Mix/master critique

J

Jake93

New member
Hi all,

I'm new to this forum and the first thing I'm doing is selfishly asking for you guys to critique my mix.

My friend and I have been working on a few instrumental tracks for an EP. I've opted for a very low budget home "recording studio". This pretty much consists of SONAR home studio, an M-audio M-track Quad interface (4 channels, 44.1kHz, 24bit), and a Session 1 AKG mic set (we mic'd up some drums in a practice room so only had limited time). I don't think a highly polished sound is really achievable with this, but we hope to have something listenable nevertheless. I've attached the first track, I've listened to it so many times whilst mixing that I can no longer tell if it sounds any good or not.

Much appreciated.

Edit: 2nd song also attached.
 

Attachments

  • Anticolour.mp3
    6 MB · Views: 29
  • Once It Rained On Mars (220kbps).mp3
    8.6 MB · Views: 12
Last edited:
I think there is some good and bad in this mix.

First thing tho, it's way over limited. That creates a general distortion to everything that makes a good critique very difficult. So first off, I'd post a version that isn't quite so squashed.

The rhythm guitars, as far as I can tell, don't sound too bad. A bit honky in the 1K area I think. But they have a kind of nice breakup and are definitely not harsh.

The clean guitar sounds OK to me.

The bass sounds a bit low in the mix. Might be just a bit weak in the low end. Tough for me to tell for sure.

The drums are a bit mechanical. Snare sample is decent. Kick is decent. The crash cymbals are a bit forward in the mix. The cymbals seem to have a bit of nastiness in the mid 2K range. Their high end sounds a bit hyped.

Anyway, I don't think this is a bad start by any measure. But put up a version that isn't so squashed so people can hear what's underneath all of that squashing.
 
Thanks, Triple M

Here's a version with limiter off. For the drums, we didn't really have a lot of time to mess around with mic placements on the kit and only used 4 mics (kick, snare, overheads). The overheads probably picked up too much of the cymbals and not enough snare, I'm not sure I can tone down the cymbals without compromising the snare sound. They might also sound a bit harsh because the mics were pretty cheap. I had a compressor on the overheads' bus, which I removed and it perhaps sounds a little better.

Cheers,

Jake
 

Attachments

  • Anticolour (no squashing).mp3
    6.1 MB · Views: 16
THis one was much easier to listen to.

The drums sound much better to me. The cymbals aren't so strident.'

I thought the balance on things was pretty good.

I thought the distorted guitars had a bit too much gain dialed in. When the song gets to the big power sections, those guitars just become a mash of one sound with no distinction from one chord to the next. There isn't any chug to them.

But this is a pretty decent sounding mix to me.
 
Hey Jake, I like the first mix better, which is weird, because I kinda hate too much compression haha. Really cool song...nice guitar riffs.
The mix has a lot of technical problems, but I like the raw garage rock vibe of mix 1.
 
Cheers guys,

I've got a large "reverb cloud" on top of the guitar track and I quite like the sound it creates, I think the bass does a decent job of carrying the main melody. I do think the cymbals sound much better with the compressor off the overheads, come to think of it I don't know why I did that, it compromises the stereo image of the kit also.
 
The first one is way too squashed for me - not that this is my kind of music, but it really needs a bit of relief somewhere. I felt like it was just a tiny bit unbalanced, at least in the beginning, and a little bit of compression/limiting wouldn't hurt. Apologies in advance but here's your 2nd one with the tiniest bit of that and a .5dB balance shift with slight softening in the mids. It's easier for me to listen a couple times with that amplitude dip in the middle, though I might change what kind of leads the listener out of that too.
View attachment anticolor-medsqsh.mp3

P.S. I'm really impressed with what you've done here!
 
You've managed to retain good separation in the mix without it getting cluttered. It's pretty busy too towards the end and still retains the clarity. Whatever you're doing, it's working - on these speakers at least. Nice job
 
Listening to your second mix. It sounds pretty good. Not a lot of definition in the guitars, but it does that MBV wall of sound, miasma thing pretty well. I didn't think the bass quite took up the slack in the way you mentioned. It actually sounds low in the mix too on my monitors, and for my tastes. There's a part at the very end where the guitars are dying out and I hear the bass slide up. It sounds clear and good there. Elsewhere it disappears into the miasma. Drums all sound good. Write some vocals.
 
Cheers,

Keith, what did you do to "soften the mids"? It's subtle but I like it. And thanks Bulls Hit.

We're doing an EP which will consist of 3 songs, I've pretty much finished tracking the 2nd song so here it is attached. It's squashed as hell, I have a tape saturation emulator, limiter and soft clipper on the master bus. To be honest though I really like what this does to the mix.
 

Attachments

  • Once It Rained On Mars (220kbps).mp3
    8.6 MB · Views: 5
Robus said:
Listening to your second mix. It sounds pretty good. Not a lot of definition in the guitars, but it does that MBV wall of sound, miasma thing pretty well. I didn't think the bass quite took up the slack in the way you mentioned. It actually sounds low in the mix too on my monitors, and for my tastes. There's a part at the very end where the guitars are dying out and I hear the bass slide up. It sounds clear and good there. Elsewhere it disappears into the miasma. Drums all sound good. Write some vocals.
Click to expand...

Cheers for the advice. I'm getting mixed responses so don't really know what to do. I like to keep the bass as low in the mix as a I can.
 
My general take on your original posting: Anticolour

Cool! I like when everything hits around the :30 mark, then at the 1:00 mark things filter out a bit and the drums are really nice - moreso here because the guitar-like sounds aren't covering them up as much. Then it quickly builds up again, without dragging on - I like that. I also like the 2:18 mark - sounds like everything kinda "sparkles" away down to the ending. The drums sound good on my end. I like the note bending on the bass line.
 
Jake93 said:
Keith, what did you do to "soften the mids"? It's subtle but I like it. ...
Click to expand...
Ozone 5 EQ - pic attached. Just moved a couple things around until it took a tiny bit of edge off for me. (The -.6dB on the left might have been part of what you heard, too.)
Screen Shot 2017-11-25 at 6.38.46 PM.png
 
Jake93 said:
...I've pretty much finished tracking the 2nd song so here it is attached. It's squashed as hell....
Click to expand...
If all you're doing is producing your own CD that kind of "sausage" is Ok, but if you'll be targeting any streaming services like Spotify you might be surprised how it gets rendered there.

Again, this only applies to streamed music (e.g., Spotify, iTunes, YouTube videos) and apologies in advance if you know all this, but if it's news, you'll want to understand the LUFS targets that some sites are using. If that track goes to Spotify (e.g.), as is, from what I've read, you would hear it with about a -8dB (i.e., negative) gain. It loses a lot of excitement then!
 
Hey man,
Good song, good mix but I would halve (at least) the volume of the hi hats, and take some middle out of them. I think the whole thing will come together better once you do that.
 
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