MIX CHALLENGE - MC092 June 2023 - Winners announced

[Mister Fox]

A friendly reminder:
Including today, 14 days left to submit your mix (technically: 13 days and 3 hours)


Kind warning for all participants (especially our new ones):
Before you submit your entry, please do read again what was written in both the "TL;DR Rules" and "Words by the Song Provider"/"Words by the Staff" TXT files bundled with the multi-tracks.

Your entry is final.
There will be no further reminders given.

[BenjiRage]

That was a fun mix, many thanks to the band for providing this track. I've never mixed Bluegrass before so I wasn't really sure what to aim for, it's a totally different approach to the usual rock and pop I do. I tried to keep it natural sounding, not over compress, but enhance the sound of the band as a whole and the environment in which they're playing by way of some subtle room reverb.

As usual I mixed in-the-box in Pro Tools. Overall, apart from the bass, I didn't find there were many issues from the spill, it was largely complimentary between instruments and I didn't find it caused any phase problems.

Percussion / Cajon:
• All provided elements used, 300Hz high-pass on the overheads
• Added extra low frequency on the stomp with MH Thump and parallel compression (but was careful not to overdo it, "it's not a rock track" I kept having to tell myself!)
• EQ and transient shaping on the 160 and 414 mics to take out some of the lows and try to bring out the woody tap sound
• The snare wire track was heavily compressed but kept low in the mix, just to add that bit of wire buzz
• Valhalla room reverb ("Dense Room" mode, 1s decay) added on all tracks except stomp
• All perc tracks bussed together and compressed with Waves Kramer PIE on the shortest decay time to help bring out the transients but maintain the room effect

Vox:
• 100Hz high-pass on all tracks
• Magnus' lead track compressed quite heavily with PSP Vintage Warmer with the speed control right down to give a bit of fuzz and distortion. Also gated and EQ'd with MH Channel Strip (my new favourite toy! )
• Angel and Marianne's main tracks panned 60L and 60R respectively, compressed with Massey CT5 with a quick release for good diction, gated and EQ'd with MH Channel Strip again
• Magnus BVs panned centre and 55R, Angel BVs panned 50L / 50R, Marianne BVs panned 100L / 100R for a thick and wide vocal soundstage
• Added a slight bit of non-destructive vocal tuning via Graillon 2 on Magnus' BV tracks just to stabilise some of the notes
• Just a little bit of Reverb and Delay added via sends on all vocal tracks - Valhalla Vintage Verb (Palace, 1.4s decay) and AIR Multi-Delay (Although fluid, I'd estimated and set the average tempo at 215BPM, which allowed the use of musical delay times - quarter note, eighth note etc)

String instruments:
• Lead banjo mics panned central, 200Hz high-pass, Brauner mic compressed in parallel, high-boost shelving EQ added to each
• Second "Solo" banjo panned over to the left, same EQ
• Guitar mic tracks treated as one a stereo track, panned over to the left with some light compression, high-pass and high-boost EQ
• Duplicated the guitar tracks but this time panned 100L/100R, added a 1kHz high-pass, 10db of high-boost and a valve exciter in order to bring out the pick rake and really get the "chick-a-chick" rhythm coming out but keep it evenly spread in the stereo field
• Fiddle - only used the Royer mics from each of the parts with a little EQ and compression, I didn't feel the Brauner's were needed. Tried blending them in but I felt it sounded better with just the one mic for each.
• Fiddle B panned 35R, Fiddle A that comes in towards the climax I've used Panstation to move it between 65L and 65R in the stereo field so it "flows around the room" if you will
• All string instrument tracks sent to an additional instance of Valhalla Room reverb to enhance the virtual room sound a little more.

Accordion:
• Used BX Stereomaker to give it a wider spread, 150Hz high-pass, and a whopping 14dB of high-boost from 8kHz up. It also works really nicely that you get an added bit of high frequency spill from the Cajon on this track too and with the stereomaker it really increases the virtual room effect.

Bass:
• Only used the U47 mic, as the Royer (presumably being a figure 8 mic picking up front and rear) had tons of spill that meant it was much harder to shape as desired.
• 3kHz low-pass, lots of Vintage Warmer compression with a relatively slow speed to get the mid-range harmonic distortion going
• Waves MaxxBass used to further help bring out the sub-harmonics so the instrument is not totally lost on smaller speakers
• Panned dead centre

Master:
• Shadow Hills Class A in Mid/Side mode compressing the side element only and amplifying it slightly in comparison to the mid - again to really try and increase the stereo spread and make it as wide and spacious as possible (without going overboard)
• SIR StandardClip used just to shave off the odd Cajon hit that was reaching near 0 dBTP
• Automated the master level so there's a 1dB boost when the band comes in after the Banjo intro to help give more impact
• Loudness measured with TC LM2N at -16.2 LUFS / -1.1 dBTP

Here's the mix: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hSSzij ... sp=sharing

I've really enjoyed listening to all the mixes so far, but a tip for those still to submit - go easy on the master compression!

