MIX CHALLENGE - MC091 April 2023 - Winners announced

[denio_w11]

Hello, here is my Submission:)

https://www.dropbox.com/s/vmo6yo0ad0pph ... 1.wav?dl=0

I've focused on dynamics and the actual composition.
I have worked on the perfect mix.

Thank You all, Enjoy!

[Piotr]

Hello everyone,
this is my first entry here, I'm glad I came here!

Download Link:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/19JyQhd ... sp=sharing

Description:

Goals:
After getting acquainted with the song and descriptions - I set the following goals:
1. Classic sound but with modern clarity (speaking the reference language - snare sound like Greta van Fleet's Safari Song but with a wall of guitars like Foo Fighters)
2. Highlighting the dynamics between the verses and choruses (breath of the instruments on the verse, especially the guitars, and more meat in the choruses and at the end).

General:
To shape the sound, I used repeated specific processors in many tracks, all virtual simulations of devices, mainly these were:
- Black box HG-2 (saturation) (already testing a demo and it’s nice plugin so far!),
- Lindel 50 series (API console channel strip),
- FAST Reveal (on groups of instruments - I tested this tool, something like a side-chain compressor)
- Shadow hills compressor
- basic plug-ins available in Cubase (Studio EQ, Gates, Compressors etc.)
- almost all used in "paraller mix" mode (to preserve transients and not to do too much editing)


Drums – trying achieve clarity and modern but not overcompressed:
- Kick: EQ deep cuts at middle range > Compressor > Steinberg Squasher (dynamic processor) > Compressor
- Snare: Gate > Equalizer (cut slighty lows end midrange emphaze) > Compressor > Saturation Softube Knob
Snare has send to special rever FX channel (paraller editing)
- OH – edited as group: Compressor > EQ cut lows (shelf) and highs (shelf) and point reduction at 10kHz (squashing)
- Rack and Toms: Gate > Compressor
+ Drum Bus:
- EQ – some small peaks at 80hz and 2kHz and cuts at 10kHz
- Saturation with HG-2
- Compressor
> Send to FX Bus with Multiband compressor and extra reverb to parallel processing

Bass:
- EQ cut at 200hz and add shelf from 400hz
- Compressor
- Compressor width side-chain driven by kick
- HG-2 Saturation (low mode)
- Compressor
(all Compressors with Dry/wet mix knob at around 50%)

Guitars:
- I used DI tracks with amp simulations ( NeuralDSP models: Fortin Cali and Gojira archetype - 'clean' model) to make additional layers (density). Especially the intro/outro I highlighted track 11 a bit, making this more interesting I think. And the same way using amp sim I made distorted guitars in pre-chorus and chorus. To show dynamic articulation changes, such as palm-mutting on the pre-chorus. (Choruses are such a step towards Foo Fighters).
- On selected clean guitars I used channel strip simulation Lindell 50 (Api) and on recorded guitars with mic.
+ Bus of guitars are:
- EQ - limiting LPF and HPS and cutting out 3.6khz buzzes and ‘hard’ 400hz areas.
- HG-2 saturation
- Closed with compressor

Organs - lets them ring a bit! :
- EQ - reeduce lows and add highs (shelfs)
- Basslane and Stereo enhancer (widener plugin)
- saturation (Softube Saturation knob + HG-2)
- volume automation (verse louder)

Vocal - I decided to leave 1 track on the front and the other a bit further back:
- EQ low cut at 150Hz / 2.1kHz / 6.7kHz
- Desser
- compressor
- HG-2
- compressor
- Send to reverb

Master bus: nothing

[PeterGomes]

Hello everyone,

This is my first entry and im very exited to be part of this challenge.

