MIX CHALLENGE - MC100 October 2024 - Mix Round 1 in evaluation

[paglia]

Hi everyone.

I haven't been here for a long time. I tried doing this mix on headphones and iPhone, no speakers. The goal is to bring out a clean and 3d sound but definitely lost some raw sound energy.

Kick: Ssl E channel + Sub enhancer
Snare: Distortion + Ssl E channel
Toms: Ssl Channel
Overheads: Ssl E channel
Room: 1176 + Eq

Bass: Amp emulator + Ssl E channel

Guitar: Ssl E channel

Vocal: Pro q3+LA2A

Master: Clipper fo control the lufs



https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/p0hwb7cn ... ihwkt&dl=0

[LCM!]

Nice song! It was fun to mix. I'm a big fan of Heavy Trash, a side project of Jon Spencer, and I tried to emulate their raw, gritty sound with lots of distortion, tape delays, and 'cavernous' reverbs.

I much dig your approach.
And the outcome, as well.

[sthauge]

Hi all

Just a quick tips to everybody before you post your link to your mix in the forum:

Over and over again we see that participants posting links to their work that for some reason do not function. When you have copied the link to your song, open an Incognito window in your browser and past you link into it. Can you now listen to your song and download it? If yes, then every thing is fine, if not, correct whatever needed and try again.

Good luck to all.

[drunk-ffx]

Hm, maybe I am wrong, but the samples seem to be not even aligned to each other? Why not providing a base project instead, e.g. as a daw project file?

[Onni]

Hey!

Haven't mixed in a good while so I decided to join this forum to get some practise. I need to start working on sound more and saw this challenge as a great place to start again. I recently switched from mac (logic) to pc and now im learning Reaper. Also just got a bunch of free plugins for this project to try them out. Mostly from analog obsession. I also got to say I recently moved to a new home so im not sure at all when it comes to my listening, but Im trying my best to figure it out as I go! Thanks for reading and I hope to get some constructive feedback. Will give some feedback to others looking for it as well

TLDR: Focused on the energy of the song. I didnt keep it clean at all and tried a bunch of free plugins for the first time

► Show Spoiler

GENERAL
- EQ on almost every track (ozone 11 eq)
- Almost every track also has the britchannel form analog obsession, some have the britpressor as well (doing small boosts/cuts here and there)
- Main goal was to have good energy in the song

DRUMS
"Artist doesnt like snare/drum sound (transients)"
- Analog style eq and compression on the kick and snare (frankcs, pultec)
- Kick has a pretty big boost in the lows and around 7-8k giving it the snap and punch, also saturation to soften the transients a bit (magma lil tube), i also gated it
- Saturation on the snare (distox and Fetdrive, also a separate distorted snare verb) to soften the transients
- Nothing crazy with the overheads, just some eq and compression
- Drum room has a tiny tiny bit of reverb added for the guitars to be in the same "room" and to add more dimension. The room also has some dynamic eq to control the cymbals around 4k and lows are cut so that they wont get in the way of the close mics etc.
- The room also has a pulsar smasher paraller compression but not in paraller mode. Pretty much distroying the sound on purpose. Added a bit of tube saturation too. I had a lot of fun with this! The overall distorted sound might be too much for some but i thought it fit the song and the vibe. Would be definitely something that should be discussed with the artists to see how much is too much
- A couple compressors on the drum bus and a bit of mid/side eq. (reacomp, pulsar smasher in paraller, MJUCjr and ozone 11 eq on mid/side)

BASS
"bass is dull and lifeless and doesnt cut through"
- I duplicated the bass track and made a "dirty track" with distortion and more emphasis on the high mids (to make it cut through as hoped) using the growler plugin. I cut the lows from this track.
- I kept a "clean track" of the bass too for the low frequencies. Its bit more compressed and only has a little bit of saturation.
- Bass bus has some pultec eq for more body and definition
- The low frequencies also have a sidechain compression that pumps with the kick a tiny bit with reacomp

GUITARS
"Ideally make all guitars work"
Used all the guitar tracks except the DI
- guitar tracks i panned wider in the chorus, verses are pretty narrow (energy... again)
- Solo guitar has a boost to make it cut through the mix a bit better its also routed to snare verb to help cut through more
- Guitar bus has a bit of mid/side eq to make room in the middle for bass and vocals
- Guitar bus has very little compression and some pultec again to give more bite
- Guitars are sent to drum room too

SYNTH
"Make thicker"
- I didnt quite understand what was meant by making the synth thicker... so i didnt If anything I made it thinner to give more space for bass and guitars. But can be made "thicker" (more low mids?) for sure if there is another round where i get to change my mix after feedback?
- Only has some eq and a panning automation
- I think it worked best as an effect to create movement in the choruses

VOCALS
- All vocals have a deesser, LALA compressor, saturation (distox, saturation knob, magma lil tube) I know it seems like a lot of saturation but they are all in paraller giving a hint of different types of saturation.
- Choir vocals have high frequencies turned down a bit to push them back in the mix
- Vocal bus has a tiny amount of chorus, pultec again for presence and dynamic eq calming the "now a bit too harsh" reverb tail on the higher frequencies. Dynamic eq also tackling some low mids.

