and I only exclude the floor mic from the Drums.
The procedure was pretty straight forward for everything else, lots of dynamics and EQ and two Reverb algorithms.

Mix: https://www.dropbox.com/s/n384shgskl78z ... p.wav?dl=0

Screenshot: https://www.dropbox.com/s/41jfzgvo8mzjd ... M.png?dl=0


Regards!

[mixtur]

I´ve listened to some of the others and decided to make something slightly different.
The links didn´t work initially but I just updated them.

Anyway, I didn´t mess too much with the tracks (liked the raw sound) , and mainly used compression, eq and saturation for effects.
There´s a lot of sidechaining going on with the drums to clean up snare/kick from the OH/Room tracks though.
Some of the guitars were also re-amped and blended with the original room mics.
The vocals have some volume automation but I decided to leave most of the rest like the band (presumably) indented it to be played.
The master bus has some light compression for glue and a limiter just to keep things under -1 true peak.

Some plugins used:

• PA BlackBox, opticom, BX_Control and Fuchs amps
  Softube Tape, Tsar reverb and Fix doubler
  Waves RenAx, RenVox and vocalrider
  PSP FetPressor
  IK Multimedia Black 76, bus compressor and stealth limiter
  Soundtoys decapitator and little plate
  Kilohearts multipass with band passed delay snap-in
  Various Cubase stock plugins (mostly envelope shaping and eq)

Anyway, here´s the final mix https://www.dropbox.com/s/yijrixoocwxjq ... r.mp3?dl=0
MP3 version (louder): https://www.dropbox.com/s/yijrixoocwxjq ... r.mp3?dl=0

*UPDATED* Exported to wav 24/44 max -16lufs -1dbfs as per instructions

[bond158]

Hi everyone!

This is the Google link for my mix and screenshots of my session https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing

First of all, it was a great song and I enjoyed mixing it!
As I started listening to the materials, I found that the challenge of this song is how to blend the tracks using several miking techniques. My focus was on listening to each track separately, selecting the nicest frequency range that each mic can provide, and using EQ to mix the tracks together so that the song sounds full. I have put the kick as the basis of the song and the bass above it. Next is vocals and guitar on mid range and high-mid range respectively, with brass percussion on the most top. For the snare, I've used the reference you've given. I've boosted the low frequencies on it to make it bigger and added the distortion effect to make it more aggressive.

As for my respect for rock songs, I did not add any excessive special fx. The only thing I did was putting the phone fx and delay on the vocals to make it dirtier and darker. Hope you enjoy it. Any feedback is appreciated.

Thank you
Bond

[tusca]

Hi all!

Listening a huge variety of tastes in mixing techniques. Great productions so far! I'm very happy for this challenge and this forum! Keep growing!

Now, it's my turn, so here I go!

In my case, it was very difficult to keep things in the same direction as references tracks, I got in love with both Holy Motors and Warpaint stuff. Mixed in Ableton Live, veru quiet in terms of exploring, trying to not going too wild, but also enhancing the power and deepness of the song.

The recording stuff from Cheap Flights is great! Congrats to @Los_ady and the audio engineers! It took me some extra time to select the audio takes for my mix.

Here's the mix: https://drive.google.com/file/d/19nZGzi ... sp=sharing

Please enjoy and thanks!

PD: I'll try to update this post with some technical info about which processors were used in the mix.