Another Mix Contest - Finally Here

  • Thread starter Thread starter guitar zero
  • Start date Start date
guitar zero said:
Mix 5 (trumpino 1)
Pros: Good kick. Snare sound is good, but... Panning is good

Cons: One big one- snare is way too loud, makes it hard to focus on anything else. The echo/reverb on the vocal makes it sound too processed for this genre.

Overall: Hard to tell with the snare so loud.



Third Place: Timkroeger: Great job with the drums, by far my favorite drum mix. Just needs a little more stereo spread 3d-ness and this will sound great.

Second Place: simman: This mix was a clear winner if not for the lithpy vocals. Would have won easily without that. Could never send this to mastering without fixing that one thing. Otherwise great mix.

First Place: D. Vincent. Solid mix with no glaring errors except the ending could be tidied up a bit and lower the kick and bass a titch.

Thanks again to poetic for adding drums, and helping with the judging.

Hope you all had fun. I know I did. Hope this helps with your future mixing skills. After all that is the goal.
Click to expand...

Hey thanks again Guitar Zero and Poetic for letting us do this song. It was a real treat to listen to while mixing it. Listening to it again and you are exactly right that snare is loud. Also the vocals, yeah I guess they did sound a little too overprocessed, I guess kind of more like a pop song or something, didn't notice til you pointed it out. I might try to post another mix just to see what you think, IF you got time to listen and feel like it.

Congrats to D. Vincent, Simman and Tim on this. After listening to there mixes and a lot of others here I can really tell that mine is pretty bad.

Later
 
Hey, thanks for the great feedback and for taking the time to evaluate all mixes. That was some really good feedback! Wow, 3rd place is nice!

guitar zero said:
Mix 3 (timkroeger)
Pros: IMO this mix had the best snare sound, just right! Just the right amount of roominess to the drum mix.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the kudos on the drums, I think I spent most of the time I had available to mix on the drums. For those of you who are interested how I mixed the drums:

Most of the sound comes from the overheads. I lined up the Overheads, Snare, Tom and Kick tracks first. There's no compression on the overheads, just some EQ (actually quite a bit of tweaking but no mountains of EQ). I used the stock ReaEQ from Reaper to tune the Overheads:

50Hz: +1.0dB
160Hz: +3.0dB
417Hz: -1.6dB
1.6kHz: +2.8dB
7.6kHz: +2.0dB
15kHz: +2.4dB

Then I used the UAD Pultec-Pro EQ for color:

20Hz attenuate@2.9
200Hz peak@2.5
500Hz dip@2.0

I normalized the Toms to 0dB and set up a gate at -13.9dB with a 50ms attack and quite a long release at 450ms. A little ReaEQ, too:

50Hz: +2.9dB
400Hz: -3.6dB
5kHz: +2.9dB

I left the toms pretty loud because they're used so sparingly and I really like the sound of it.

On the Kick I used the UAD LA2A in compress mode with gain@67 and peak reduction @90. That's pretty much, but that really made the kick sound roomy and that's what I was aiming for. I have to admit, it's pretty low but there's a new mix coming down the line where I fixed that level issue. After the LA2A comes the UAD Pultec EQ:

100Hz boost@1.0, attenuate@3.0
4kHz boost@7, bandwidth@3.1
20kHz attenuate@10

Now, I wanted to get some of the brushed Snare standing out but not too much. Most of the snare sound comes from the overheads anyway but for finetuning I sent the snare track through the UAD 1176LN limiting amplifier:

input: 30
output:14
attack: 6.0
release: 5.9
ratio: 4

Then again comes the UAD Pultec-Pro EQ:
30Hz attenuate@3.2
200Hz peak@1
300Hz dip@10
5kHz boost@4, bandwidth@7

The drum tracks go to a drum bus which is first compressed via UAD LA2A in compress mode and gain@50 and peak reduction @40. Then UAD Pultec-Pro EQ again to shape the "submixed" drumset:

100Hz boost@3.2
300Hz peak@3.0
1kHz dip@2.0
2kHz peak@3.0
10kHz boost@2.5, bandwidth@7.5

And last but not least a UAD EMT-250 Reverb. I just used the "REVERB-Drum Room" preset :spank: and turned down dry/wet until I could barely hear the effect.

That may well be a lot of plugins, maybe even too much but I'm working on it ;)

guitar zero said:
Also, the vocals are just right. They don't need much help, and it sounds like you left them pretty much alone.
Click to expand...

Hmm, I found the vocals to be pretty good and I think you're right that they don't need a lot of help. Nevertheless I wanted to play around with some stuff, so I routed the vocals out of the box into the outboard LA-610 MkII channelstrip...

preamp gain: +5
peak reduction: 3
makeup gain: 7
mode: comp

... and back into the box. I used a gate because I was too lazy to clean up the track, a highpass at 80Hz and the UAD Pultec EQ for a little color in the low end:

100Hz boost@3.2, attenuate@1.9

guitar zero said:
Cons: Where's the kick? Dobro and tele seem a little low. Mix sounds a bit cramped and closed. Ending not great.

Overall: Solid mix, just needs to sound more open and 3 dimensional.
Click to expand...

I tried to fix the issues in this new mix. Turned up the kick a little, wider panning, shouldn't sound cramped anymore. Fixed the end and turned up tele and dobro a little. I moved the accoustic guitar from the left to the right, too. Some level tweaking here and there in the 0.1dB - 0.6dB area.

guitar zero said:
Third Place: Timkroeger: Great job with the drums, by far my favorite drum mix. Just needs a little more stereo spread 3d-ness and this will sound great.
Click to expand...

I hope I achieved some more 3d-ness with the new mix :)

Thanks again for putting up the tracks, it was a good learning experience for me and it's nice to see that people still try and improve their mixes although the judging has been done already.

