MIX CHALLENGE - MC044 June 2018 - Winners announced

[noogard]

Hey! Thank you once again for detailed feedbacks

So here are my fixes:

• Rhythm guitars are fattened in parts where they are alone by reamped through engl powerball DI tracks.

• Added more automation and for overhead tracks and a bit cleaned highs overall, to make mix more... bright where it is needed, for example at opening chords for choruses.

• Added another guitar track for choruses, it was reamped DI with some secret sauce Guess what is it. everything under 300hz was cut.

• Increased volume of sm57 at chorus parts for lead guitars to help them cut through mix.

• Added brand new Mercuriall Chorus in solo parts, to make it wider and a bit differ from other parts.

I hope these improvements not spoiled the original mix of mine, and would be noticeable enough for the judge

MP3
WAV

[Waleed Morris]

wizzo

Very nice raw sound. The space in the verse is great. Chorus balance is good. The speed section sounds very cool, I like how you featured the DI track on the guitar at the beginning for articulation. The half-time section sounds great and the bass guitar shines here. The solo section sounds fantastic, very articulate and defined, punchy.
Some minor gripes would be the toms sound a little cardboardy and the guitars lack presence. Also, the section after the solo, sounds like a step back, probably in need of some makeup there.

Section work is great, each one flow into the other effortlessly, and other than what I just mentioned after the solo, macro-dynamics are fine.

Hello everyone ,
Thanks for review and feedback , here is my submission for round 2
1-Remove cardboardy sound from toms.
2-Added presence to the guitars.
3-Raise all gtrs section after solo just a little bit.

Wav :Download link here
Mp3 :Download link here

Cheers !

[OctopusOnFire]

Your Mp3 and WAV versions has _R1 prefix. Aren't you mistake with the upload, just curious?

It means "Revision 1", but thanks for pointing it out. It wouldn't be the first time I screw up a round2 submission

[qhtrvw425]

Hello,
I'm happy to join the round 2.
I overhaul almost everything, especially backing guitar. It's very hard to sculpt the miked amp sound.. Way harder than amp simulators(too realistic).
Hope my modifications works well, because I fixed many things the feedback doesn't point out.

In detail
Drum bus - use UAD FATSO to thicken it up
Kick - little more low?
Snare - use MJUC to thicken it up
Backing guitar - kill resoanace, muddiness and make it smooth with Q2, decapitator tone knob. Some saturation with Neutron 2, decapitator.
Lead guitar - little saturation with Neutron 2
Master - reinforce low to mid-low with bx_2098 EQ, and some saturation with Black Box HG-2(PA), Ozone 8.

WAV : https://1drv.ms/u/s!AjtlADECVeCVgvcy7OV-sQQS3sxLZQ
MP3 : https://1drv.ms/u/s!AjtlADECVeCVgvcxa-SZiLOIWXj8Xw

Best regards, Jack(qhtrvw425)

[Baddo]

Hey guys, it seems almost everyone managed the time to submit a round 2 mix. That's great. Good job everyone!

[Aditya.inHim]

Can I submit it now? My internet in studio just lost connection and nothing happened until now. So I bring my mix to my home and upload it from my home by now. I don't now.. I keep got an error message..

edited : typo

[Aditya.inHim]

This is my R2 mix.. Following the feedbakcs..
I using some paralel processing to get more "in your face" sound than my 1st mix. Enjoy it. Thank you very much for this competition

Wav : https://www.dropbox.com/s/qnp4j2kc7orbi ... V.wav?dl=0
Mp3 : https://www.dropbox.com/s/z929lctt3pwjs ... 3.mp3?dl=0

edited :
I don't know, I can't play dropbox link in my computer, so I reupload it :

Wav : https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Q_i71x ... sp=sharing
Mp3 : https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mgYksa ... sp=sharing

[marc clement]

leonardo 3

Your mix has nice guitar tone, and good snare. The guitar tone in the verse is very cool, though a tad low in level. The chorus guitar begins low but then it goes up a little, that was distracting. In general a nice clear sound throughout. The speed section has great bass and drums, and I liked the solo section, cool tone, the snare sound fits and the piano is well placed, if a tad low. I think there is too much bass in general, and too little rhythm guitars.

The sections flow, which is good, and other than what I mentioned about the chorus guitar beginning low, I think mostly all transitions are accomplished nicely. Well done

Thanks for the feedback. It was actually good to get some distance from this and when I listened I thought it was a bit dull....I agreed with your comments btw.....I added mv2 to guitars and redid the bass whilst keeping your comments in mind. Added some parallel distortion to the snare.

Hope you like it !

mp3 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1joV8UU ... sp=sharing

wav https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zCE7hk ... sp=sharing

[Henrik Hjortnaes]

Here is my Round 2 mix.

Baddo, I addressed all the findings you noted. Maybe not to your liking, as the language of sound is not set in stone.

You, noting the dull section shows phenomenal attention to detail.
A snare that "could be better" leaves a lot to the imagination, so I just did what I felt lifted the song a bit.

As always for round 2, I adjust several other things not pointed out by the client. I know this seems counter productive, but I just can't help it.

• I changed the character of the kick. Less distorted, more defined especially through the fast parts by automation. I felt it was a little soft in my Round 1 mix.

• I changed the character of the bass guitar. I wanted the bass to poke out more and fill up some of the low mids, because I felt there was room for it in the overall mix. I know doing stuff like this is super critical when the judge is a guitarist, but the bass brings some powerful harmony-like notes and strenghtens the guitars and fattens them slightly.

• On the mix bus, I raised the top end slightly 8K upwards and also raised 650 Hz with a small bell curve. 650 Hz is dangerous as h... but I wanted more grunt and upfront-ness from the whole mix.

• On the drum bus, I changed the Clariphonic EQ settings to try sweeten the top end of the kit slightly.

I think that's it.

WAV Henrik Hjortnaes R2
MP3 Henrik Hjortnaes R2

[Mork]

Super last minute as always!

WAV: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1dwSXV ... nO-RkBQHAv
MP3: https://drive.google.com/open?id=127bEn ... rsd6v8f9EL

I do it like Henrik, comments follow.

...and here they are:

As mentioned in the feedback the first mix was way too harsh. The guitar mics all have lots of energy in the 2-3k range (my guess would be the amp setting) which I got used to and consequently matched everything else to the guitars. It's a very delicate area for metal guitars, so I tried to fight the harshness while maintaining a natural guitar sound that still cuts and also speaks. Therefore I have completely redone the solo guitars. Of course, everything else had to be tweaked to fit the new sound as well, especially the drums! And the bass... and the piano
I wanted to get an even more enormous sound to lead the warriors into the thunderstorm... I hope you enjoy

• I changed the character of the kick. Less distorted, more defined especially through the fast parts by automation. I felt it was a little soft in my Round 1 mix.

• On the drum bus, I changed the Clariphonic EQ settings to try sweeten the top end of the kit slightly.

Henrik, now that the challenge is over I am really interested in how you got this "slipknotty" (yes, it's a word!) drums where every drum hit has that same click on top. Is it just saturation/distorton? But first you would need a transient to clip, so Transient Designer into distortion?
It's not necessarily my style, but I heard it a lot and you never know what's coming, so again, I would be quite interested in how to achieve this.

Cheers
Mork