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MIX CHALLENGE - MC089 December 2022 - Winners announced

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jake sg
Posts: 9
Joined: Tue Sep 07, 2021 18:48 CEST

Re: MIX CHALLENGE - MC089 December 2022 - Submissions until 21-12-2022 23:59 UTC+1/CET

#41

Post by jake sg »

Hi Sir,

Below is my mixing and thank you for organise and give us the opportunity to join this event.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nT6hnp ... sp=sharing

Firstly, gain staging. Then eq the drum, bass, guitar and then vocal individually. Later unsolo all the tracks and listen. And eq and panning on each tracks which i feel to balance it for heights, depths and widths to blend. Compress on the vocals and lastly add small delays and reverbs in the mix.

Sorry if my mix is not up to your expectation :D

Thank you :D
Eduardo Dinis
Posts: 4
Joined: Mon Jul 13, 2020 11:56 CEST

Re: MIX CHALLENGE - MC089 December 2022 - Submissions until 21-12-2022 23:59 UTC+1/CET

#42

Post by Eduardo Dinis »

Hi!

Really good song it was good fun working on it!


My track: https://www.dropbox.com/s/bts4ueh6q4sau ... s.wav?dl=0

Gain staged the whole track to get good balanced.

On drums I have used Eq in every track to enhance or clean frequencies.

Kick used CLA-76
Snare used SSL Comp
Parallell distortion on the snare
Tom used API-2500 and saturation
OH used de-esser

All drums going into DRUM BUS with SSL Comp, limiter, and a bit of saturation

Non Linear reverb on drum bus
Room Reverb on snare, tom, drum fill and OH
automated Hall reverb on snare

Bass with Eq and CLA-2A
Bass DI with Eq and Pulsar Smash

Both tracks sent into Bus with another CLA-2A and Blue Cat's Free Amp

Guitars all with 2 Eq's (first Corrective Eq and Second with Addictive EQ)

Guitar tracks sent into bus with CLA-3A and Saturation

Guitar with Room reverb and Slap delay

Lead guitars with Eq and CLA-3A and Tape Delay

Vocals chorus with Eq, CLA-2A, Vocal limiter, De-esser and Burier | Effects : Plate reverb, Throw delay and Hall reverb and Automated Throw delay

Vocal Scream with CLA-2A, CLA-76, Eq, Vocal Limiter and Burier |effects : Plate reverb and Hall reverb and Tape Delay

Vocal Harmony with Eq and vocal limiter | effects: Hall and Multi Delay

Light automation mainly on the bus groups to give it a bit more movement throughout the track

Mix bus: Firefly compressor for glue
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TomImmon
Posts: 57
Joined: Sun Jun 16, 2019 18:03 CEST
Location: near Berlin (Germany)

Re: MIX CHALLENGE - MC089 December 2022 - Submissions until 21-12-2022 23:59 UTC+1/CET

#43

Post by TomImmon »

First of all, I usually don't mix this kind of music, but this song is really a great crossover between different styles, so I couldn't resist. I hope I settle into the genre well enough.
Here is my mix:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ksk4slirzlx8w ... n.wav?dl=0

Description:
First, all tracks were cleaned by hand. The vocal tracks were freed from extreme noise via Izotope RX.

The original drums sounded too small for me, I wanted more Bonham style, so I doubled the room track. Used it then once as a normal room and once with a fat compressor and gated via snare and kick. In addition, the drums were provided with several satuartions. The overheads gave me a lot of headaches because they sounded like plastic and not like OH. I then achieved the best results with waves VitaminX and an extreme EQ that focused on the hihat frequencies.

The bass was used as a DI and given a metal sound via Presonus Ampire. In addition, a tube saturation and a compressor chain were used.

Except for the lead guitar, every guitar was re-amped. For this I used a SansAmp Emultion. A stereo image was created with M/S technic or the Brainworks Spreader and set to extreme panning. In addition, an attempt was made to get a wall of sound with strong compression.

I made a basic setting for all vocal parts with Nectar Elements, then reworked them with Neutron EQ and the Milenia EQ. Compression with the blue CLA-76. In order to get the extreme dynamic jumps under control, I used several compressors in chain on the vocal busses. A limiter was needed for the scream. The vocal master group was homogenized with the inflator. The backings in the chorus were provided with a chorus effect.

