March Mix Competition - Its Voting Time Again!!!!

[51m0n]

I honestly cant remember for sure, but I think the room was more evident in your original mix than in B, and I'm fairly sure the kit has had some help with samples - not saying you shouldnt do it, if thats required, just there is depth to the kick on that mix that I couldnt find for love nor money on the tracks

People should definitely go for the one they think is best overall, but its interesting that those appear to be fairly heavily limited, so even if people are choosing what seems best, it may be that for this style a more heavily limited sound is simply more compelling when its done 'right'.

That in and of itself is a reason to do all this kind of thing at all, its a great way to find what sort of thing makes people think a mix is 'right' for a genre, regardless of your own preferences. I think mine could score better, if it were mastered and had slightly less ambience on some of the guitars, so I've learnt something very useful for the future when we get heavier stuff. Its not a style I mix often, and hearing what people perceive as a great mix in a genre is really fascinating and educational for all of us.

But I tend to mix with a view to mastering being a later stage in the prcess and adding any limiting or heavy compressio on the 2 buss is an absolute nono if thats the case, it completely ties the mastering enhgineers hands and removes his ability to help a mix reach its final best state with the tools he has got specifically for that purpose.

I might do one and master it just to illustrate what I mean, its hard to explain the difference that stage makes, and how people doing that kind of faux mastering treatment on their 2buss here will win votes but its not really the mix thats being voted for, its a mastered (however cheaply) mix instead.

[cheddatom]

I have to admit I've been mixing with a limiter on the main output. I can always take it off if it's going somewhere else for mastering, but I feel it gives me a clearer picture of where it'll be as an "end product".

I guess the best way to approach this is to get the mix sounding as good as you can before you start doing any master compression at all, but this method does have me working a lot quicker. More experience required!

[51m0n]

Well I mix into a compressor (very very light compression, less than 2dB at the very loudest, and with an attack long enough to let transients through cleanly) because I like the sense of glue, but that isnt what makes mixes sound like these do

In fact that compression isnt a mastering type of thing at all, unlike a limiter approach (whiuch is all about catching the transients int he first place).

[Twigman]

I confess also to mixing through a compressor on the Master buss...[psp Vintage Warmer to be precise] I always do...old habits die hard.


is the voting still open?
I'd like to make some specific comments about things I did and things I found difficult but don't wish to influence the voting.

[51m0n]

Voting closes on Wednesday

Like I said mixing into a compressor is fine as far as I'm concerned, if you arent nailing it for level. Hitting a limiter for level is not.

Its a tough call but if the waveform is looking really 'squared off' in places then there is a good cance its whacking hard into something!

Of course you can just as easily apply a limiter to a group and dop the same thing to differnt sections of the mix. The line between mixing for level and mastering for level is ever more smudged!

[Twigman]

None of these look brick wall limited to me when i look at the waveforms.....

[51m0n]

Have another look at B in close up (ie click on the link to B within the page)

Now that may not be brickwall limiting, but either the 2 buss is hitting some heavy compression or various groups are. Its very well done, but i'm pretty sure (very sure) its on there.

Directly compare that to mix E, lots more peaks and troughs within sections suggest less limiting/heavy compression oneither groups or 2 buss.

Or mix D again the little peaks are there, and there is a volume swell visible in D and E where the Sapere Aude vocal comes in that doesnt show up at all in Mix B.

E is loud though, D is quiet (the quietest?), B is also loud. Its not brickwall limiting set to 0dB, its either heavy compression or limiting set to a lower output level on either 2buss or different groups.

None of this is intended to be derogatory to B, its just analysis to undeerstand what we are listening to...

[Twigman]

I think it is intersting that Mix H 'looks' the loudest when all the waveforms are shown together but isn't, I do see what you say about mixB now.

[51m0n]

Cant tell exactly what Soundcloud does as part of its processing, there is definitely some normalisation type of thing going on or at least something that changes the level somewhat (Mix D got louder on Soundcloud IIRC), plus preping for streaming (whatever conversion that goes through) and the waveform output.

