MIX CHALLENGE - MC071 November 2020 - Winners announced

[TonnoBass]

Hi Everybody, and thank You Patrick @patrlord for Your detailed feedback. It helped me so much to get a better mix for the Second Round.
I’m very happy to be part of the Round 2! I didn’t expect to reach this point, I’m so excited and a bit surprised!!!

Here’s my mix for the 2nd Round:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pUBh4g ... sp=sharing

I changed many things in this mix:
As you suggested, I tried to change the tonal balance, shifting the focus more on the high air and mids frequencies, modifying the various tracks and their Bus.
Lots of automation were added to make everything sit in the right place, especially on the fx sends.

VOCALS: Reading Your feedback, I realized that I didn’t touch too much the vocals as concerned the FX.
So I drastically changed the Reverb and the Delays on it, everything.
I changed the plate on the vocals, passing from a Valhalla Plate to a Relab LX480 plate. It gives incredible space, nice transient for the voice, and with the PreDelay I set a high value, around 140ms. It sounds kinda strange when You hear it for the first time, but it’s incredible in the mix.
I think this value is very musical for this mix.
For The Delay, I added some more feedback both in the 1/4th Delay and the Slap Delay, giving it more tail in the entire mix.
To create a sort of space and depth sound, I put my delays in send, going out into the reverb.
It also added a little of the body of the voice, and it sounds much better to me now.
I saturated just a little more the hi-mids and the hi frequencies with the Ozone Exciter.

DRUMS: As for the voice, I added reverb on the snare.
I added even more reverb to the entire Drum Bus, to make it more “in the space” feeling. Relab LX480 helped me with those add of the snare and the whole drumset.
Tamed the riser at the starting.
Automated the snare volume on every fill to give more impact and crescendo to every fills.
Added a Satin u-he to add more 3d feeling to the entire drumset.

BASS: I tried to fix the big boomy bass under 100hz on the two single tracks, and even on the Bass Bus. Added various automation for both tracks.

GUITARS: I added a Satin u-he on the Bus to give something more modern sounding, and get clearer attacks and get the transients less lost.

SYNTHS: I added a Satin U-he to get that high air out of them, nice sense of tridimensionality and a little less hidden sounding now.
For the “Blue in Gray PAD”, I softened the attack with a Softube CL-1B with fast attack and slow release, with higher ratio (in the spot between 8:1 to 10:1), compressing up to 10dB, to cut the unwanted attack.
I added reverb in insert, the LX480 by Relab (Hall) with no PreDelay, to cut out the remaining attack out of it.
I did the same processing for the Pad BinG high.
Serum Lead now is really forward, as suggested.

PADS: Lowered the volume in the “Pad blue in gray” track at the ending.
Also added an u-he Satin to give the transient and the air more forward and living sounding.
Automated lowering the volume on the “Blue in grey Pad” at the ending of the song, as requested.

VIOLINS: I added some volume automation to fit better the requests, and to get them better fitted in the song. You can clearly hear that now they fit much better with the voice, and even with the other instruments.

STEREO BUS: nothing changed here.

Many and much other automation to get the listening more focused on every kind of shades that is happening at that moment, that every instrument does, alternating.

Export: WAVE 44100/24bit
-19.4 LUFS Integrated, -3.7dBTP


Hope You will enjoy it, I’m having so much fun on this mix.

TonnoBass

[patrlord]

Hi everyone,
Based on the 5 R2 submissions so far, we've now reached a new level, I'm so excited to hear these very impressive new versions, I'm really enjoying them big time, thank you so much !
Cheers, Patrick

[Jerze]

Hope everyone one is doing well, Also thanks to Patrlord for all the great reviews not sure I hit all your points, but I tried.

Here is my R-2 mix.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/lgz8mocoovcvm ... 2.wav?dl=0

As for the mix notes
1. Automation on a lot of parts
2. Re EQ some of the synths
3. Adjusted the vocals for a little more up front later in song
4. Tried to readjust pad sound
5. End lead sound added more saturation adjusted the eq a little
6. Added a little mo weight to the kic

If you have, question or thoughts let me know!
Thanks Jerze

[Mister Fox]

A friendly reminder:
We're in the final 24 hours to submit your edit for Mix Round 2

[Green-Dog]

Hi all,

Thank you to @patrlord for selecting my track for round two and feedback!

I worked a little with the vocals, levelled the frequencies and made the sibilants more restrained. I also added some warmth to the vocals.

Aside from the requested fixes, I found the lower middle a bit busy. I had to clean it up a bit. I also added automation to spice up the mix a bit and highlight elements and separate parts of songs.

Here is my submission for round two: Mix

Good luck to all finalists!
Cheers

[JulienMeirone]

Hello guys, here my submission for the round 2:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/cy636c5gjfr6f ... 2.wav?dl=0

Here some documentation : https://www.dropbox.com/s/fwe79n5yr7h68 ... 2.zip?dl=0

Not a lot of change since the V1, mostly automations and tweaks on some plugins. Just added some valhalla supermassive, vintageverb and delay on some synths.

Hope you will enjoy it .

[MattRocket]

Hi everyone!

round 2: https://www.dropbox.com/s/b40nrg45g98y5 ... 2.wav?dl=0

RG: -1.7db
vocals: -1db
hihats: -3db
synth tops: add monodelay, low pass filter, wider
cymbals: add drums reverb
serum lead: duplicate track, remove pluguins, add reverb and blend this track with the "serum lead round1 track"
89 the break: it's complicated. add delays, reverbs

Matt

[canese]

Hola! Thanks for reviewing my mix and providing great feedback. Here's my submission for Round 2: https://www.dropbox.com/s/b39p7hwh7ytg8 ... 2.wav?dl=0

Process:

Vocals: Cut the chorus in the chain and got a much more natural vocal sound but I put the original vocal with lots of chorus in stereo and lowered its volume to blend it. Also lowered reverb decay time and wet knob in pre-chorus.