Of cause i used a lot of FX: Nonlin rev for snare, ducked delays on vocals, short stereo slap on guitars and backings, a middle sized room for everything.

This time I used two Andrew Scheps techniques to get the sound more aggressive and dense, on the one hand the rear bus with 2 x Cla-76 (all tracks but the drums) and on the other hand the drum dirt bus (here Izotop Trash was used with its tape setting and softened via EQ ). Both buses were mixed in with a small proportion.

On the Master Bus, the Townhouse was used for the glue. Worked it up a bit with the Milenia Tube EQ and pulled all freq below 70Hz to mono via plugin.

Expose readings:
Integrated LUFS: -16.2 LUFS
Short Term LUFS: -13.9 LUFS
True Peak: -4.3 dBTP
Peak: -4.3 dB
Dynamic Range: 9.1 DR
Loudness Range: 4.1 LU

Best regards from Berlin
Tom
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MFTWC
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Re: MIX CHALLENGE - MC089 December 2022 - Submissions until 21-12-2022 23:59 UTC+1/CET

#44

Post by MFTWC »

Mixed in Cubase pro 12.

Drums: Built everything around the drum stereo room track, some volume automation one the drum stereo oh track to raise the crash, used a transient plugin on the kick and snare track to enhance the
snap. I took the drum stereo oh track and used a reverb freeze on the crash part to use as a transition track.

Bass: Scooped out some 196 Hz to make it fit better, added a bass amp.

Guitars: I panned the different tracks to get the stereo separation I wanted, added a guitar amp plugin. Used shaperbox 3 as an effect on certain parts.

Vocals: The scream tracks and the non scream tracks got their own group tracks, used a deesser and clued the non scream tracks with a saturation plugin. I processed the scream tracks aswell with a saturation plugin.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/10vaaEZ ... sp=sharing
BrianWalis

Re: MIX CHALLENGE - MC089 December 2022 - Submissions until 21-12-2022 23:59 UTC+1/CET

#45

Post by BrianWalis »

My submission for the mix contest. Overall fun tune. I found myself having to do a bit of clean up as there was quite a bit of noise left in the tracks but nothing too crazy. The biggest thing with this one was just automating the heck out of everything to get it all sitting the way I wanted. I'm happy with the end result though.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/132X4gY ... share_link
groovehahn

Re: MIX CHALLENGE - MC089 December 2022 - Submissions until 21-12-2022 23:59 UTC+1/CET

#46

Post by groovehahn »

Hi, thanks to the song and platform providers for giving us this great opportunity to test our mixing skills. Especially I like the fact that mastering/loudness is excluded. The song was really fun to mix.

Main themes for my mix:

- make the snare sound real (I used little Alter Boy to pitch the "formants" down a little. Same for kick. Also I do not have it super loud, such that it sounds more natural)
- make the overal sound more wet (used reverb on snare, cymbals, vox (also 1/8th delay) and guitars).
- have the voice in the verse harsh, and warm in the chorus (contrasts for keeping the song dynamic). For the screaming vox I used Decapitator, for the warm sound Chorus, Microshift and some SSL EQ.
- provide some ear candy: tried that with the intro (Little Radiator, MetaFlanger, and EQ automation. Main effect is Waves GTR Stomp 4 - Stutter preset).
- don't mess with the guitars: I liked the guitars so I only added a little reverb and tamed some boom with EQ.
- make room for snare and vocals - sidechain compressed the instumental with snare, also sidechain "trackspaced" (Wavesfactory Trackspacer) the instrumental with snare and vox.

Some more plugins I used: Waves TrueVerb, Neoverb, Pro Q3, Waves C1, Waves L1, Waves SSL bus compressor, Microshift, Waves CLA 1176.

The mix is quite conservative so far. If I make it to the next round I could think of adding some more creative/candy effects on the vocals.

Enjoy listening, looking forward to receiving feedback.

