Critique my mix

[Joël van Dam]

Heya guys,

I'm kind of new to mixing and mastering. Here is the mix I did. I'm the vocalist/producer/recording engineer/mixer.
Would you fine people be so kind as to critique my mix? Anything that comes to mind is much appreciated.


https://soundcloud.com/jo-15/unfold-mix/s-3hcb6

I have put most of my money in mic's. The plugins that are really limiting(no pun intended) me right now are the following:
My bus compressor
- DCAMFreeComp

The mastering plugins, I use:
- DCAMFreeComp
- ReaEQ
- JS Stereo Enhancer
- TB_Reelbus
- W1 Limiter

Sidenote: The backing vocals are recently added and made with pitch-shifting software. I'm still too mic-shy to record them for real. (have to practice the bastards first)

 

[TripleM]

Welcome to home-rec. Don't worry about your voice - it's nice.

Overall, it's pretty good. Here are my preferences/nits:

Too much reverb on everything for my tastes, but especially on the vocal and drums. Sounds like 80's synth-pop reverb.

The bass has some boomy frequencies. Like maybe in the 80hz-120hz range. It's a bit loud too.

Clean guitars sound nice to my ear. Crunch guitar was OK, but I thought the clean tone was better. Not enough definition/clarity in the upper midrange on the crunch guitar.

 

[Nola]

hi joel. it's weird there is a lot of reverb yet it still feels very close to me. is a lot of it recorded DI? it feels that way to me. maybe mess with your predelay and reverb in general to push some stuff back.

 

[Joël van Dam]

First of all, thank you for your comments. They are all added to my big list of things to change.

Too much reverb on everything for my tastes, but especially on the vocal and drums. Sounds like 80's synth-pop reverb.

I'm going to look into this. The drums defiantly lose their directness.

The bass has some boomy frequencies. Like maybe in the 80hz-120hz range. It's a bit loud too.

I really struggle with this. I know the answer is multi-band compression but I can't seem to get it right. Your guesswork on the problem-frequency is spot on!
This is the bass guitar:

If I use a multiband to tame the 100-ish hz I lose all my lowend =S

Clean guitars sound nice to my ear. Crunch guitar was OK, but I thought the clean tone was better. Not enough definition/clarity in the upper midrange on the crunch guitar.

The distorted guitars had so much 3khz in them, it made them sound really thin. Maybe I overdid the equalization.

hi joel. it's weird there is a lot of reverb yet it still feels very close to me. is a lot of it recorded DI? it feels that way to me. maybe mess with your predelay and reverb in general to push some stuff back.

Bassguitar was recorded with my Sansamp. The rest is real instruments with real mic's.
I have the feeling that I need to get the vocals and the drums on the foreground, maybe pushing other things back is the solution!

 

[TripleM]

I wouldn't use a multi band compressor to fix the bass guitar. I'd notch it with an equalizer. But that's me. And if that causes it to lose all its low end, then something is wrong with the way your're doing it - either you're reducing volume by too much and/or you're taking out too wide of a band.

 

[Joël van Dam]

I wouldn't use a multi band compressor to fix the bass guitar. I'd notch it with an equalizer. But that's me. And if that causes it to lose all its low end, then something is wrong with the way your're doing it - either you're reducing volume by too much and/or you're taking out too wide of a band.

But the high spot in the bass isn't static. When the note goes up. It goes up and vice versa. You'd have to make the q quite big =S

 

[andrushkiwt]

But the high spot in the bass isn't static. When the note goes up. It goes up and vice versa. You'd have to make the q quite big =S

Listened but didn't read all the comments. Is the bass through an amp sim? Can't you use the sims EQ knobs? Also, nothing wrong with 2 or 3 small EQ notches in the problem area...as long as you don't make them all on top of one another wide huge q's.

The reverb application makes this sound similar to Europe, to me. def an 80's sound. good song writing. good voice, that's not something you should be worrying about. it's just fine..very good actually

 

[Joël van Dam]

I's so nice that all you guys are taking the time to listen to my stuff and teach me things!

Listened but didn't read all the comments. Is the bass through an amp sim? Can't you use the sims EQ knobs? Also, nothing wrong with 2 or 3 small EQ notches in the problem area...as long as you don't make them all on top of one another wide huge q's.

The bass guitar is a VT style sans amp. I'll add EQ'ing it to my long list of stuff to do!

The reverb application makes this sound similar to Europe, to me. def an 80's sound. good song writing. good voice, that's not something you should be worrying about. it's just fine..very good actually

Awh thank you! But I must say that we are shooting for something more modern than Europe =D
I'm going to look into the reverb thing.

 

[TripleM]

But the high spot in the bass isn't static. When the note goes up. It goes up and vice versa. You'd have to make the q quite big =S

That's OK. Use your ears more than your eyes. Yes that peak will move up and down. But there will probably be one spot within that range where the boominess will ring out. That's where you will want to cut. Making a broad cut with the multiband is likely why you're losing your low end.

Take your EQ and make a real narrow band, and a big boost (like 10db or so). Then, while the song is playing, gradually move that narrow boost through the problem range. Somewhere in there, the boominess is really going to jump out. That's probably the spot you're going to cut. Leave the band where it is, and change the 10db boost to a -4 to -6 db cut.

See if that gets rid of the boomiess without decimating the whole low end.