Mix Challenge

Hi everyone!
Big thanks to the song provider for sharing the track — it was fun working on this one!

As for my monitoring setup: my main reference speakers are Focal Solo6 BE, and I also check the mix on Sennheiser HD660S headphones and AirPods Pro.

MIX

Mixing Notes:
For the drums, I enhanced the kick with some top-end boost, subtle compression, and saturation for punch. Snare was cleaned up with EQ, compressed, and sent to a reverb bus for depth. Overheads and room mics were balanced for a natural feel. The bass was EQ’d to sit well with the kick and compressed for consistency. Electric pianos and synths were shaped with EQ to avoid masking and placed in the stereo field with panning and modulation. Guitars were treated with light compression, some midrange sculpting, and stereo widening. Lead vocals went through gentle de-essing, EQ, compression, and time-based effects (reverb and delay sends). Backing vocals were blended with some saturation and spatial effects. A light mastering chain was added for final glue and loudness.

Good luck to everyone!

Hi, this is my first attempt here and I’m really excite to have some feedback from you.

Here's my mix: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EIemb ... sp=sharing

I usually mix with REAPER and a hybrid setup, because I prefer hardware saturation and dynamics but ITB eq (usually SSL native channel) for a quick recall.

So, on this beautiful song I do more or less this thing:

DRUMS: have a parallel to a townhouse convolution that gives a lot of pumping at drum and I work on each channel with a SSL native channel. There’s a bit of reverb on the snare

BASS: at first there’s a parallel to a channel strip with a valve preamp and a VCA comp. This gives me the sound I love on bass. There’s a eq for give some space at the kick

GUITARS: I pan a lot very track for have spatiality in the mix, there’s a parallel to a UAD distressor that I love on guitar and to an UAD tape echo.

SYNTH: nothing too strange, I pan also this thing a lot

EPIANO: I have two parallels here: one to a convolution of SSL FUSION (I know is a master outboard but sometimes I love this one on buss); other parallels goes to a YAMAHA SPX50D from ’80… this time I use this for chorus (everyone I think knows the symphonic preset on this)

MAIN VOX: eq by usually SSL, an analog 1176 (it works a little but give a lot of presence) and a parallel to another analog outboard a multifx for delay and reverb

BVOX: I use a parallel to the 1176 with the same settings of main vox for have some glue with that.

MASTER BUSS: I use a tape machine emulation for some analog color and a de-esser for any kind of harshness

Let me know what you think about…

Mix: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1d5rOjy ... drive_link

Drums : EQ and little bit of compression. Snare drums are quite distorted but with some dry signal mixed in. Added a reverb insert on the room to give it some size. Used Auto-align to get a head start phasewise.
Bass : Used a split between DI, Amp, a distorted track and a "sub" track. The sub track is the DI, compressed and saturated which then goes into Airwindows Subsonly.
Keys : added a widener and some saturation to make them poke through
Vocals : 1176 on everything, LA2A in addition for the BGV. Added a plate with predelay for the revrb.
Guitars : I didn't use the DIs, and the amp tracks were saturated and then compressed.

Hi all.
Thank you to @Strange for an interesting song to mix.
Thank you, as always, to @Mister Fox Fox for looking after all of this and hosting this challenge.

First, here is my mix:
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/krs6lqrm ... 2kteh&dl=0

I enjoyed mixing this song. It is a well crafted song and the arrangement and parts really take you on the journey nicely.

I pretty much just followed my nose with this and didn’t think too hard about what it could be. I listened to both the Soundcloud version and the one included in the download and figured that i would want to be aiming it to be somewhere in the zone covered by those two tracks.

My monitoring environment is a pair of Sennheiser HD300 Pro headphones which I have learnt in the past little while are actually very accurate. I decided to dig out ToneBooster’s Morphit and put that on my mix bus to aid my listening. It helped a lot. I also referred to my iPhone headpiece and the occasional trip in the car.

My eq approach was pretty simple. The most difficulty I had was sorting out the kick and bass sounds. To me they had a tendency to be a bit heavy handed so I spent a good deal of time experimenting with them eq wise to get them to feel right. I knew the kick was about right when I could feel it in my feet when listening on the iphone earbuds. I’m still not 100% sure about the bass - I don't know if it’s a level thing or it’s still just a little bit too thick.
All the guitar parts were used as they were provided - no extra amp sims. I combined the verse guitar amp and DI and the fills amp and DI. The other amp and DI parts I split as stereo pairs. Used a little EQ on individual channels to help them fit into the mix and compressed the guitar group as one buss. I added a tape delay to the verse and fill amp guitar tracks.
The keyboards were pretty much levelled and sent to a bit of reverb. For the electric piano I added an instance of CHOWTapeModel to add a little bit of something special and a tape delay.
The vocals were eq’d and had a bit of compression applied.