Drums: nothing much. Only cut a little mud in the kick and ressonance in the snare I didn't hear the first time.

Synths: Reduce volume in top synths after the intro. Added in parallel a long reverb to main synth.

Guitars: Automated a filter with lfo because it was to static.

Pad/organs: I put a convolver reverb and played with dry and wet signal to get the sound of a PAD. Add a little low eq boost in the intro

Bass: cut it 2.5 db below 100hZ

Violins: I Cranked the stereo enhancer and added more reverb in paralelel, also I pay much more atention to the volume automation.

Lead: I put lot's of distortion and a tremolo to give the feeling of a blusy electric guitar. Added more reverb in parallel.

FX: put white noise convolver reverb in parallel to give more energy to the transitions.

Automation in general: Automated volume /stereo widening/Low-pass filter in some sections of the song to make nice transitions.


Good luck, everyone.

[Mister Fox]

It's the 10th December 2020, 0:30 (UTC+2) - the 2nd Mix Round has officially ended.

Sadly, not everyone has sent in an edit (missing is @flat_hat)
We have no submissions after the deadline.

Please check your upload links again, and have an eye on this thread for the final feedback and results.



I'm now opening up the room (again) for Q&A's and giving each other feedback (which is highly encouraged)

Please check out all other games on the community.


See you on the flipside.

[patrlord]

Hi everyone !

After hours of A/B/C/D…-ing between all the Round 2 mixes, I have finally chosen a winner. It was close, as I had expected!

On the ‘technical excellence’ side of things, there was little to distinguish the round 2 submissions. They were all really good, and everybody took on board my comments and moved their mix to where I wanted to go. I want to sincerely thank you all for providing such a strong set of mixes and I can say that yes, I have definitely learned some lessons and techniques to improve my own mix. I particularly like Canese’s use of filters to create tension in key sections of the song. I love Kirurg’s treatment of the drums. I digged alavault’s ‘dark’ (no, I really mean ‘with attitude’) mix.

To make my final choice I had to apply the rather difficult to describe concept of : what I like . Thus rapidly descending into the murky waters of client preference which I struggle to explain in plain terms but I’ll do my best !

Here is my final feedback on the top 3 mixes.
I found myself running out of time to evaluate every single finalist’s mix, so I only give the top 3 here. But on request I will provide detailed feedback to anyone else who asks.

Kirurg - WINNER - superbly accomplished mix
* It feels open, full, glued and spacious (yet focused, with body, not swimming).
* I love the drums, tight and punchy. It’s the best drum sound of all the mixes, they sound so natural.
* Overall excellent balance between all parts, every instrument has its place
* Crescendo up to Chorus 2 really shines through
* Great tonal balance throughout
* I think that using a metal guitar amp we can make that final lead more juicy, but it’s already very cool
--> Best point overall: the space and glue in the mix, the overall song dynamics + drums sound perfect
--> Points to improve: the vocals could be slightly more forward (+1db ?)

Canese - RUNNER-UP 1 - excellent, superbly polished mix
* The most tight & punchy version overall, very modern
* The rising LP filter on the drums at key sections of the song is COOL
* Great dynamics building up towards the climax in chorus 2
--> Best point overall: excellent creative use of auto LP filter to create tension in build up to choruses - some might say it’s an obvious technique but you are the only one to have used it out of 63 submissions and I LOVE IT
--> Points to improve: reduce inter snare / hi-hat sounds in drum track to let the bass + snare shine through

Rvalle - RUNNER-UP 2 - again a really superbly composed mix, kind of halfway between the open-sounding mix of Kirurg and the more close-sounding mix of Canese
* Listening to it alone, it sounds so great. It’s when I switch A/B/C between mixes with Kirurg and Canese that I notice some small differences. It feels like Rvalle’s mix is halfway between Kirurg’s open-sounding mix and Canese’s more close-sounding mix. (Which means nothing in terms of choosing a winner, it’s just down to style)
* I notice that in this mix, the bass hold is mostly missing. That is really important to give a deep warmth to the song. I think that because of this, it makes the whole song sound somewhat light and less well grounded.

I think if Canese had Kirurg’s drums and a tad more ‘air’ he might have stolen the podium. His mix had a more precise / punchy style. And I was so impressed by Canese’s LP effect on the drums and synth motion : it rocked !! Canese, you were so close to winning on that alone ...
And Rvalle was such a strong mix, if it had a bit of the drums of Kirurg and the dynamics of Canese, (and a bit more 'bass hold') it would have stolen top spot too.

But in the end, Kirurg’s glue, space, body and presence, and perfect drums, won it overall.
Special mention to Tonnobass and Rvalle who delivered leads that had some real character and drive, like an electric guitar (it may seem like a small thing but it’s such a key part of the song that it matters a lot, well done).

I am open to give detailed feedback to anyone that asks.

Special thanks to Mister Fox for organising this. As a song provider I see how much time and effort it requires on his side to prepare and manage these competitions. There are numerous not-so-obvious stages to go through to prepare viable mix packages for each competition, and a lot of work goes on behind the scenes to set these competitions up, so a I propose big round of applause to him for working tirelessly every month to make this happen !

Cheers, Patrick