I really like the song witch made it easier.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/vuy5mhoejk4lc ... s.wav?dl=0

drums:

kick- ssl channel strip
snares- Pro Q3
TOMS- grouped with ssl channel strip and kramer pie
OH- ssl channel strip

drum bus- nls,distressor

bass- ssl channel strip, sansamp, pro Q,

guitars:
waves amp thingy, ssl channel strip, and on a couple of them the UAD Brigade

organ- ik leslie and eq

voxs: ssl channel strip, UAD 1176,

on the double i have the UAD chorus

Master bus: ssl bus comp, waves magma, UAD studer

good luck to everyone!!!

[ari5to5]

my mix here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vOkK0- ... share_link

my comments:

Overall, a challenging mix due to the drum's dynamics/recording (i couldn't get the sound i desired).

Drums:
bus: compression
kick sum: stock eq -dynamics control - transient enhancer - pultech style eq - stock eq
kick: dynamics control - channel strip - stock eq - gate - stock eq, parallel saturation (in sub, bass and hi-mid frequencies)
snr sum: dynamics control - compression - stock eq
snr top: dynamic control - channel strip - stock eq
snr bot: dynamic control
oh: stock eq - compression
toms: stock eq (and gate for the FT)

drums fx: plate - stock eq - gate

bass: saturation - stock eq - compression

sidechain channel for sub frequencies (kick - bass)

organ: flat

gtrs bus: stock eq - stereo narrower - stock eq - reverb 17%
all gtrs were treated with stock eq. solo gtr was also compressed with a fed compressor emulation plugin

vox bus: stock eq - deess - stock eq
vox 1,2&3: fed compressor emulation plugin

vox fx: echo sending to echo-verb

[LowlandsWave]

Hallo Jeroen, dat was een behoorlijke uitdaging!

Quite a challenge this month's Mix Challenge, but a lot of fun to work on. Thanx Jeroen for sharing this song with the Mix Challenge community.

Had a listen to original mix that was supplied with the pakkage. I found it a little bass heavy, without the sparkle or sheen. So my goal was to create a mix with good bottom end but also some sheen and sparkle to get it more to 2023.
I did change some timing issue with the lead guitar on the second lead part, but left most of the "imperfections" as is. As mentioned in other posts, it contributes to the character of the song.

In comparison to the original mix I left the vocal a bit dry, I am not a big fan of that "boy in the bathroom" sound on vocals.

Processing:
I started experimenting with a mix template that sort of incorporated the Brauerize method. The tracks end up in one of 4 busses with a compressor on it and some light EQ (Pultec). Those busses are routed to the mixbus. On my mixbus I have an eq to clean up some low end, pultec for some highs, tape for some analog character and a SSL bus compressor for the final glue and some thump.

Drums: tried to fix some phase issues to get more out of the raw tracks.
Kick: split in 2 separate tracks, 1 low end and one for the high end. Used some subgen and transient shaper to get a punchy kick
Snare: LA3A compressor on both tracks, routed to a bus with a transient shaper, SSL channel strip EQ and JST clipper
Toms: Big smiley face EQ into SSL Channelstrip, send to a reverb to make em bigger.

Bass:
Split the bass in 2 tracks, low end and high end. Low end compressed with LA3A, high end slightly compressed with saturation and some 800 and 3k boosts.

Guitars:
Most guitars I used the DI tracks if available, "re amped" with Helix. Tried to get the sound crunchy, but not to saturated (stay away from a metal sound). Brush off the digital sound of Helix with some tape emulation.
To get some more precense and get the guitars to cut a bit better trough the mix I added a parallel distortion Aux (decapitator).

Organ: Simple EQ and then added some character with the UAD waterfall rotary speaker plug in. Organ raises its head only a few times. Left it merely in the background.

Vocals:
Used Melodyne to fix some pitch issues and evened out the vocal performance. Then som little alterboy from soundtoys and lowered the formant just a bit, than some Soothe and a preset from the sound toys effects rack (Rock lead vocal)
Thid was send to a vocal bus. I didn't use the Brauerize 5 compressors vocal treatment. On the vocal bus I used a pultec to cut a lot of the low end and boost the high end. Then used a LA2A to compress the remaining signal. That goes into another pultec to boost some low and cut some high end.

