$3500 mix vs. my mix.

[kikkis]

I thought I'd put this out there to get some thoughts.
Some background;
The beds were tracked to 2" Australian made Optro 16 track. Vocals are straight into Pro Tools HD, guitar solo is the Guitar Rig plugin.
I hired an ARIA (Aussie equivalent to the Grammys) winning engineer to mix the new album, and he convinced me that he could master it a lot better than most of the top name mastering engineers in Australia.
At the start of the year I had enough of trying to convince myself that it sounded any good, and decided to remix the whole thing myself.

So below are two links to the same song, one is his mix, and one is mine. To make it interesting I'm not going to tell you which is which. Please tell me which one, to your ears, sounds better.
All comments are truly welcome as I value the opinions of a lot of people on these boards.

Enjoy!!

Exhibit A
Exhibit B

[ecktronic]

So you did 1 of the mixes and the Grammy guy mixed and mastered the other?

Mastering can be personal preference when it comes to the pros of the game. Its not like 2 top pro mastering engineers will master your track the same, they will be different. Since mastering is a technical art form.

Ok, A sounds too much in the low end a tad. Its the kick drum. The guitar lead lacks upfront in your faceness. You could use some mid range boost to bring it in front. I like the vox panning. Nice stuff.

B, Has an annoying intro thing going on. Might work if its not soo long and annoying. Initially I prefer the overall tone of this, although the kick would be niceer somewhere inbetween the two mixes. The back vox panning sticks out a bit too much, mabe panning to far or volume or EQ or a mix of all of these.

Id take a wild guess and say that the pro mix is A and yours is B.
I prefer B although if the vocals sounded like A and the kick was something inbetween A and B you would have a pretty dang nice mix.

Eck

[ecktronic]

Forogot to say, the panning in B is a little off, thats one of the reasons I think that the pro mixing engineers mix is A as Id expect hed know how to balance the sides pretty well by now.

Good stuff. Nice tune, kinda Freddy Mercury vox.

Eck

[schismatic]

i'm really not a fan of the intro to B, but I think I prefer the vox better in B, except when the panning is so obvious that they don't sit for some reason. Drums I prefer in B. In A i thought the low-end was muddy too.

In B, the guitar solo sits well though, and it is generally a pleasant mix so........

Pro is B i think, A is yours

[Markaholic]

Im no expert but id say A= PRO,B=YOU !
But i do think the lead sounded way cooler in B.

[Perdicament]

A kicks alot harder.... B is there any drums or bass???? lol

I would almost say that A sounds like it's too pumped up and possibly the low end might cause some probs on different systems...that would be my only concern...

I do not like mix B...it's weak and the intro sucks and is way too long.... and the panning is annoying and takes away from the tune.....it a distraction...

FWIW

[bigwillz24]

A = Pro

B = You

Really easy to tell.

[warble2]

Originally Posted by bigwillz24

A = Pro

B = You

Really easy to tell.

My thoughts as well.

[kikkis]

Thanks people. Your thoughts are certainly helping.

[soundvile]

okay im not good with guessing games, but I actually kinda HOPE yours is B because I can't stand the way the first one is mixed as far as the bass goes. The second one is not only tight and punchy enough, you can actually hear what is going on in it with ALL the instruments. the firs tone seems a little buried in itself. I appreciate that type of intro on B as well, however I think overall it would be better shorter, like half that but with the same sweep, but thats my personal tastes deal. I really like the original sound here, aswell.

[NL5]

Well, my two cents -

Mix A sounds horribly amateur to me. There is no fidelity and a horrble low freq rumble going on.

Mix B sounds like a crappy pro mix - not fond of it either, but there are some fairly advanced things going on in the mix, whereas Mix A had nothing advanced going on at all.

edit - mix b bugs me mainly due to the cheezey intro and panning.

edit 2 - listen between 2:30 and 2:50 (times are forward about 10 seconds for Mix B) - HUGE difference in the way they sound.

[Perdicament]

Hmm, upon further review.... I have to say first off that I don't like either mix in their respective entireties.