I dont know what area of the spectrum it measures for that waveform, possibly its not full range though, Mix H is pretty heavy in the mids to my ear , and the snare ring is huge, that could be part of what is making it look so loud, plus the quiet bits have their instrumentation much louder than Mix B. Its difficult to work out just from the Soundcloud pics thats for sure!

Its all supposition and listening though, looking forward to hearing the answers from Mr Mix B and everyone else when the votes are done though

[Skol303]

I always use a compressor on the bus to glue everything together - usually pushing -2db or -4db maximum (depending on how much 'pump' I'm after).

This month I used a lot of heavy parallel compression to really slam the meatier parts of the track. I was also playing with a new gate/limiter plug in... And in hindsight the result was a mild balls-up! But I managed to avoid squishing the living daylights out of it. Just.

PS: I'd personally be happy to reintroduce the original idea of standardizing these mixes using K-metering. I think it'd need a mini- tutorial to clarify (and simplify) what's involved - and would probably also need 'policing' to make sure everyone sticks to it. But in the long run I think it'd be worth the effort. Anyway, food for thought...

[OldG]

Voted. Hard to choose I found - I don't think soundcloud has been very kind to them... It seems the busier the material - the more the processing kicks the life outta things. I know it's the same for everyone - but all the same, hard to predict what the final version will end up like... Any way we can render/host our own mp3's to be in control of the end sound?

[quote name='Skol303' timestamp='1364944245' post='2033262']

I'd personally be happy to reintroduce the original idea of standardizing these mixes using K-metering. I think it'd need a mini- tutorial to clarify (and simplify) what's involved - and would probably also need 'policing' to make sure everyone sticks to it. But in the long run I think it'd be worth the effort. Anyway, food for thought...
[/quote]


+1, makes sense...

[51m0n]

[quote name='OldG' timestamp='1364972689' post='2033377']
Voted. Hard to choose I found - I don't think soundcloud has been very kind to them... It seems the busier the material - the more the processing kicks the life outta things. I know it's the same for everyone - but all the same, hard to predict what the final version will end up like... Any way we can render/host our own mp3's to be in control of the end sound?




+1, makes sense...
[/quote]

You can download the original tracks off the soundcloud pages, what you download is what I uploaded, which wasa selection of 44.1KHz 16bit wavs...

Thats the same as whatever other option you attempt really I think.

[51m0n]

[quote name='Skol303' timestamp='1364944245' post='2033262']
PS: I'd personally be happy to reintroduce the original idea of standardizing these mixes using K-metering. I think it'd need a mini- tutorial to clarify (and simplify) what's involved - and would probably also need 'policing' to make sure everyone sticks to it. But in the long run I think it'd be worth the effort. Anyway, food for thought...
[/quote]

Well I mixed mine to K-14 (which is an totally enormous giveaway!).

The reason I didnt make that a stipulation is because I spent a month explaining what K-metering was, how I wanted us to use it, and why. For the whole month. Some people got very confused about it and I think a little intimidated.

All I wanted was a way of ensuring that people mixed to a certain level using a known set of meters with a very very strict algorithm behind them controlling their bandwidth, ballistics and sensitivity. Using essentially the same meters to measure the average volume (that are designed to measure average volume) is pretty much the best way to do that IME.

Edited April 3, 2013 by 51m0n

[51m0n]

Right thats it, times up, poll closed, all votes are in...

[b]The results stand as follows:-[/b][list=1]
[*][b]Sapere Aude - mix A (1 votes [7.14%])[/b]
[*][b]Sapere Aude - mix B (5 votes [35.71%])[/b]
[*][b]Sapere Aude - mix C (0 votes [0.00%])[/b]
[*][b]Sapere Aude - mix D (3 votes [21.43%])[/b]
[*][b]Sapere Aude - mix E (4 votes [28.57%])[/b]
[*][b]Sapere Aude - mix F (0 votes [0.00%])[/b]
[*][b]Sapere Aude - mix G (0 votes [0.00%])[/b]
[*][b]Sapere Aude - mix H (1 votes [7.14%])[/b]
[/list]

Mix B has won, top job there!

And the 'big reveal' is this (unless of course I am very much mistaken!):-

Mix A was skol303
[b]Mix B was moonbass[/b] (well done)
Mix C was lurksalot
Mix D was me
Mix E was vasdim
Mix F was Butlerk02
Mix G was oldG
Mix H was twigman
Mix I was nobody, there wasnt a mix I, what am I thinking???