All the best

Ben

[FixInTheMix]

Glad to be back

I used this month´s challenge as an opportunity to try mixing with an emphasis on maximizing loudness and I´m pretty happy with the results.
I also edited some takes to further polish the final result (pitch correction and time adjustments) although the raw files were already great.

Here are the basics:

accordion

2K broadband boost + high shelf 10K reduction
parallel compression
30% flanger

Bass

Only ended up using U47 mic
heavy eq notch at 2K region + 300hz band cut
upwards compression
subtle saturation

DRUMS/cajun

Besides standard eq and compression I used an emphasis eq boost for the miked cajun tracks at the fundamental frequency to compress heavily that peak, then heavy cut at the 400hz-500hz region and boost at 4K


BANJO

Used Braun mic as the main source panned hard right but added the AKG mic as a parallel signal panned only 50% to the right, heavily saturated and bandpassed.

GUITAR

Did something very similar to the banjo, using AKG as a main source and the U87 track as parallel, heavily compressed, band passed and with chorus effect

VIOLIN

Again, the same process: one track as main the other as parallel processing, high passed, and with a chorus

VOCALS

For the main vocal I used compression, dynamic eq, and saturation also used parallel processing, created a copy of the track, and used bandpass, heavy distortion, and chorus.

Reverb

I ended up using 6 different reverbs, all of them as aux returns. I don´t know why but when I tried to re-use them for different tracks it didn´t feel right.

The first one was for the main vocals, which used a convolution vocal plate reverb and then added sidechain compression to "duck" the reverb with the dry signal

The next one was for the background vocals that had lyrics, I used a combination of slapback delay and short but dense reverb sound. I used that one for the whole song until the very end with the final "Lord" repetitions, for that section I switched the reverb send to a longer convolution reverb with a gate and a different delay with different settings.

For the sustained background vocals, I used a denser reverb with a frequency shifter before it to add extra width.

I used a different reverb for the overheads, slightly shorter in length

Finally, I summed all of the instrument tracks into a bus and fed that to a medium reverb to keep the consistency of recording everything in the same room but with a little bit bigger and brighter sound.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/18CkquA ... drive_link

[MFTWC]

Hello there.

Everything was mixed in Cubase 12.

I started with sending all of the percussion tracks to a bus, and then I mixed them together,
then I took the bass tracks and mixed them to the percussion bus. The bass bus got SC by a
dynamic EQ in the lower frequencies to the Stompbox DI track.

The main vocal track got eq'ed by the maag EQ4 plugin, some klanghelm mjuc compression, a room reverb on a send and finally some deessing with the lindell 902.
Vox Angel and Vox Marianne got panned left and right, then I used a room fx to place them in a space similar to the room fx used on the main vocal.
All the Bvox tracks got panned to get a surrounding sound.

The banjo tracks got bussed together, I panned the different mic's to get some stereo sound that would make it easier to find a place in the mix.

The fiddle tracks got the same treatment as the banjo tracks, added a bit of a exciter plugin to brighten it up.

All the percussion tracks and the bass tracks got bussed together and then compressed by a mbc in the lower section.

Finally a bit of bus compression on the master to control it more.



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

[SDB_12]

https://www.dropbox.com/s/f2rjqwyzfw8b0 ... 2.wav?dl=0

Super cool song! Thanks for letting us all have some fun with it!

Since this immediately hit me as a "fun and exciting" song that's what I went for in the mix. I love how it builds into chaos at the end, so I wanted to slowly grow the song right along with the natural build of everything.

I mixed this on my 56 channel analog console, running some outboard inserts on a few channels, and the mixbus was a Smart C1LA compressor, into a pair of Audioscape Pultec EQP-A's. I have a full system setup to monitor all channels coming back in on Pro Tools through my mixbus, and all stems are then printed back in with one pass for perfect recall later, should I need to make any tweaks.

Most EQ was done on the board. I have a Crest X-VCA and the EQ is amazing on it. It reminds me of an SSL style eq a bit...very flexible, clean, but powerful. It aslo has a variable highpass filter on each channel up to 400hz, so I took advantage of that to help in cleaning up mud/low end.