Cheers
Tim
 
Oh, and of course - before I forget - congratulations to simman and D. Vincent for 2nd and 1st place!

Cheers
Tim
 
travelin travis said:
i listened back and holy crap, i was sizzling eggs. :mad: i did a very quick remix.
Click to expand...
Yep, this one is way better. Now I can focus on the mix better. The bass in the lower notes gets really indistinct, rumbly and muddy. Maybe just high pass the bass and that should clear up. Ending is way better. Still need to fix the hard stops. Vocal sounds a little boxy, but drums are way better than the first mix.



timkroeger said:
Hey, thanks for the great feedback and for taking the time to evaluate all mixes. That was some really good feedback! Wow, 3rd place is nice!



Thanks for the kudos on the drums, I think I spent most of the time I had available to mix on the drums. For those of you who are interested how I mixed the drums:

Most of the sound comes from the overheads. I lined up the Overheads, Snare, Tom and Kick tracks first. There's no compression on the overheads, just some EQ (actually quite a bit of tweaking but no mountains of EQ). I used the stock ReaEQ from Reaper to tune the Overheads:

50Hz: +1.0dB
160Hz: +3.0dB
417Hz: -1.6dB
1.6kHz: +2.8dB
7.6kHz: +2.0dB
15kHz: +2.4dB

Then I used the UAD Pultec-Pro EQ for color:

20Hz attenuate@2.9
200Hz peak@2.5
500Hz dip@2.0

I normalized the Toms to 0dB and set up a gate at -13.9dB with a 50ms attack and quite a long release at 450ms. A little ReaEQ, too:

50Hz: +2.9dB
400Hz: -3.6dB
5kHz: +2.9dB

I left the toms pretty loud because they're used so sparingly and I really like the sound of it.

On the Kick I used the UAD LA2A in compress mode with gain@67 and peak reduction @90. That's pretty much, but that really made the kick sound roomy and that's what I was aiming for. I have to admit, it's pretty low but there's a new mix coming down the line where I fixed that level issue. After the LA2A comes the UAD Pultec EQ:

100Hz boost@1.0, attenuate@3.0
4kHz boost@7, bandwidth@3.1
20kHz attenuate@10

Now, I wanted to get some of the brushed Snare standing out but not too much. Most of the snare sound comes from the overheads anyway but for finetuning I sent the snare track through the UAD 1176LN limiting amplifier:

input: 30
output:14
attack: 6.0
release: 5.9
ratio: 4

Then again comes the UAD Pultec-Pro EQ:
30Hz attenuate@3.2
200Hz peak@1
300Hz dip@10
5kHz boost@4, bandwidth@7

The drum tracks go to a drum bus which is first compressed via UAD LA2A in compress mode and gain@50 and peak reduction @40. Then UAD Pultec-Pro EQ again to shape the "submixed" drumset:

100Hz boost@3.2
300Hz peak@3.0
1kHz dip@2.0
2kHz peak@3.0
10kHz boost@2.5, bandwidth@7.5

And last but not least a UAD EMT-250 Reverb. I just used the "REVERB-Drum Room" preset :spank: and turned down dry/wet until I could barely hear the effect.

That may well be a lot of plugins, maybe even too much but I'm working on it ;)



Hmm, I found the vocals to be pretty good and I think you're right that they don't need a lot of help. Nevertheless I wanted to play around with some stuff, so I routed the vocals out of the box into the outboard LA-610 MkII channelstrip...

preamp gain: +5
peak reduction: 3
makeup gain: 7
mode: comp

... and back into the box. I used a gate because I was too lazy to clean up the track, a highpass at 80Hz and the UAD Pultec EQ for a little color in the low end:

100Hz boost@3.2, attenuate@1.9



I tried to fix the issues in this new mix. Turned up the kick a little, wider panning, shouldn't sound cramped anymore. Fixed the end and turned up tele and dobro a little. I moved the accoustic guitar from the left to the right, too. Some level tweaking here and there in the 0.1dB - 0.6dB area.



I hope I achieved some more 3d-ness with the new mix :)

Thanks again for putting up the tracks, it was a good learning experience for me and it's nice to see that people still try and improve their mixes although the judging has been done already.

Cheers
Tim
Click to expand...
Tim, thanks for posting your drum treatment ideas. I've always wanted a UAD card just for the pultec, but I'm on an i-mac with no PCI slots, so I'm SOL.

The new mix is great. Way wider soundstage. Kick sounds good (on headphones right now). Thanks again for playing.
 
I am confused? this is the "another mix contest thread" right? I just added another mix, your link just sent me to MP3 mixing clinic and it looks like my reply is in the "another mix contest - finally here" thread. So I dont understand if I was supposed to post somewhere different...:drunk:
 
ryanefl said:
I am confused? this is the "another mix contest thread" right? I just added another mix, your link just sent me to MP3 mixing clinic and it looks like my reply is in the "another mix contest - finally here" thread. So I dont understand if I was supposed to post somewhere different...:drunk:
Click to expand...

Nah man, this is the right spot. Good mix. Just listened on headphones. Seems spread out well and levels are pretty good. Kick maybe a little hot and pillowy, but I really need to hear this on monitors to tell about the bass and kick. Thanks, hope you had fun mixing this one.

Here's my final mix. I think I'm happy with this one (for now).
 
Last edited:
hey man, thanks for the feedback. this was a cool tune, I'm digging the groove definitely. I would guess there could be some weird low end stuff in my mix, the speakers on the computer i used are the cheapest computer speakers I have ever seen, that some kid a best buy suggested to my girlfriend. Even worse it has a subwoofer that is just useless. Still fun though.
 
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