Moonbass, in your own time (but soon!) - full disclosure on the mix please I'm particularly interested in the drum sounds, were samples used to beef them up? And any group or 2buss compression going on personally, great mix, love especially the way you glued all the guitar parts together fo rthe ending - huge sound, top job!

Edited April 3, 2013 by 51m0n

[Skol303]

Well done Moonbass! Also congrats to Vasdim and Si. Good work.

I think I was lucky to get a single vote ! On reflection I EQ'd too much from the low end of the guitars to make way for the monstrous bass I'd created, which left the guitars sounding harsh and brittle (although I did manage to completely cut away about 50% of the guitar stems without losing too much 'oomph' - I just didn't think t needed all those layers, but then I didn't get many votes so that could have been a big mistake!). I also made a botch job of the drums - the snare in particular - but didn't have time to go back and fix it.

But never mind! I REALLY enjoyed working on this track - very different to my usual stuff - and look forward to hear how the rest of y'all approached it.

Now bring on April's...

[cheddatom]

Hah, I can't remember if I voted for D or E now! I think it was E

I've really enjoyed this, it was great to hear so many different takes on our song. Hopefully I'll be able to take part in the next few mix competitions to show what I can do!

[Twigman]

Mix H - which bizarrely seemed to have the most plays - perhaps as it was top of the list - I do hope not that many folk were put off by it thus not venturing to the better executed efforts further doen the page.

I went for a wall of sound from the guitars which is probably why the mix sounds very mid heavy and muddy.

One thing I did which I don't think others did was edit out all the breathing in the vocal...i thought that sounded horrible...but then perhaps the vocal sounds a little sterile as a result?

I found the acoustic guitar in the bit after the intro to be really difficult to control. Without it the section sounded empty, with it it sounded too busy and had a tendancy to overload the meters.

Yes, I did have a 'huge snare ring' I bussed all snares together and then whacked quite a lot of compression on it....this was in an effort to get the snare to cut through the mush of guitars - i bussed the guitars and considered for a while sidechaining the guitars to the snare but that put too much pump into the guitars.....I found it really tricky to get the drums anywhere but 'at the back' of the mix.




I am really looking forward to the next one whatever that might be.....I am afraid I won't be able to provide any stems as our record company are somewhat traditional when it comes to copyright issues and to be honest my home demos are not the greatest performances in the world.....

[Skol303]

[quote name='Twigman' timestamp='1365064962' post='2034650']One thing I did which I don't think others did was edit out all the breathing in the vocal...i thought that sounded horrible...[/quote]

Me too. I cut out the breathing during the intro of the first section of the first verse, then re-introduced it as the track got heavier to add some emphasis. "All these little details will be lost in time, like tears in rain..."

[quote name='Twigman' timestamp='1365064962' post='2034650']I found the acoustic guitar in the bit after the intro to be really difficult to control[/quote]
I just found it wasn't needed and cut it completely after the intro. I don't often find that acoustic and heavy electric guitars sit well together, but that's just me (and what the hell do I know!).

[Skol303]

[quote name='Twigman' timestamp='1365064962' post='2034650']One thing I did which I don't think others did was edit out all the breathing in the vocal...i thought that sounded horrible...[/quote]

Me too. I cut out the breathing during the intro of the first section of the first verse, then re-introduced it as the track got heavier to add some emphasis. "All these little details will be lost in time, like tears in rain..."

[quote name='Twigman' timestamp='1365064962' post='2034650']I found the acoustic guitar in the bit after the intro to be really difficult to control[/quote]
I just found it wasn't needed and cut it completely after the intro. I don't often find that acoustic and heavy electric guitars sit well together, but that's just me (and what the hell do I know!).

[cheddatom]

In my mix the acoustic is automated up and down, but in the heavier sections it's hardly there at all

[51m0n]

Given time I automate vocals, I never ever cut out the breathing altogether, it kills the feel for me, however if you compress the vocal to add punch and 'spit' as it were, you bring the level of the breathing right up, and the only way to really precisely control it is to automate pulling the input level into the compressor down for every breath. A track like this it would take about 20 minutes to do one vocal channel really well (you actually have to listen to every bit of every phrase in the song repeatedly to get every breath right).

