Online mixing session with band mates?

Steve Ireland

New member
Hi folks, I hope this is the right place for this. I’m also hoping that the hive mind can help.

I’m currently mixing my band’s debut ep. I’m very inexperienced at this and at the moment with restrictions in place the only way I can get feedback from the chaps is by rendering a mix to wav and then sending it, via Dropbox and Facebook messenger, to each one then waiting for their views. Often the feedback is a little vague, e.g. “nip the drums up a bit”, or “lead guitar needs something”. I then have to interpret these, remix, render out etc. This is very time consuming and ultimately frustrating. So, I’m looking for an alternative.

With platforms like Zoom now taking off I was wondering if that or something else would allow for a live mixing session with the lads. Obviously, this is only going to work if they can hear the audio directly from the DAW into whatever platform we are using. If what they hear is what’s coming out of my monitors via the crappy mic on my iPad or whatever, it’s not going to work. Audio quality is absolutely vital.

Has anybody any methods they already use or have any ideas how it might work?

Thanks,

Steve.
 
I prefer to send high resoltuon mp3s rather than wav files. A little easier to send via email, uploading, etc. There is very little difference in audio quality between a wav files and a 320kbps mp3. Your band mates are not going to hear a difference if listening on earbuds or in the car.

Which leads into: You have to take into account how your bandmates are listening to the mixes. How are you listening? How a mix sounds on different sound systems is called translation. How does it translate from one system to the next. One way to help this is to have your bandmates listen to a commercially released tune that is similar to what you want yours to sound like. Then let them listen to your mix right after.

Then for comments and critiques, you have to pull more out of them then just "the guitar needs something".

In the end, you're the mixer and you have the final say. Give yourself 78% of the vote and everyone else 25%. or something along those lines.
 
Yeah, I’ve sent mp3 on occasion as well, it’s just frustrating waiting for responses etc which is why I thought the live online session would be excellent because then I’d be able to drag it out of them lol! Believe me, I’ve tried getting detailed feedback but the process is a real grind.
 
how you heard the expression "too many cooks spoil the broth" when I mix a band I tell them do not have everyone at the mixing session. Each member will only listen to their parts. That's whey in the days people actually used studios you had an engineer / producer making the mix decisions.

Alan
 
That’s a fair point and I’ve no doubt it is simply my inexperience / insecurity that wants the rest of the chaps’ input.
 
To answer your question about ZOOM, yes, you can route your PC audio through ZOOM so your bandmates can hear you mix live. Having said that, I don't know how good the audio quality will be once it's processed through the internet. I'm sure the signal will be compressed somehow. No it won't be like you're bandmates are sitting with you in the control room listening to a set of GENELECS, but it's better than dropboxing files back and forth and they can hear edits on the fly.

To route your PC audio through ZOOM, in the ZOOM audio settings, you will have to select your Audio Interface as your audio device rather than your webcam mic. This alone won't route your DAW into ZOOM as your SAW is audio out. You need to take a an output or send from your AI and send it back to the input of your AI. It's the AI input that ZOOM is monitoring. I do this by taking a send from my AI and routing it to a return on my mixing console. The MAINS on my console is connected to the inputs of my AI.

Make sense?
 
zoom audio is optimised for speech, highly compressed and auto level managed. I've not found a way to turn these features off as I think its linked to the audio suppression to prevent feedback and loop through.
 
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