For the bridge I used a Telephone like setting on an EQ to make it stand out to the rest of the song.

Here is my mix: LowlandsWave Mix

[bluesation]

Hello,

https://my.hidrive.com/lnk/ufyzWElG

I wanted the song a bit more Grunge than HardRock. The Melody isnt that typical for HardRock.

Vocals and Bass weren't a big issue. Just a bit Eqing and compressing. A bit more work was needed with the drums. Just Eqing and compressing, but it took some time to get the right settings to lead the sound in the way I wanted.

The biggest challenge were the guitars. For rhythm I only used the DI Tracks and reamped. It took some time to get the right sound. I searched more for a garage sound than the typical Hardrock sound. The sounds were dialed in, that no Eqing was needed, just a bit compression. Panning was done very quick. For lead I used the provided tracks.

All Tracks except the drums go into the same reverb. Vocals got a short slap delay on top. Drums got their own reverb.
All in all, for me this mixchallenge was not that challenging as former ones. What does that mean? The song was quite better arranged, played and recorded than many others.Nothing needed to be fixed. Thumbs up.

[lupobuonino]

HI All.

here is the link to my mix for the challenge:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/wa66eau9xsuxt ... o.wav?dl=0


first of all, a big thanks to Jeroen Zuiderwijk for providing this track full of energy: mixing it was a real fun!


my goal for the mixing was to maintain the energy provided by the Wall of Guitars, but to let emerge also vocals, drums, bass and organ.


DRUMS:
I decided to use a drum replacer for Kick and Snare, maintaining also the original tracks, for giving more punch to the overall drums.
on the Drum Bus I used a vintage channel strip emulator for increasing 200Hz, 1kHz, and 2,5kHz and a modern EQ for filter below 27Hz and rise 67Hz and 6kHz.
on the Drum Bus I also used an EQ emulator and a vintage compressor emulator for giving more air and punch to the drum track.

on the Kick Bus I used a Pultec EQ, on the Snare Bus a vintage compressor emulator, and that’s all for the drums.


BASS:
I wanted to give evidence to the bass track, so I inserted the following chain:
- Pultec emulator;
- Saturator;
- modern EQ filtering below 42Hz, above 4,7kHz and increasing the saturator harmonic distortions on 1kHz;
- FET Compressor emulator


GUITARS:
I filtered out quite all the tracks below circa 100Hz and used a Guitar Strip for making the sound more rounded and edgy with few EQ touches on decreasing 1,5kHz + 2,2kHz, and increasing 1,25kHz + 3,5kHz here and there.

the chain on the Guitar Bus includes:
- vintage EQ emulator for increasing 10kHz, 2,5kHz, 500Hz, and decreasing 100hz;
- a modern EQ for filter below 90Hz and above 1,6kHz, and increasing 3kHz with a wide Q, but also for dynamically lower around 300Hz and 600Hz using the Vocal Bus as side chain;
- a virtual tape machine as saturator;
- both a classic British 4000 series and a VCA compressor emulators.

ORGAN:
I used a saturator and a modern EQ for filtering below 110Hz and for take out a build up at 215Hz.

VOCALS:
on the lead vocals I increased 650Hz with a vintage channel strip emulator and with a modern EQ I eliminated the build up at 900Hz and 630Hz.
on the backing vocals I filtered out below 300Hz and above 2,5Khz with a stock plugin.

FX:
I used long and short reverb, separated for Drums, Instruments, and Vocals


AUTOMATION:

Gain:
I increased the gain on the bridge for the Muted Guitars
I increased the gain on the reprise of the song for the Guitar Bus
I increased the gain on the bridge for the second Lead Vocal

Reverb:
I created a ramp for the send to Long Reverb for the Room and OH on the song reprise
I increased the send to the Long reverb for the Organ on the bridge
I increased the send to the Long reverb for the Guitar Bus
I underlined some parts of the Lead Vocal Bus (verse, chorus, and bridge) increasing the send to the Long reverb


Thanks and Good Luck to All,
Paolo.