I left the acoustic in, but the eq had devastating amounts of cut in it. I am again really pleased with the ambience I achieved in the opening, and I love the vocal part, beautiful voice to work with - having said that knowing that I wouldnt have time for any automation I built the mother of all vocal chains, something like three compressors with different threshold levels (and everthing else) and a de-esser and an eq and saturation plugins, just to keep it under control through the entire track. I would much prefer to do this kind of thing with automation, but the final result wasnt too bad really.

I struggled a bit with the bass this time, it seemed to lack low end and be trying to cover the entire frequency range all the time, with a rather nasty fizz to it. Didnt produce anything like as nice a final tone as for the previous months track IMO, but I did manage to keep a lid on it in the outro, tough one to mix that!

I think I had a bit too much ambience on the extra guitar layers which mushed them out a touch too much in the latter stages of the track which I think lost punch as a result, the snare was ducking the guitars and the kick was ducking the bass to help the drums poke through.

Careful eqing and gating controlled the snare ring, it was definitely centred around a couple of frequencies (different ones on each snare) and so relatively controllable I thought.

I really really want to know where Moonbass found the low end on his kick drum, total mystery to me, it wasnt on the original track (that I could find) so either there was additional samples, or there was some use of a bass generator tool of some kind (pitch shifter, waves bass plugin thingy, whatever) to give it that lovely 'heft' to use a GM term

I too thoroughly enjoyed the song, and am still humming it, I really like the vocal part, its excellent stuff, no idea what he's banging on about though

[Twigman]

[quote name='51m0n' timestamp='1365069722' post='2034754']
Given time I automate vocals, I never ever cut out the breathing altogether, it kills the feel for me, however if you compress the vocal to add punch and 'spit' as it were, you bring the level of the breathing right up, and the only way to really precisely control it is to automate pulling the input level into the compressor down for every breath. A track like this it would take about 20 minutes to do one vocal channel really well (you actually have to listen to every bit of every phrase in the song repeatedly to get every breath right). [/quote]

That's what I did.....pulled the level down for each and every breath and used a slow curve envelope on the automation to bring each breath back to level...



i also edited out that clang on the guitar after the Sapere Aude vocal bit where the strummed acoustic and 'normal' vocal refrain come back in.....It just sounded like it was timed poorly and superfluous...I heard it was still there in many of the mixes.

[quote name='51m0n' timestamp='1365069722' post='2034754']
I left the acoustic in, but the eq had devastating amounts of cut in it. [/quote]

Yes I eq'd out a lot of the bottom end of the acoustic particularly in the appeggiated parts - I suspect the player's thumb was a little heavy on the E string....


[quote name='51m0n' timestamp='1365069722' post='2034754']
the snare was ducking the guitars[/quote]

As I said above I tried this but found that I got too much 'pump' on the guitars so abandoned the idea....






I loved doing this - I can't wait to get cracking on next month's ....

[moonbass]

Well, thanks all for this great honour. Do I get a trophy? Seriously enjoyed working on this, and I’m still learning loads by listening to other mixes and hearing how everyone achieved them. I liked the blind voting, but I missed the updates on how people were getting on, and hearing partially finished mixes as a result; so I hope there’s some good discussion on the processes now.

Rather embarrassingly I didn’t actually get my final mix in as I forgot to tell Si I’d changed it. (You can listen hear if you’re interested: [url="https://soundcloud.com/makossaband/sapere-aude"]https://soundcloud.com/makossaband/sapere-aude[/url]
The main difference is that I found the ‘Sapere Aude’ vocal line (no it wasn’t a conscious decision to leave it out, just stupidity!) But there’s also a bit of panning and eq tweaking.)

[b]General:[/b] I use Logic Pro on an iMac with stock plug-ins and my old NAD Hifi as monitoring (I’m saving for some AE22’s!) I thought the song rocked, and was quite quirky with its multiple sections, and I wanted to highlight this. So generally I tried to make the drums lead the way and make the linking sections jump out with panning and eq.