The main thought was that the drums, bass and vocals were the main spine of the track. The guitars added a bit more colour which mainly came in around the sides a bit more. The keys in the chorus added a more heartfelt vibe and I thought they worked best prominently in the centre.
The backing vocals I wanted to put up front with the main vocal. I felt they worked best this way as an interaction thing.
My vision of the end was like having a bunch of flowers in a vase with the lead vocal sitting in the centre with the other flowers popping up around him.

Anyway, thank you for the opportunity to gain more understanding.

Best of luck to all.

Tried to move away from studio clarity aims to 70's style of impact; somewhere in between. I monitor on JBL 306 Mk II in a completely untreated room. Mixes should try impact on the artists intention with as much texture and character as we can now afford. I like dynamic mixes and not an aggressively compressed drum set in particular. Also kept the space relatively small


https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/3w0huu80 ... ypmfc&dl=0

Hello!
Here is my mix. I hope you'll like it.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1k4ITP- ... p=sharing
What I did?
First, I'll put the tracks in order. There are many, and there are some I ended up not using (such as the guitar direct boxes).
I started by mixing the drums, starting with the overheads with a good amount of compression and lowering the brightness because the hi-hat cuts through them a lot.
Next up were the kick drums (drastically reducing the 400Hz) and the snare drum, where I linked the three snare tracks to a bus and there I slightly compressed and cleaned up the body weight, as it seemed excessive.
With that part done, I added the bass. I like the sound of the amp, but I prioritized the sound of the DI box. So the bass sound is a combination of 80% DI box and 20% amp sound.
The guitars: as I mentioned, I didn't use the raw tracks; I went directly to the amp recordings. I routed them all to a stereo group track and applied compression, HPF, and LPF. Not much more.
As for the cymbal tracks, effects, pads, etc., they don't have any processing; I just adjusted the volumes.
The pianos do have HPF and LPF.
The vocals were a real struggle. They're inconsistent and sometimes disappear from the recording, while sometimes they appear aggressively. I cut a lot with the EQ at 1k and 2k, and then used a limiter to try to equalize the parts so they sound more consistent throughout the song.
The choirs only have a main bus with HPF and LPF and a volume adjustment.
Snare drum, OH, guitars, voices and background voices have plate or room reverb as needed. There is also a delay effect on the voic.
On the main mix bus, I cleaned up some resonant frequencies and applied an HPF EQ at 30Hz and an LPF at 16k with a very high Q.
A PuigChild compressor compresses only 0.5dB at certain times to avoid being too drastic, and a limiter ensures that the peaks don't go over -1, although truth be told, they're far from that.

Thanks for the song and for letting us have a great time mixing it.

First of all...thanks to Strange for providing the Multitrack for this sweet song.

As requested I will give some insight in my mixing setup:

I mix ITB in my Studio. The room is really well treated (done by me) with lots of Bass trapping and diffusion in the right places.
My monitors are NS10s with a big sub.

Mixing this song:

Having read the requests from Strange and what he wishes from the mix I imported the multitrack into my template and listened to the original mix.
The mix is so good, that there was no benefit in trying to beat it. So I went for a totally different vibe.

When I go for vibe I try to mix very fast and establish a balance quickly. Then I get a sound just from processing the stereo bus with eq, saturation and compression until I have sound that I can work with.

My goal was a more rhythmically dominated mix so I treated the drums as a whole first on a drum bus until they were pumping a bit.
On the individual tracks I did very little, some eq to get the midrange right on most tracks and some modulation on keys.

The most important vocal I did the most work on. Some compression with various comps and some eqs doing very little. Then lots of automation for different vibes in different parts, mostly delays, no reverb because I wanted the vocal very intimate.

Hope you like it:

https://www.icloud.com/iclouddrive/095F ... tparkSound

Cheers, Hendrik

Hi Everyone, I'm late but here is my mix.

My Mix

I've started with organizing tracks - doing the mix with only the volume and pan, moving some parts of the tracks to new tracks just for separation,
Once It sounded best it could I added low pas filters - always in context to at (least) bass guitar.

song didnt need a lot in my opinion so as my approach was quite minimalistic I'd say.