[Yann]

Hello there, here is my attempt to the mix challenge 91 !
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Zz07jh ... sp=sharing

First of all, thanks to Mister Fox & JeroenZuiderwijk.
I haven't mix a full track for a while, so I really enjoyed to work on this track !

The mix was done on Reaper 6. I tried to use some plugins that i own but never use.

Rea EQ for cleaning all the tracks of the project.

Drums :
I didn' use the room track.
// comp for the snare & the drum bus.
I use the Valhala super massive as a room reverb, and a specific room for the snare.

Bass :
Autotune and ampeg sim

Guitars :
I enjoyed to work on the guitars tracks. I use the tracks with amp sim, and the DI tracks.
Pan L/R.
On the DI tracks I used the chowcentaur plugins.
And the convolution amp/cab modeler form reaper with a Marshall model, on the guitars bus

Organ :
Nothing particulary. Just some cleaning.

Vocals :
A little bit of saturation and valhala supermassive for the reverb.

I use the Cerise channel Strip from Acustica on my drums bus, guitar bus, vocal bus, etc, to have a unity of treatment and sound.
An EQ and a comp on the mix bus for glu effect.

I think i'm not gone wild enough on this mix, but I really enjoyed to work on this project, because i usually work on hip hop tracks. So it was fun to rock on for a once .

My goal is to reach the 2nd round.

[SDB_12]

Hi!

https://www.dropbox.com/s/gtolw13b72jee ... 2.wav?dl=0

Haven’t been here in awhile and saw this pop up, listened to the song and said “yyeeeeeesssss!!!!” I love this band, sounds a little like Foo Fighters, and all of the great references that were mentioned in the original post. I dig it! So I spent some time yesterday mixing this, taking a much needed ear break from my current “paying” project This was refreshing, so thank you for sharing!

I’m not sure how crazy detailed I can get into what I did, as I honestly don’t remember everything, lol! But, I will say that I started by organizing the tracks the way I always do, color codes, routing, etc. I then spent awhile listening to all the guitar parts/DI’s and started finding amp sims that I liked for this song. I put on my producer hat and didn’t worry about mixing at first, just finding the right tones and amp sims to put on the provided DI’s until it felt great.

Once I was happy with guitar tones, overall balances and panning choices, I decided to mix this very hybrid, using quite a bit of outboard. Most all tracks were sent out to my different pieces of outboard using hardware inserts. I think I started with drums:

Kick- CAPI LC25 EQ
Snare- Blended top and bottom and sent to AML 52f50 Compressor- CAPI LC25 EQ- Neve 542 Tape Module
Toms- Heritage Audio 1073 EQ’s

OH’s- CAPI BT50 EQ’s
Room- Audioscape Bluestripe 1176- Heritage Audio 1081 EQ. Then I put UAD Ocean Way room on it to make it more stereo



All drums sent to a little Bricasti impulse response room reverb sound…just a tad. Snare and Toms also sent to an AMS non lin verb. I also then gated the kick and snare a little, and added some transient designers to them. A touch more EQ here and there with either SSL Channelstrip or Crave2 if needed.
———————

Bass- Audioscape V-Comp- SSL 611 EQ- Neve 542 Tape Module
Once bass was printed back in, I used some RBass, sidechaining the kick to bass, and a little more EQ
I also sent the bass to an aux with Waves LoAir, which only sends during the chorus to make it sound deeper/fuller
The bass also sent to my hardware Dimension D clone for a little width

——————
ALL DRUMS AND BASS then sent to my “B Bus” which has a Lindell Audio 77x compressor on it.
——————

Guitars:
All guitars sent out to my CAPI LC25’s, BT50’s, Heritage Audio 1073/1081 and SSL eqs depending on the part and what I wanted. I also used the Neve 542 on a few of them. For the lead, I sent it through my Bluestripe 1176 along with some SSL EQ. The intro/outro guitars got a little AML 52f50 compression as well. In the bridge, I added a little chorus sound using Soundtoys Crystalizer on guitars.