[b]Drums:[/b] I approach talking about these with some trepidation, as I suspect I was a little naughty: Firstly I did some major tone sculpting on the kick trying to get some low end and for the click to cut through. There really wasn’t any low end though, so I also added a gated sine wave at 48Hz for the sub, and (to my shame) the warehouse kit kick from Logic. (In my defence this really only added a bit of low-mids back in.) All three then went to a separate bus to which I added a tape emulator and an adaptive limiter. Snare and toms were eq’d and compressed (fairly heavily) and some distortion applied to the top mic. Toms were also gated and panned hard left and right. The main size of the drums are from heavily compressed room mics, which sounded amazing! (15db reduction in peaks with 10:1 ratio – pretty much a limiter!)

[b]Geetars:[/b] Almost nothing except a little contrasting eq on the right and left so they sounded wider, automation on volume, and cutting reverb for effect in some sections. I pretty much just left the acoustic running at the same level through the whole track.

[b]Bass:[/b] Really struggled with this to be honest, and thought nearly everyone else did a better job than me. It always seemed to sound separate from the rest of the track, so I just used reverb and echo to try and get it to blend in.

[b]Vocals:[/b] Didn’t need to do much, but I don’t really like the reverb I ended up using as it left me with quite harsh sibilants (I’m yet to find a Logic reverb that I like for vocals!)

[b]Mix bus:[/b] Hmm, don’t want to open a big kettle of worms here. Personally I’m with Dave Pensado in that in a digital environment going past zero bad things happen, but up to then all’s fair in love and war! I use a tape emulator, then eq to get a little top end lift, light compression 1-2db in loudest sections, then limiter to clip the top 0.5-1db off the loudest snare hits, then the adaptive limiter to bring up the quieter sections and add beef to the louder sections. I know this is controversial, but the main argument against the loudness war is lack of dynamic range; when I look at the waveform of my track, there is still a heck of a lot more range than most commercial releases in this genre, and I certainly wouldn’t use such techniques on a jazz recording. But more than happy to tone this down if that’s what’s decided.

Again, great track and lots to get your teeth into. Would love to hear how others tackled the bass sound, and also there were some great guitars, especially on vasdim’s that I’d love to hear about. Looking forward to next month!

[51m0n]

Nah mate nothing naughty at all. I hadnt bothered to bang on about k-metering and mixing and yada yada on this one. If we reintroduce K-metering all that will happen is your level will be the same as everyone elses, but you would get slight less transient through. I think it wasnt your mix buss so much as the fx on the groups, your level goes up and down between different sections, but each section sits pretty much in one place level wise, the crescendos appear to have gone. Its a really unusual pattern, and I guess you are compressing various key components in those sections fairly heavily, or the groups they are in, or you are doing a scary job riding gains

Gated sine wave on the kick was completely inspired, nice one: I've done this before myself, but not for years and years, in fact I did it with a hardware synth and gate and an aux send to the sidechain all with real metal boxes, it was that long ago and Ihad totally forgotten about that trick - thanks!

I never ever put any delay or reverb on bass, it just disappears for me when I do that and I'm listening in a room. But your kick has so much authority in the mix (missing from mine!) that it completely hides the fact that your bass is a bit 'over there'. It wasnt a great bass sound to work on I agree, but it seemed to have all the right ideas in there, some growl, some od, some punch, just not enough depth for me. I wonder how new the strings were?

As for reverbs you simply cannot beat a great convolution reverb IMO. Its taken me a long time to feel really happy with ambiences and reverbs from ITB mixes I've done, and I've gone round a ridiculously circuitous route to get to where I am now, a couple of really great reverbs and some well set up delays and you can get such a lush and believe space. Nothing like the reverbs of yore at all. And I never ever leave a reverb without filtering it at the least to low and high pass the gash out of it, otherwise you cant get as much in there wihtout it sounding smashy and harsh IME, and reverb to me is the great 'smootherator' .

It is a damned fine effort, I take my hat off to you. Your prize is to choose the stems for next month. Lets hope its Country and Western eh!

[cheddatom]

it's interesting to hear there's no low end on the kick. I'll have to have another listen tonight, but I thought my kick sound was allright, and I've not used anything to artificially create low end.