Link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1snQDMa ... sp=sharing
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PistolPete
Posts: 43
Joined: Mon Jul 12, 2021 16:46 CEST

Re: MIX CHALLENGE - MC089 December 2022 - Submissions until 21-12-2022 23:59 UTC+1/CET

#47

Post by PistolPete »

Title;Statistics - "MC089__Hooker_and_a_Handgun__INFERNO__Pistolpete"

Loudness_Value;-16.03 LUFS
Loudness_Range;5.04 LU
Max_True_Peak_Level;-2.00 dBTP
Max_Momentary_Loudness;-10.30 LUFS
Max_Short_Term_Loudness;-11.67 LUFS
Sample Rate;44.100 kHz
Average RMS (AES-17) Left;-16.30 dB
Average RMS (AES-17) Right;-16.22 dB

Max. RMS Left;-11.56 dB
Max. RMS Right;-12.23 dB
Max. RMS;-11.56 dB
True Peak Left;-2.00 dB
True Peak Right;-2.00 dB

DC Offset Left;-oo dB
DC Offset Right;-oo dB
Bit Depth Left;24 bit
Bit Depth Right;24 bit


Here is my Mix:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/12cp1Zf ... sp=sharing

Thank you to @ron stokes and @MisterFox for bringing another awesome mix challenge and interesting song for us! I really like this song and its not even the typical type of music I listen to. Very fun song to mix.

This month was exceptionally challenging for me, as I’ve never really mixed scream vocals and it is not my typical genre I listen to, so I had a lot of fun learning with trial and error, and I think I did a pretty decent job with this song. It really grew on me the longer I spent on the mix and I had a lot of fun making it come to life in my own mind. I didn't listen to the sample original mix or any other references. I just dove right in as I just wanted to see where it takes me.

After sorting and coloring tracks per food group, I added a VCA fader to each group (bass, guitars, drums, vox and scream)

I inserted pink noise on a separate track and set it to -16dB which was a good starting point for gain leveling. Once I had a nice even volume balance I kept on the pink noise and I panned tracks which allowed me to really listen in to how the tracks interacted. Then I removed the pink noise.

I phase aligned the drums, the some of the guitars and the bass.

I created a bunch of FX sends for parallel processing. I’ve found this works well with my ancient CPU as well as really opens up the track how I want to flavor it. I created the following FX sends: Instead of direct processing each track I create sends to some of these following FX aux tracks to parallel process each track using different combos of each of the following, and some of the sends are automated.
  • Vox distortion (waves abbey road)
    Vox Doubler:vocal rider, valhalla, decapitator, echoboy, (used for space and automated sends)
    Vox RIder: Vocal rider, Lindell 500 eq, echoboy, s-1 imager to keep it in the middle of the stereo field.
    Scream Distortion: guitar amp simulator, CLA effects for a filtered delay with a bit of overdriven signal.
    Drum Distortion (decapitator),
    Drum Bus (Waves Eric Kramer drums set to room and used for ambiance)
    Plate Revert (little plate) and a Waves Q4eq with high and low passes allowing only the mids,
    Hard L pan,(panned hard left and select guitar and vox tracks sent to this, Black Box a DC offset EQ and a vocal rider were added to create an opposing ambiance on hard right panned vox and guitars)
    Vox Compressor (CLA 76)
    Vox Rider (set with a vocal rider set to run opposite the vocal peaks,
    DELAY: Echoboy
    General saturation: Waves Abbey roads saturation, analog obsession LCF high pass, vocal rider set to duck the kicks and snare to help keep them up front.

Guitars: I really didn’t do much processing at all directly on the tracks, I used FX sends to create the reverbs, distortion and tone of the guitars. On 4 of the guitar tracks that shared similar frequency as the kick and snare low end, I used shepps omnichannel to eq and sidechain a gate to duck the snare and kick. I added some automation to the FX sends to give some motion and added the bass rider from waves to the guitar bus FX channel to pump it for some motion as well.

Bass: I really didn’t do much direct processing on the bass. I used shepps omnichannel to eq the bass and to duck the kick with a gate and some very light compression. The rest of the effects processing and automation was done on the FX sends.



The vocals.. ahh the vocals….

Most of the backups I had no problem with but the main “VOX CLEAN” was my nemesis. Since it was between the heavy scream vocals and the thicker chorus and harmony vox it sounded kind of frail, lifeless and needed something extreme. I duplicated the track, panned one hard left and turned the volume down quite a bit. I then added a guitar amp simulator and a hard bit crusher type plug on it to really destroy the vocals and give them some grit. This seemed to work well to support the main clean vox. I also added 2 different distortion tubes to the clean vox track to really give it thickness. Also a number of FX sends for parallel processing were in play and a lot of the sends were automated to create motion.