Listening a bit closer... Mix A is too muddy and I'm pretty sure that the low end on a system with a big sub is just gunna pound wayyyyy to hard... Just guessing but based on what I've heard in my mixes vs. the real deal (studio productions) it's gunna be way too much low...I hope a "pro" wouldn't let that much low end slide by....it's sucking up 70% of the tune..and ya can't hear the bass line as well as in mix B.

I don't like the drums on either mix, chalk that up to personal preference... Mix B could use a touch more low... but is closer to the mark overall to professional...

The breakdown part that NL pointed out... MIX B wins hands down...although I think there is a tad too much panning...again personal pref...

Either way, I wouldn't be all too enamored with a so called grammy 3500 dollar mix of either.... The panning of the Vox on B is still distracting, and the intro IMO is ridiculous. 20 seconds of a waste of time...

Overall good tune though..and killer bass player... Just wish that the drums would hit me harder....it for some reason just sounds weak...another thing that is troublesome to me (for reference I'll use Mix B's time frame) is at 2:53-3:04 there is a bad and distracting/cluttering kinda distortion (and it's on both) almost sounds like it's the snare just ratteling....

Damm props to the Bass player.... actually all the musicians are impessive...cool guit solo...but that bass player fuckin jams his ass off.

Mix A - you
Mix B - 3500 clamz ---->Final Answer LOL

Actually, I dig this tune.... any chance of uploading the tracks so we can all take a shot and mixin 'er down?

[DavidK]

I prefer B. A seems too crammed together and smashed. Good vocalist

A lil distortion on B in the right channel.

[kikkis]

Cheers everyone. Getting lots of people's opinions all in a condensed place puts a lot of things in perspective. Also I've been checking out all your stuff and that puts things into an even greater perspective.
I guess I should have chopped off the intro to make it a little fairer.

Originally Posted by Perdicament

almost sounds like it's the snare just ratteling....

That would be the buzz roll on the snare...

Originally Posted by Perdicament

Actually, I dig this tune.... any chance of uploading the tracks so we can all take a shot and mixin 'er down?

Man, that's like 1.5GB of material!

[NL5]

Originally Posted by kikkis

Man, that's like 1.5GB of material!

We've done it with 800MB songs before - It can be done!

Are you gonna tell us which is which?

[caryindy]

Yes, B is the pro mix. Mix A has way too much low end.

I don't like either mix, for the reasons stated above. It's a cool song though.

[kikkis]

Originally Posted by NL5

Are you gonna tell us which is which?

Yes I'll let you know soon.

[Perdicament]

Dude meng... you don't even have to have a contest... upload em if yer willing...
I'd love to hear what some of the people here could do with that...

The contest (yeah the never ending one ) I did, I figure had to be close to 1.5 gig.... What I did was take the tracks (name them all) and RAR'd them in 2 separate files...

I'm sure there are plenty of willing hosts, up to you, butcha might get some cool mixes

[Microfiction]

I don't like either mix, but I really like the song

Great vocalist- actually all the instruments are great, really well performed.

I'd guess that A is yours, B is the pro.

[jrhager84]

A = you
B = Pro

Mix B seems to be a little more "alive" to me...although I'm a complete audio retard... just my uneducated .02

-Joel

[turtlishous]

my first pass thru these i thought A was yours....but now after hearing it a couple times the levels are FAR better in A and also has a bass guitar in it

A=pro
B=you

final answer

[kikkis]

Ok A was the 'pro' mix,
and B was my mix (with the 'annoying' long intro)

I guess aside from the panning issues, I got a fair amount of thumbs up.

Thanks everyone.

[Freudian Slip]

Wow I can't believe a pro put in that much Loooooooow end?

F.S.

[NL5]

Originally Posted by kikkis

Ok A was the 'pro' mix,
and B was my mix (with the 'annoying' long intro)

I guess aside from the panning issues, I got a fair amount of thumbs up.

Thanks everyone.

Wow. I'd ask for my money back. His mix was terrible. If you can go back and fix the panning issues and put a tad more bottom into your mix it will be pretty badass!

(and get rid of that intro!)

[jaybriggs84]

I'm not listening on my monitors, just some 20 computer speakers, but the vocals sound better in the A mix. 3500 is a lot of money....