Drums - Gbus comp on sum,
- kick drum is sample mixed in 60% and ssl channel strip
- Snare - I used 2 original tracks and used snare condenser as trigger for sample mixed in 60% then 1176 does the compression until I hear sustain od the snare drum
again processing is minimalistic most of the times is eq + ssl channel E and sometimes 1176 if needed

Bass - I used 2 tracks - Di is low passed and amp is high passed and low passed to taste - set up in context then some 1176 on each one of them
Low Bass needed 2 1176 in series. thereis chorus on high bass track as well - then bass bus has distressor, MV2 for some squeeze, ssl and side chain compression from the kick drum.

vocal are just eq, 1176, SSL and deesser LCR panned. Lead Vocal has parallel decapitator slightly mixed in, and another dacapitator for the bridge -same settings

vocals has only wide room reverb and delays

Piano only eq and ssl E channel. with widening for chorus part and room reverbs

guitar in verse has the same processing i just decided not to pan guitars as in the demo mix I felt everything needed to be either centre on stereo so widened the guitar to sound like it is in stereo and kept that tought process for all the tracks I wanted that melody guitar to respond to vocals in between the lines - I found it sounding very pleasant.

Synths claps and whistles didnt need much so most of it is just eq and a little compression. automation did the rest.

If you need more specifics let me know

Edit- my monitoring is Hi fiman sundara with mid side eq and harman curve + realphones mix focus mode. + yamaha hs7

Thanks to Mr. Fox and Strange for his song. I tried to keep the spirit of Pharell Williams's song, but with Dire Strait's guitars. The whole thing is mixed with SSL 4000 E console emulation, a little soft clipping on the drums, and a very close mixing sound.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FduY-M ... sp=sharing

Hi,
this is my entry for this mix challenge.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1O9aLk0 ... p=drivesdk
I really like the arrangement and the song idea, enjoyed mixing it.
My Listening situation:
Headphones AKG 701, I only have a tiny untreated asymetric room available.

Thoughts, feeling I tried to create:
You mentioned you are looking for a feeling of happy home driving.
I automatically thought about truck stops, trucker bars and the feeling of driving home at a medium or slow pace, being focused on the road while letting wandering the mind a bit, some things feel distant while others are very present, music playing, one is lonely but not alone.
I might not hit the feeling of “happy”, but I tried.

I did a lot to the song this time.

Where to start….
Bass: I used both tracks DI and Amp while Amp has more Volume, both are compressed only on certain frequencies to gain control. Both are only fed mono in bass-group where I added some Reverb – high frequencies are filtered.
“whistle” and “whistle synth” are grouped together whistle received reverb via send iq-reverb “chamber shower” customized (length stretched).
Backing tracks are grouped together they recived Chorus and Reverb via Sends as well. Chorous is Standard Cubase Rate (1/2). Reverb (iq-Reverb) “big Bathroom” Pre-Delay 91 ms. BGV (li+re) are hard panned to left and right.Vocal (LV):iq-DeEsser, Low-cut 83,3 Hz/ Q: 7,4/ -24dB:Sends: Chorus and Reverb (same as Backing tracks – but sent with different Volume (Post Panner)
Guitars: git bridge (di not in use) Low cut 64,2 Hz Q:0,3/ -24 dB Send to Mono delay (mono delay is panned opposite to Main panner) Same goes for “git chorus strat and –tele, “-funky crunch” but at different send volumes. Git –fills and verse were send to a reverb (iq-Reverb “chamber shower”)
E-piano: chorus and verse are send to a rotary and an effect group where I added a Gate, Bit crusher Metalizer, “Cubase’s Mono to Stereo” a plugin that controls the volume in the mid channel and finally an autopan that moves the resulting metallic highpitch sound between left and right at a rate of 0,11 – did this just for effect and to add a bit of high frequencies (barely noticeable I hope).
DRm-BD is compress using Iq-Eg (pushed on 57 Hz and High shelf from 2423 Hz up (5.9 dB)102 + 321 Hz are limited dynamically using a dynamic limiter) (resonance from the barrel – didn’t do the full trick but reduced it quite a bit)
Snares an Claps are compressed in the single channels (Cubase standard channel compressor) and routed to a snare group.
Congas Low cut from 119,7 Hz -24 dB Q: 6, compressed Cubase Standard (Channel) compressor I used a Stereo Enhancer to widen them.
Synth bridge and pad are send to iq-Reverb, they recived low shelf filters roughly from 320Hz downwards at max. -13,5 dB (Q:2.3). Shelf filter at 7914 Hz (for some “air”) +5,3dB.Synth Pad recived AutoPan as Plugin to move from left to right at a rate of 0,10 – a Stereo Enhancer widens this effect (directly plugged into the Channelstrip)
SFX – I only use a gate in SFX Rise (to cut out the unused signal in between).
In the sumgroups (instruments) I used the channel Eq’s to control the frequencies.
All instruments are routed in their subgroups while the groups are routed into an instrumental group were I very slightly compress them together form “harmony”.

I hope my mix is not tooo bad.

Thanks for the oppourtunity