The scream vocals also were quite a challenge for me as I had no idea how they should sound as its rare that I listen to this type of music so I was completely unfamiliar. I knew they needed to be leveled out a lot so I manually edited their volumes to get them to consistent levels. I then eq’d the main scream vox, used a compressor to really squeeze it, added the abbey road distortion plugin which I love, hit it with a sibilance plugin and then hit it with a limiter to again squeeze them a lot. This brought them nice up front in the mix. Then through a combination of FX sends I automated different fx into the scream vox.

On the mix bus I did very little, I used the SSL compressor for a tiny bit of glue, I used an air plugin to help tame some of the highs ever so slightly and a HighPass/DC offset eq that cuts out the 20hz range fairly sharply. I then just added a brickwall limiter to control the peaks set at -2.db but it really wasn’t doing much crunching if at all.

Thank you for pushing my limits with this song submission. I had a lot of fun mixing it. Hopefully the judges like it.
floodo
Posts: 11
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Re: MIX CHALLENGE - MC089 December 2022 - Submissions until 21-12-2022 23:59 UTC+1/CET

#48

Post by floodo »

Thanks for sharing

As for the references I used, for the vocals Numb from Linkin park, and for the overall balance between mid bass and treble Shadow_Moses from bring me the horizon, the mix was totally made with cheap headphones (behringer hpm 1100), morphit and dearvr monitor, with a Presonus 24C board.

My Mix: https://drive.google.com/file/d/121I9et ... sp=sharing

VOX SREAM: de esser, vmx mic fg and virtual channel neve, eq, 1176, la 2a, ssl compressor, arousor 1:1 only to give saturation, vtm, gate
VOX CLEAN: de esser, vmx mic fg and virtual channel neve, eq, 1176, la 2a, arousor 1:1, vtm, gate
CHORUS AND HARMONIES: eq , 1176, la2a, decapitator
VOCAL BUS: bus compressor, lindell de-esser

BASS DI: svt suite, nadir (amped stv 810), fab mb, vmr (eq and comp), la 3a, saturn 2 (mid saturation), waves l1

GUITARS DI: 1,2 AND 3: I used the clean guitars with a Studio one preset (Rearfire) to which I modified the amount of distortion and loaded a screen impulse with Nadir, I don't remember which was the impulse because I was rendering to gain resources, I sent the guitars to a bus where they were compressed and the trackspacer with a sidechain to a bus where all the voices are, lead, chorus and harmonies.

KICK: eq, compression 1176 and api 2500
SNARE: eq, compression 1176 and api 2500 and a response impulse that I found some time ago on the internet which is a plate for snares.
FILL AND TOM: I did absolutely nothing to them, I just loaded the convology xt with a presonus impulse (tom reverb 6000).
OH: CUT AT 250, -10db at 800 and shelf from 2k of about 6db, lindel de-esser.
ROOM: Honestly I wasn't convinced by the room, I didn't want to remove it because I wasn't sure if the rules allow to remove any of the provided tracks, anyway they are at too low volume, imperceptible, and I recreated my own room using delay and a convolution reverb.

DRUM BUS: I think this is where I worked the drums the most, I used slate vmr (virtual cannel E, u73b just for the color, it's not compressing anything) virtual tape machine, arousor 1:1 just to give it some character, modeled the recordings with an eqp1a, inflator, ssl bus compressor, waves L1 to control some peaks about 2db in some transients, finally hornet analog stage in transistor mode to give more color and to keep the initial gain I had before the processes.

MIXBUS: Slate virtual Mix buss, bus compressor, reduction in 256Hz tape emulation, inflator, multiband compressor, oxford transmod, cmkII from variety of sound, and some very interesting plugins that I found recently from terry west (deharsh, cleanup, ferricTDS basically to control the mix a little) and finally the apUnmask
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Dodgingrain
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Re: MIX CHALLENGE - MC089 December 2022 - Submissions until 21-12-2022 23:59 UTC+1/CET

#49

Post by Dodgingrain »

Mix is here: https://1drv.ms/u/s!AqpB-RLndYJrlI1ob4g ... g?e=oimVgd


Drums: basic eq and compression, used the new lil tube to give the drums some bite. The overheads have heavy eq and a delay send to attempt to give them some groove and make them less of a white noise wash.