———————
ALL GUITARS send to my “C Bus” with my Retro DWii compressors on it.
——————-

Organ:
Sent this out to my Heritage Audio 1073’s and got some grit/EQ…then into my Retro DWii compressors.

———————
ALL KEYS/ORGAN send to my “A Bus” with AML 52f50 compressors on it.
———————

Lead Vocal:
SSL 611 EQ- Audioscape 1176 Bluestripe- CAPI BT 50 EQ- Neve 542 Tape Module. 

Once printed back in, I used a touch of soothe2, and some more EQ (Crave2). R-DeEsser as well. For the bridge, I used a cool DAW Cassette plugin and filtered it a little to give it a new atmosphere. The vocal sends to a little UAD EP-34 delay, and in the bridge a little UAD Chamber. In the chorus only, it sends to my Dimension D hardware clone.

The vocal double was run through the same chain basically, with slightly different eq and no effects sends.
———————
ALL LEAD VOCALS send straight to mixbus.
———————

The backing vocal was treated all ITB, with Soothe2, SSL Channelstrip v2, and Crave2 EQ. Sends to a little Dim D.

——————
ALL BACKING VOCALS send to my “D Bus” with GAP 3A compressors on it.
———————

The MIXBUS CHAIN: (ABCD busses all send to Mixbus)

I start the mix with my hardware chain active and in (Alan Smart C1LA compressor into Audioscape EQP-A Pultec EQ’s). Somewhere along the line I added Gullfoss, and a little Tape Saturation using the UAD ATR-102, as well as a touch more EQ. No limiting anywhere in the session.

Other stuff:
All in all, I wanted to give the band a Foo Fighters vibe, but with it’s own thing. There were a few drum hits that were really distracting me as they were slightly out of time, so I nudged them by hand just a little, only in a couple spots. Very minimal editing. I only fixed this because it distracted me and took away from the song.

————————
Monitoring:
Dynaudio LYD 48’s with 18s Sub.
NS-10’s with HSU sub.
Focal CMS 50’s.
Slate VSX

Mixed in Pro Tools with hardware inserts using Orion Studio and Ferrofish Pulse 16 converters.

This was fun! Thanks!

Seth

[GersonArdilaVerjel]

https://drive.google.com/file/d/102s53Q ... sp=sharing

Hello, this is my version of the mix of the song EyeOfTheNeedle.
In general, my goal was focused on portraying the influences of the band and the like, so I listened to bands like Greta Van Fleet, Alice in Chains, etc... The sound is inspired a bit by Andy Wallace mixes, so except on the Mix Bus.
So in the mix bus, I used an emulation of SSL, although I would have preferred one of the mythical Alan C2.
As for the guitars, I just added some EQ, compression and some time based effects, my goal was not to modify or change the essence of what was already there, so I didn't use the DI tracks.
As for the battery, there are processes of saturation, parallel compression, subtractive and additive equalization.
As for the vocals, I applied quite a bit of subtractive, dynamic, and resonance removal EQ, additive EQ, and some time-based processing.
On the other hand, on the bass, I applied distortion in parallel, to lift the high frequencies and give the bass some character.
Some of my used plugins are:
VMR (Virtual Mix Rack)
Fab Filter Pro Q^3
bx_yellowdrive
soothe 2
Midnight Compressor
CLA2A
bx_townhouse Buss Compressor
SSL Native Bus Compressor
Shadow Hills Mastering Compressor
PuigTec EQP1A... Among others.
Greetings to all, I wish you could tell me what to improve and so on.
¡Saludos desde Colombia!