Other than board EQ, here are a few inserts I used:

-Kick- Heritage Audio 1081 EQ- Lindell 77x compressor (mix knob around 40%)
-Snare- Heritage Audio 1073 EQ- Lindell 77x compressor (mix knob around 40%)
-Banjo- GAP LA3A clones (after board EQ)
-Bass- Heritage Audio 1073 EQ- Neve 542- Audioscape V-Comp
-Main Fiddle- Retro DWii compression after board EQ
-2 main BV's- The male was run through the bass chain, the female through the LV chain and printed.
-Lead Vocal- SSL 611 EQ- Neve 542- Audioscape 1176 (Bluestripe)

I also had a drum parallel setup that had my AML 52f50 compressors, going into CAPI LC25 eq's. I sent the kick, snare and cajons here I believe.

All effects were outboard as well, I used a Strymon El Cap delay pedal, a KT Dim D box, my Abbey Road Chamber reverb pedals, a T.C. Electronics D-Two Delay box, and I think that was it for this song. Just to give a bit of depth and excitement to mainly the vocals, but a touch of banjo and fiddle went through a few things too.

I think that's about it. I hope you like the mix, I had a blast playing with it!

[alanvaldez]

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1J0muz3 ... sp=sharing

Hi Hope all are having fun mixing

This mix was done using Cubase 12 Pro

Vocals:
first of all there were routed to a stereo track
Butch Vic Vocals all fx and eq
aphex vintage aural exiter
vocal rider
kHs Dynamics
and NLS
and routed to a vocal reverb channel (all vocals were routed to this fx track) using the Acon Digital Verberate 2

other vocals
Omni Channel
Mcompressor stereo unlinked
and waves center

Choir
all routed to a chorus group
ssl EV2
GW Tonecentric
Magma BB Tubes
Apex Vintage aural exiter
waves center to eliminate some vocal stuff that can mask the main vocal

Guitars
used the SpectralLayers Pro 9 to eliminate bleeding from the drums
grouped both tracks paned and used the Ssl EV2

Banjos
Cla Mixhub lite
Abey Road saturator

intro banjo
Ssl Ev2 routed to an fx track with the Melda Production MDoubleTracker

Violin 1
Ssl Ev2
MautodynamicEQ
Rcomp
De esser

Violin 2
Magma channel strip

Accordion
Ssl Ev2
Abbey Road saturator
Neutron 4 sculptor
routed to an fx track with the Melda Production MDoubleTrackerMB

Bass
Both tracks were treated with the MAutoAlign
DIFIX by United Plugins
Bass rider
Rbass

Cajon
Neutron 4 and sidechained with the kick to eliminate some low freq masking

Snare
MDrumStrip

Kick
MDrumStrip

OH
Acon DIgital declip
Cla Drums
Neutron Sculptor

all drums were routed to a drum master track
MDrumstrip

all instruments were sent to a master instrument reverb with different levels using the Acon Digital Verberate 2

Master track
NLS (Mike)
Ssl Comp
Acon Digital Limiter

exported audio was imported to Wavelab
added the Gw Tonecentric checked levels and done!

[alavault]

Hello!
Mix: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mmsLQp ... sp=sharing

The idea was to "recreate" the exact representation of the video regarding side-to-side placement and depth. It didn't turn out well.

Percussions:

• Kick: only kept the triggered Kick. EQ, Comp, Clipping. Into parallel compression
• Snare + cajon : EQ + comp. Short and medium reverb on the grouped signals, all into parallel compression.
• Cymbals: EQ (a bit boxy sounding), Comp. Into short reverb.

Bass:

• Severely low-passed to remove the bleed, ditched the 121.
• Multed the 47 into a dry and a low-passed (~200Hz) version for subs only.
• EQ, Comp, Saturation. Into a flanger and the parallel drum compression

Guitars and Banjo:

• Guitars slightly panned outwards. Lowpass for less bleeding. EQ, Comp, saturation, into a short verb and guitar parallel EQ/Widener;
• Banjo tracks (live) are the same but at different frequencies.
• Banjo overdubs are processed like the live ones to avoid sonic discrepancy.

Violin and Accordion:

• EQ, Comp, Saturation
• Into the same parallel processors as the guitar/banjo

Lead Vox:

• Classic 1176 style compression. Added quite a lot of air (15k+)
• Parallel EQ for level
• Plate with pre-delay, slap back, and 1/4 delay as FX

BG Vox:

• Same as the lead ones, with less emphasis on air.
• Sent to a long hall reverb to push it further.

Master Bus:

• Tessla into Flavour MTC. For saturation, widening, and brightness.
• Clipper into a limiter for safety purposes.

[DavidB]

Greetings everyone,

I'm delighted to have found this forum and take part in my first mix challenge. Mixing this song was an intriguing experience for me. While I typically focus on electronic music, I welcomed the opportunity to delve into a different genre - It was actually a great fun to mix such alive track. In the past, I've produced my own music and mixed other tracks sparingly. However, after a decade-long hiatus from music, I decided to return and explore mix engineering. This challenge was a great way to checkmy skills and I'm eagerly awaiting any feedback.