Bass: reamped the DI track with a WT800 and blended that with the existing bass amp track.

Guitars: Some of the DI tracks were reamped in MegaDual. Otherwise guitars have some compression, are hard panned and blended between the DI and amped tracks. Decapacitator is on the guitar bus to add some bite. Also used a bit of ADT to thicken the guitars in a few spots.

Vocals: tried to use compression and vocal rider to even out the vocals. Otherwise just used eq, compression, panning and fader rides to try and blend the BGV's and leads. Did add a long delay on on vocal shot around the 2 minute mark. Used a little bit of dynamic eq and soothe to keep the vocals from being to harsh in the 2.5k range. Some of the vocals were warmed up with a 73 mic pre. Used some standard parallel compression to try and thicken the vocals.

All: used an API console emulator along with tape saturator and 2500 compressor on the two bus for glue.
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JeroenZuiderwijk
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Re: MIX CHALLENGE - MC089 December 2022 - Submissions until 21-12-2022 23:59 UTC+1/CET

#50

Post by JeroenZuiderwijk »

Hi, Thank you for providing this powerful song.

I wanted an aggressive big sound and an in your face mix. To achieve that I wanted to use as little reverb as possible. So I got creative using delay on the vocal and keep the reverb to a minimum. I created stutter effects in combination with stereo panning to make it (hopefully) more interesting. With serial compression I also managed to lengthen the sustain of the drum. That made it sound bigger and more alive without using reverb. The guitars got a little bit of slapback delay to make the guitars blend without washing the sound. I let the compressor pump on purpose to make the guitars feel like they are maxing out the amplifier.

The bass needed to be the massive foundation of the track. I experimented with both tracks and settled on using them both. One with a more clean sound and the other with lots of saturation.

Here is my mix (-16LUFS / peak max -2,1dB )

https://1drv.ms/u/s!Ahp8xH6KRIfbgQnXOI5 ... O?e=83Gao0

And here are the technical details:

Drums Overheads:
EQ with hpf at 1 Khz+stereo width plug in

Drum kick:
EQ lsf at 100 Hz, + bassexciter plug in (boost 90Hz) + ‘Timeverb’ reverb plug in (yes, not the most commenplace for a reverb, but the kick just wouldn’t blend with the rest of the kit….this sounded like it worked)

Drum SNR:
through a focusrite optocompressor with ‘vintage harmonix’ and tube simulation + Compression 4:1 ratio + EQ HPF at 250 hz, cut at 3,4 Khz + transient controller

Drum Stereo Fill:
Agressive compression/limiting with 20:1 ratio + Bassexciter plug in (boost 90Hz)

Drum buss:
EQ cut at 300Hz + Parallelcompression + saturation (tiny bit)

Bas:
DI track: ‘NoAmp’ plugin

Bass buss:
Ampsimulator + EQ cut at 90Hz, cut at 1Khz, boost at 4,5Khz, HPF at 30Hz

GuitarLeadtracks:
Stacked with ampsimulator and fuzz distortion + Chorus (tiny bit) + EQ: same as the harmony vox track but with the frequency ‘flipped’ + Compressor 4:1 ratio + Stereo Width plugin

Guitar Rythm
Amp simulator + NoAmp plugin + Compression with 1,4:1 ratio + Bassexciter plugin

Guitarbuss:
sent to Warm Audio stereo buss comp and a Behringer 3040 exciter.

All guitartracks are sent to a delay (¼ note) and sent to stereo delay (14 ms / 17 ms) with distortion on the output.

Vox Harmony and octave:
volume automation +3 compressors serial + EQ HPF at 100HZ, cut at 400Hz, cut at 1,4 Khz, cut at 3,4 Khz + EQ boost at 1,7Khz only for some words

Vox Scream:
3 compressors serial + EQ HPF at 100HZ, cut at 400Hz, cut at 1,4 Khz, cut at 3,4 Khz

All vocaltracks go to a pitch/delay effect with different settings left/right.
All vocaltracks go to a delay effect ¼ note + flanger.

Guitars, Drum and vocals go to a subtle room effect

Enjoy!
Jeroen Zuiderwijk
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