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

[Onni]

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.

I like your mix! Its clean and I feel like you have done just enough to make all the tracks work. Nothing crazy, in a good way! One thing I would prefer is more low end on the kick, I think the bass sounds great. The boosts on the vocals also work great! good job

[PauPeu]

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.

Thank you @LCM! , Heavy Trash really rock, it's a shame i never seen them live, cheers!

[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.

I like your mix! Its clean and I feel like you have done just enough to make all the tracks work. Nothing crazy, in a good way! One thing I would prefer is more low end on the kick, I think the bass sounds great. The boosts on the vocals also work great! good job

Thanks v much. I feel like mixing is very much about trying to do 'just enough' so hopefully I have done it right for once. For example, you have these compressors here there and everywhere and it's so easy to do too much and also so easy to be afraid to do too much and end up doing too little. At one point I had 10dB of GR on an 1176 on the chorus vox and I was thinking "yeah this is great". Came back the next day and went "urrgggh what was I thinking".

[MadMav]

Hi Jeroen and fellow mixers,

I had a good time mixing this track. I wanted to keep it raw and energetic. I didn’t time correct anything. I just focused on the band bandit out in a room.

I felt the that to give this track an aggressive energy, I would have to pull it from the drums. I used transient designers to control the attack of the drums and I used the sustain knob on the transient designer to bring out the room in the overheads, and room mics. I also used a stabilizer on the overheads to make them feel more aggressive. I added distortion to the bass as well, to give it grit and audited.

Below is my mix:

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/vl6tqg4b ... 1l8wv&dl=0

Thank you,

MadMav

[Dodgingrain]

My mix is here: https://1drv.ms/u/s!AqpB-RLndYJrmtxLiNm ... g?e=ug4wkR

I have no idea how to mix a wall of guitars so we'll see what you think. Biggest challenge I had with this is the limited dynamics and trying to deal with the guitars.

Drums: eq and compression, a little bit of saturation and transient designer on the snare. A little bit of exciter when going into the chorus to create more energy.
Bass: Used a WT800 amp along with decapacitator to try and improve the tone as much as I could. I experimented with a brighter bass but ended up not going with that. Drum and bass are bussed together to add compression.
Synth: eq to cut off the low end, little radiator to saturate it, and some stereo widening.
Guitars: Added a marshall amp simulator to the clean 1 gtr, otherwise lots of eq and some compression. Otherwise, it came down to panning, volume automation, and eq automation when going into the chorus.
Vocals: Not much here other than some eq and light compression.

[floodo]

Hello everyone, thanks to the artists for giving me the opportunity to mix them!

First I did my static mix, I don't know if it happened to all of you but it took me a long time to get a panning in the guitars that works for me, once I did my static mix I decided to use as a reference a Grunge anthem from the 90s and I bought In Bloom, unfortunately after I bought it I saw that it was a remastered version and there were some differences with the version I heard on cassette, one of these differences was that it had a huge stereo image, gigantic, but I liked it and I applied it.

First challenge, recovering the tail of the snare: I equalized a lot, increasing the aggressive zone that I felt was missing, with a trancient designer I practically flattened it completely, then I gave it back the punch with an api 2500 and a good reverb plate to stretch the tail a little more.

Kick: with the kshmr I left the sub low and low at the same level, I also raised the click area to cut a little better, also saturation and some compression, I gave it some punch with an api 2500 and distosione a little with a clipper, and here comes something I never did and that everyone says is wrong, in Bloom curiously the kick has sides, even in the sub low, not much but it has, so I increased the image with the wider 20% and I did at the same level as the reference.

Toms: I only equalized it with the mequalizer, why did I choose that one? Because of its saturation knob, I think I used this eq in almost all the tracks.

Aerials: I wanted the aerials to sound very aggressive, as if the drummer was really bending them because of how hard he was hitting them (remember Dave hitting the cymbals so hard), so I did several things to achieve this. First I clipped them at 450hz and boosted them at 2K, then I increased the saturation with the tape bus until the highs were almost completely lost, which I then restored with 2 pultec, one boosting at 8K and the other boosting at 3K, and I removed the hars with bx refinement,

Room: I wanted the room to be high to give life to the drums without adding bass or treble, so I dropped 7db with a low shelf from 300 and about 9db with a hi shelf from 2400.
To all this I sent it to 3 parallel processes, 2 different types of compression and distortion

Bass: I wanted the bass to have energy and personality, I remember when I played in a band, when my adrenaline was pumping I would play so loud that the strings would hit the frets of the bass and this gentleman is an excited bass player, so through distortion and EQ and compression in parallel I lifted the sound of the bass frets, unfortunately I also brought a series of unwanted electrical noises to the fore, but I decided to leave them.