The song had a lively and musical essence that I aimed to preserve. I particularly loved the groove and hope I managed to maintain and accentuate it.

The mix was done in Ableton live.

In terms of the individual tracks, I used one send with an Arturia Reverb LX-24 hall for the vocals, instruments, and hi-hats to control their spatial placement.
Mostly used Sonible EQ + Compressor to treat sound and dynamics on particular instruments.

Lead Vocals Buss:
- Maag EQ4 - Mainly to add air
- Low cut at 160Hz + adding a bit of mid
- Waves RVOX compression
- Waves Sibilance deessing
- HendyAmps Oven to add some saturation
- Second vocals panned left/right to spread in space
- A bit of reverb

Backing Vocals Buss:
- EQ added mids, low cut + air
- Sonible Smartcomp2
- Spread panning
- Full Reverb

Banjo:
- Low / Hi cuts, add few db at 1.1kHz
- Panning to side to place in the mix
- Reverb 30%

Guitar
- Low cut + EQ tilt to add highs
- Panning to other side than Banjo:)
- Reverb 30%

Fiddle
- Bettermaker EQ Added couple dBs at 350Hz & 5K
- Tracks Deesser to treat harshness
- Panning to the side
- Reverb 50%

Accordion
- Low cut at 170Hz + HiCut at 5kHz
- Panning kinda opposite to the fiddle
- Reverb 50%

Upright Bass
- Low cut at 40Hz, bump at 110Hz, Hi cut at 1.4kHz
- Maag EQ4 to add sub + 40Hz bump
- HendyAmps Oven to add grit

Drum Buss
- Bettermaker EQ - pultec boost/attenuation lows 50Hz
- Glue compressor

Cajun - routed through drum buss
- Arturia Trident Pre / EQ, add some saturation and air/body
- Oven to add saturation

Snare - routed through drum buss
- Maag EQ4 - to add body and air

Hihats / Cymbal routed through drum buss
- Cut below 150Hz
- Maag EQ4 to add air
- Slight Glue compressor
- Reverb to 60%

Kick - routed through drum buss
- Brainworx bx_boom to add body to kick
- Arturia EQ Sitral - boost at 20Hz and 1.5kHz to add thump:)

Master
Oven to add small overall saturation
Shadow Hills Mastering Compressor to add some slight compression
Knif Soma to final eq levelling

I hope you enjoy the mix and I'm looking forward to hearing your thoughts.

URL: https://1drv.ms/u/s!AtpzKIYuNN-3k4caa4D ... g?e=kcHO0e

All best to everyone
David

[Alex Van mixland]

Hello,
Here is my mix:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XGQiaZ ... sp=sharing

Drums: I try too add more rythm to song then was in reference track.
Bass: I just used comrepssor: 4:1 retio about 7db
Vocals: I compressed and add some high end.
Instruments: I try to balance overall.

It was challage to mix this song, when i was changing level of instruments was changing also level of drums and bass, because in instruments was also recorded drums..

Cheers!

[LowlandsWave]

Hello,

What a joy to work on! Nice energetic song. Goal was to catch the energy and expand on that.

I used my template, sort of Brauerize thing.

Drums routed to busses:
KICK -> SSL 4K B channelstrip, R Bass and JST clip: send to Paralel compression bus
SNARE -> 1167, SSL 4K B channelstrip, Transient Shaper, JST Clip: Send to paralel compression bus
OVERHEADS -> ozone vintage limiter in to SSL 4K B channelstrip

Bass:
Used both tracks
Royer I only used 250 - 3500 Hz
U47 split into two tracks
U47_Low -> highpass and lowpass filters 80Hz and 200Hz -> LA-3A compressor -> Soothe
U47_High -> Highpass filter at 200
3 tracks blended to taste and routed to a Bus: another LA-3A compressor, SSL 4K B channelstrip, Sooth, SSL Subgen, R Bass, Sidechained compressor to Kick

Fiddle and Accordion just an SSL 4K B channelstrip

Acoustic guitars panned hard left and right: SSL 4K B channelstrip into 1167, Soothe, side chained compressor to the Kick

Banjo all routed to a bus with SSL 4K B Channelstrip and SSL Buscompressor

Lead vocals, compressed with LA 2A then send to bus with SSL 4K B channelstrip and soothe for deessing. Bus is send to 5 compressors, blended to taste.
Magnus' vocal got some extra grit using decapitator

Background vocals send to bus with SSL 4K B Channelstrip.

Vocals got reverb: Hitsville Chambers

All busses routed to the mixbus:
highpass filter
Pultec, small 100 Hz and 8kHz boost
SSL Bus compressor
Drammer S73, de rumble and neutral settings
Oxford Inflator
Ozone 10 vintage limiter -> analog setting


Here is my mix: LowlandsWave Mix