MIXBUS
- Digital EQ cutting everything under 20hz, bit of mid/side to keep low bass in mid channel only and very tiny amount of pultec boosting the lows and highs
- TDR Nova dynamic EQ controlling low and high mids
- TDR Kotelnikov compressor with a very transparent 1db reduction
- I also gave the Airwindows totape7 a try here. It sounds quite nice![/float][/float]

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

[komprezzor]

a joy to mix

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1u87vhW ... drive_link

first things first, you guys play very well together, like brothers
while mixing my version of your song i found myself compressing in certain ways that allowed me to hyper compress the main bus
in a more commercial multiband shaping process[im addicted to that radio sound thing which can skew my approach but constantly thinking I can mix to the finish line]. the recordings being already processed with cool fx, I decided to play with it on more academic
approach and just totally baked the mix with gates that triggered the attack and release on the multiband

my attempt though, could be characterized as juvenile but I felt very good and in agreeance with the decision to heavenly compress
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1D4HqXi ... drive_link

[scottfitz]

Hi there rock fans. Thanks to JeroenZuiderwijk for your awesome track. If there ever was a genre for me it would be this one, a perfect track to mark the 100th Mix Challenge! Also thanks to Mister Fox for your continued generosity with your time and for your quality.

Here’s the link for my entry. Again I wanted to try to force myself to mix quicker so I’m calling it quits here at a point I’m pretty happy with. While I know it could be improved, I feel it’s diminishing returns territory.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1W8lDFu ... sp=sharing

Specific notes on my approach and individual moves
————————————————————————————

Bass

I felt that the track in it’s unmixed form was quite muddy so I cut a lot of low mids from the bass - up to 6dBs around 300Hz. I also felt it was short on that 900Hz growl/attack area so I boosted this right up. I also gave the bass plenty of tape saturation.

Drums

I thought the snare transients were huge and the kick transients virtually non-existent so I worked to even the score here. I used the plugin “Knock” on that kick with quite a bit of punch selected and some saturation. After this I did some huge cuts to the kick in that same muddy area. I was also finding the kick was too strong in the 170Hz area and not enough in it’s fundamental, so I did about a 4dB boost to 60Hz area. There was no click to the kick either, so I used about 8dB boost to the 5k+ area.

The snare transients I reduced using SplitEQ, taking them down by about 4dB. I also added a small room reverb to the snare which I felt was a bit choked by this gating.

The overheads I did some side chained multiband compression so that when the snare hits with all it’s extra cymbal sounds, those cymbals get reduced a bit. This was never going to be perfect but I gave it a go.

The drum bus I made sure to use a fairly fast release time due to the high tempo, although it was still just only a shade under 100ms in the end.

Guitars

These were very tricky partly because there were so many tracks to consider. I don’t really have time to go through everything. The main thing was that I wanted the guitars to be big and to not be afraid to mask the vox a little. I added plenty of saturation to those main rhythm guitars and used automation to make sure that in the break they fully occupied the space.

Vox

I experimented with various EQ moves but in the end opted for a little boost around 200Hz and a boost to the air range and felt this was enough. Using the Brauerize method, the saturation comes for many different compressors in parallel.

Mixbus

I used the API2500 with attack 10ms, release 50ms, ratio 1.5:1. I also used the Hitsville EQ with a 1dB boost to the top (12.5kHz) and bottom (50Hz) bands.


Cheers all and feedback is very welcome.

[Mister Fox]

Hm, maybe I am wrong, but the samples seem to be not even aligned to each other? Why not providing a base project instead, e.g. as a daw project file?

I really don't understand what you are saying here.

The project is properly "consolidated" (all tracks start at 1.1.1.000 - aka the very first beat) and end at the same time as well. There is no tag written into the WAV file that have custom BPM (so if your DAW "auto sets" a BPM, turn that off). There is nothing to adjust.