Guitars: I think guitarists are one of the pickiest people on the planet, they spend hours or even days looking for the perfect settings on their amps and pedals to achieve the sound they had in mind, and I respect that, the guitars except for the solo, were not equalized, I just did a little trimming to give space to the snare and vocals and in the general bus of the guitars I gave them a little grain with an emulation of the focusrite and took out some harshness with refinement.

Vocals: here again I encountered as many inconveniences, I found myself with partially processed voices and that gave me little or no margin to work them, especially for the reverb that I had printed, well, ask me they told me that it was not against the rules and I removed completely those reverbs, use silk vocal to stabilize them and compress them a little, from there I applied parallel compression but multiband, I mean I did 3 sends, one compressing the lows, another one the mids and another one the high end, also parallel distortion, in the effects I used a very short reverb to place them in a space, another reverb of about 4 seconds with a high enough pre delay to amalgamate them to the mix, I also used a corus something very used in the voice by Kurt, in the verses an automated 1/16 delay so that in the chorus it goes to 1/4.

Mix bus: 2 fabfilter pro C compressors, one doing glue and the other compressing 1db the Sides to give more stereo feeling, then using BX_Solo I started to analyze the In Bloom Sides and with TR quad image I left the stereo image to the millimeter with in Bloom, finally the hyper classic pultec trick, Here I noticed that resonance that I mentioned in another post, I looked for it, it drove me crazy, I found it in the voices, in the bass, in the snare, in the aeros, finally I decided to put a notch in the mix bus and it improved a lot but at times I still seem to hear that demonic hiss.

Automations: the truth is that there were so many that I don't remember them all, but there are automations in the vocal effects, volume automations in some of the guitars, also panning automations in guitars and vocals, the drum room is automated to sound louder in the chorus and God knows where else I put automations.

What was my initial intention before I started mixing.... To get a mix that doesn't sound flat and sounds huge on the sides just like my reference and I hope I have achieved that goal.
Again, I salute the Band members and hope you like the work I did!

My Mix---> https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ie68Th ... dubsn/view

[jw_]

Last comment, I just saw that they had provided the voices without the reverb -.-” I didn't realize until it was too late to use them.

Hey @floodo, could you kindly direct me to them? Cannot seem to find them, neither in the Multitracks nor in any comments by @JeroenZuiderwijk or @Mister Fox. I kept on wishing to have dry tracks as well (had no real luck with any de-verb shennanigans), so they would be immensely helpful.

[elements]

Hey guys,
One little note to anybody who cares about how they edit tracks.
When you cut things to edit noise out or whatever it’s a good idea to make the cut at the zero crossing point of the waveform. It makes for really nasty edges in the sound of things when the waveform is cut anywhere else but at the zero crossing.
Just had to share that thought. It’s something I’ve learnt over the years messing with samplers and it does make a difference to the resulting edit.

When I refer to the zero crossing point. Visualise a sine wave as it goes from positive to negative polarity - that point where it is changing between the two is the point I’m talking about. The y = 0 bit in the equation. You know that part of the graph where the waveform crosses the horizontal line?

Anyway, all cool. Just thought I’d share that in case anybody finds themselves editing things and they don’t know why there is a sudden click at the start or end of a sample or sound.

[floodo]

Last comment, I just saw that they had provided the voices without the reverb -.-” I didn't realize until it was too late to use them.

Hey @floodo, could you kindly direct me to them? Cannot seem to find them, neither in the Multitracks nor in any comments by @JeroenZuiderwijk or @Mister Fox. I kept on wishing to have dry tracks as well (had no real luck with any de-verb shennanigans), so they would be immensely helpful.

I apologize, it was my mistake, I re-entered the edited vocals to the original zip without realizing it, and that's where my confusion came from, I edit the publication to avoid more confusion, anyway I would not mind sharing the vocals without the reverb if that is allowed.

[Nysa]

Hi! Here is link to my mix : https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-toKa4 ... sp=sharing

Drums: EQ, comp and little limiting on drum bus, parallel comp for punch and snare reverb.
Bass: Eq, comp and saturation
GTR: Eq, little compression, and saturation
Synth: Stereo widening and reverb
Vox: Eq, comp, saturation, parallel compression, reverb and delay
Mix Bus: Comp API-2500, Saturn 2, Virtual Tape Machines, Pro Q3


Plugins:

EQ: Pro Q3FabFilter
Comp: C2 FabFilter
Limiter: L2 FabFilter
GTR Comp: CLA 3A
Parallel Comp: CLA 76, CLA 2A
Reverb: Pro R2 FabFilter
Delay: EchoBoy
Saturation: Saturn 2 FabFilter, Virtual Tape Machines