Gimme some feedback on this mix (metal)

metalhead28

metalhead28

Hates Raymond
I recorded this album for some good friends of mine several months ago, and we've only recently put the finishing touches on it so that I can revisit this mix. I posted some of this material a couple months back but this is a totally new mix. What do you guys think? Any comments are welcomed!


 
Sounds good brother...my only gripe would be it sounds like either you used a noise cleaner or it's just a badly compressed mp3... it's not horrible but noticeable...makes the whole thing sound flat, dull, lifeless. It's missing that openess if ya know what I mean.

Good mix though...and a good mix for the style.
 
I'm not a regular listener of this type of stuff, so here's just my personal opinions:

Guitars sound very good. I hate those type of vocals, but they seem to be right for the genre and sit well in the mix. I think maybe the bass could use more presence, but it seems that the bass gets buried pretty often in this genre of music. The drums sound pretty good, especially the toms and kick. I think the snare could use just a touch more punch. I really like the solo with the panned harmonizing guitars. I think the "middle" solo could come up some with maybe some stereo chorus or something to make the transition from middle to hard-panned harmonies not so distinct.

But again, I'm not a regular growl-metal listener, so I probably don't know shit about it. These are just things I noticed.

Overall though the production sounds great. Everything is clear and polished sounding. Good job. :)
 
Sounds good brother...my only gripe would be it sounds like either you used a noise cleaner or it's just a badly compressed mp3... it's not horrible but noticeable...makes the whole thing sound flat, dull, lifeless. It's missing that openess if ya know what I mean.
Click to expand...

I think I know what you mean. They want to have this mastered, so I will probably back off the compression quite a bit and give them some very modest levels to work with. Hopefully that will help and the mastering gurus can work their magic.
If I give the band a mix to review that is super quiet, they think it sounds horrible. :D
 
Yeah, well just so you know I'm nit-picking, but it's shit like that, that drives me nuts in my own recording... I wanted to make note of it, cause if you have been mixing it and listening to it for awhile it may not be as noticeable to you now, but you'll hear it more after a week or so of not hearing it.

Like I said it 'could' be the mp3 conversion, but I don't think that is what it is.

You didn't say if you used something to reduce noise... ?

If ya didn't, I'm at a loss...then it could be the mp3...or multi-band comp on the high end..

Mix is fine and the instruments sound as they should for that style... more vol can be added later so no worries there...
 
Yeah, there is no sort of noise reduction going on. I have a little compression on most of the individual tracks, including a little on the drum overheads. Then I have a limiter on the master buss. I think by the time everything is done there is just too much compression going on. Also the drums were recorded in a small room and the overheads don't have a very open sound to begin with. Hopefully mastering can add a little air.
 
Nice clean tight mix man.
Nice guitar tones.
What was your setup for the guitars?

The mix as a whole seems a bit weak. Id work on your low end more to make the mix a bit meatier. Guitars seem to have a nice low end I think, but bass and kick and maybe even snare could do with more beef.

Good stuff.
Eck
 
The guitar set up was a 5150 II head into a Marshall cab with Vintage 30's.
There were 2 57's on the speaker, one on axis and one off. They recorded 4 tracks like this, so with both mics, 8 tracks in all.
I used a Brent Averil 312a for the on axis mic and an M-Audio Tampa for the off axis mic.

Thanks for the suggestions.
 
Perdicament said:
makes the whole thing sound flat, dull, lifeless. It's missing that openess if ya know what I mean.
Click to expand...
Ive got a feeling it could be from using a limiter on the mix, could be a mix issue but its very hard to tell what could be wrong in the mix to make it sound a bit flat.

I mastered the song to see if I could bring more life to the mix.
Hope you don't mind.
Let us know what you think.
http://www.lightningmp3.com/live/file.php?fid=8126

Eck
 
That sounds pretty good Eck. I'm just on PC speakers at work, so it's hard to judge. I'm interested to know what you've done though, and I'll take it home and give a better listen tonight.
 
I tamed the cymbals a little with some high end compression around 12k upwards. (If you can re-mix this song Id bring the cymbals down a bit and watch the 12k upwards region of your cymbals)
You could try duplicating your OHs and EQ the original to bring out the snare and toms around the 5K, and then with the other place a hi pass filter to about 8k (use a mellow Q so it doesn't sound fake) and compress a good good bit then boost from 12k upwards to get high end shimmer. That way you can get the nice naturalness from the original OHs, and you can control your high end shimmer with the duplicate OHs.

I carefully added some low end and shaped the EQ to keep the low end tight, and so the low mids weren't boomy from adding the low end.
I cleaned the mix up some more in the low mids, although before mastering I didn't think your mix could be any cleaner!!
I did some slight touch ups in the high mids, concentrating on the guitars mostly. I boosted at around 3k and cut around 2k. Very small cuts with tight Q. This took the ever so slight harshness from the guitars, but also didnt make them loose their presence.
I also added a stereo expander to bring more life to the mix. I dont tend to use stereo expanders but it worked well in this case. It ended up bringing the guitars out a tad more which seemed to add to the power of the mix.

Finally I squashed it to fek with an L2! :)
Made sure it was the same perceived volume as your original mix.

Hope you like it on a proper system.

Eck
 
After listening again Id definetly boost the bass volume and add more low end to the bass. Would make the mix sound soo meaty!

Eck
 
The mix sounds really good. Drums are well done. There is something odd about the vocals...I like heavy music but im not a fan of hardcore...so really this could be fucking awesome and I would have know idea.

good job,

-jD
 
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