In fact, this is how multi-tracks are usually distributed. And each Mix(ing) Challenge runs through extensive pre-setup checks to prevent possible issue.

Creating "DAW specific project files" (or "base project" as you say) would mean extra work, would need extra access to pretty much every DAW out there to create the project files in the first place, and then the default settings where the projects were created on might mess up your specific DAW settings. So this is never going to happen.

Got any further concerns, please use the General Gossip thread or reach out on Discord.

Just a quick tips to everybody before you post your link to your mix in the forum:

Over and over again we see that participants posting links to their work that for some reason do not function. When you have copied the link to your song, open an Incognito window in your browser and past you link into it. Can you now listen to your song and download it? If yes, then every thing is fine, if not, correct whatever needed and try again.

Good luck to all.

Honestly, this will be the last time this particular topic will be brought up...

The Rule Book has been very clear on this, so was the Mix Pack bundled "TL;DR Rules.txt". From this point forward, any request or information "your link does not work, please make it available" other than from the Song Provider or me (the host), will be deleted. And I will give no more reminders at this point (I already did that in the introduction posts).

Looks like this is the only way that participants will learn from this experience.




Including today, 10 days left for Mix Round 1.

[Gertius]

Thanks to Mister Fox for organising the challenge and to Jeroen for providing the song to mix!
Love to mix some nice rock music!

My mix can be found here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/18BO_8q ... sp=sharing

My approach was to emulate an SSL console for most of the processing, using Reaper as a DAW.
For this I used the SSL 4KE plugin for preamp saturation and dynamics, and a convolution based SSL Eq (IR pack from XTreme Samples) on most all of the tracks. Kick and Bass had an additional Neve 73 LowShelf EQ (Nebula AlexB). Vocals had a CLA-2A as a compressor instead of the SSL 4KE.
Bus processing consisted of a hardware Kahayan Epsilon Limited 4000 summing mixer through an SSL hardware bus compressor, custom made of SSL cards from the console. With bus compression I aimed for -4dB of Gain reduction in the loud parts.

FX consisted of some PCM70 IR for TiledRoom and Lexicon 480 IR for LargeChamber reverbs, a ReaDelay and LittleMicroshift mostly for vocals and the freeware SPX Nevermore for chorus (a bit on Bass and Synth). The Guitar Solo had a Reaper PingPong Delay for some extra space/movement.

For Kick and Snare ambience I used the Reaper noise generator plugin (pink/white), sidechain-gated by the drum by an SSL 4KE plugin, EQ´d and feeding the reverbs. My understanding from reading the rules was that using noise generators is ok, hope that this is the case.

My general approach with EQing is to trim unnecessary lowend/mud while preserving the impact. This mostly results in the low mids being trimmed a bit. Then I like to add top end and high mids to taste for the instrument to poke through. For drums and bass and even guitars I used ample LF boosts to add weight while being careful not to mud it up. OH, Room, Synth and Vocals had the LF cut as not to interfere with the impact of the drums, bass and guitars.

I used gates on the drums to reduce noise inbetween and also in some cases to shape the attack. Mostly on snare I tried all the different options of the SSL gate, to make the attack more "pointy" or more "refined" so to speak. I dialed in SSL compression to taste on most of the sources, just to round off the peaks a bit. The SSL preamp was used sparingly, not for distortion but for slight saturation. Except on snare where I went a little bit higher with the preamp to slightly cut off peaks and make it sit a bit nicer in the mix.

Vocals had minimal treatment apart from the CLA-2A, just a bit of LF rolloff with the filter and LowShelf and a bit of Reverb, Delay and LittleMicroshift. I wish that there were a version without printed room FX, as that kind of limited the options for placement of the vocals in the mix.

Finally, I used a handful of volume automation to adapt for volume in different sections on bass, snare and snare reverb.

That´s all I can think of, hope you enjoy the mix!

[UHLS]

https://workupload.com/file/rLRV6MxhSrX
truepk_ -1.7
lufs-i -16.3

Hello, thanks for the opportunity to mix the song.
In itself, the mixing went without any problems, only the sorting of guitar tracks was not so easy.
But first I loaded all tracks into the DAW and made a very quiet mix (around -12dB). The "fake bass" was of course not audible, and so the bass track was the first thing I worked on vigorously. I took Izotope Trash, copied the track and gave the bass a decent distortion.
The rest I mixed in the usual way: compressor, EQ and saturation.
Only the drums are additionally processed with BOZ Transgressor 3.
Effects:
Guitars only got a flanger in places, slap delay and plate.
Main Vocal is also only partly processed with Izotope Trash.