Can You Help Me with the Balance of this Mix of "Damned if I Do (Don't)"?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Crazy Luke
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Here another mix of Damned if I Do (Don't) with more girth on the drums, as I experimented with the room mics. I have a "ready for CD" version, which is somewhat mastered (and loud), and an EM (electronic medium) version, which is less compressed, and ready for iTunes' RMS/LUFS automatic compression upload format.

I have been lurking your post here...

'Damned If I Do CD mix' is albeit compressed, but the mix sounds better IMO than the EM mix in some aspects. Especially the drums.

What is it you are using differently in those mixes? In the EM Mix the drums have way too much attack and sound strange to me.

Maybe apply what you are doing to the master out to 'only' the drums (group or bus) and not make the master out limiter do the work?

Just a suggestion. I do hear what the master limiter is doing to change certain aspects of the tone overall (guitars included), but I can assure you that if you get everything to sound the way you want before the master out, you will be way happier with the result.


By the way, I am quite impressed with the performance and sorry I didn't interject earlier. Though who cares what I think...

Good shit man!
 
Mix 40 = still VERY loud.
Sounds much better - mix is much improved.
The kick drum doesn't have much thump.
The pad still seems to just mark time until the solo - you could add a pre solo build or something!
Some parts of the solo area bit harsh on my earholes though.
 
I don't listen to a lot of metal so I don't know if the audience perspective is the norm for that but that's just down to what you like anyway, not a concern. Almost always there are examples of both on every type of music, even just a piano on classical.

The entire track seems really wide to me. Where the drums and their perspective do come into that is that since you seem to have the snare straight up the middle, it places almost the entire kit on the left side and if the drums are already wide, then they become unnaturally wide and almost completely from the left side; like the low floor tom fills are almost totally hard panned left. That could be intended, just not normal to my ears to be panned that hard.
The other thing that jumped out at me about the drums is that once again with the snare seemingly at 12 o'clock, when this high rack tom comes in, usually before a run down to the floor toms, it is the only drum hitting hard on the right side. Maybe that is a heavy metal setup but I'm used to the hi-hat being the only thing to the left (or right from this perspective) of the snare for almost all setups, though I understand that it does change and metal drummers are known to have the biggest kits, either way, with that tom seemingly the only drum come solely from the right, it sounds a little un-natural.

Of course there's no way for me to really know what you've got or are using but it sounds like in addition to the heavy compression others are mentioning, that there is a little over use of some sort of stereo widening plugin or possibly mid-side processing that was recently the domain of stereo mics but they add new algorithms every year and everybody overdoes them all a little bit while they're new.

caveat: I think this is my first post (outside of discussing my own microphone), definitely close to it, so I don't know if it's inherently understood or I need to say that I realize when I talk about the 'only' thing coming from one side or another, I'm talking about the presentation and overall use of the soundstage and that I do understand that if you unplugged the left speaker you would still hear the drums.
 
Thx, JohnnyWayne for your input. I have been a little liberal with the stereo field of the drums, so maybe I can close them in. I do, however, want some left to right movement (drummer perspective) from hi to low toms, but I will round up ant "lone" instruments sticking out too hard L or R.
Also, jimmys69 - thanks for your input and compliment as well!
 
Yo, Bruthish - Check the latest verion of Damned if I Do. I ran w yr suggestion, and brought the guitars up.

hey man, Sorry I just saw this. I listened to the EM mix and in my opinion the louder rhythm sounds a lot better, more attitude! I think your getting real close. I am with Jimmy...I can hear the limiter/compressor kicking in throughout the song. I had this song stuck in my head all weekend lol
 
Wow, some old school metal going on here. Vocals sound great, nice tight harmonies. Nice drumming too. The guitars sound oddly distant...maybe it's that slight flange on the intro guitar that sets that mood for me. I'd say either ditch the flange or make it more conspicuous, one way or the other. I don't think flange makes a very good "barely there" effect for that very reason. I think the hihat has too much high frequency to it, it kinda sticks out. But the mix overall needs a little more high frequency energy (I haven't listened to the older mixes so I don't know what state it was in before). It's a tough balance to give it some life but not make it piercing. Heck, maybe an EQ across the master bus with a little high shelf would do the trick. Not too much, just a few dB to give it some high end.
 
Much tidier mix. Still sounds like Jon Anderson fronting an 80s hair metal band playing a Budgie riff.
My obs re the synth remain unchanged.
There are a couple of points where the vocal gets a little loud/painful but generally it's controlled well.
Great mix development CL.
 
Here is my latest effort, and a response to Tadpui's request to have the rhythm guitar more present. Also, because members are critiquing a variety of genres in this forum, I will submit these hard rock, metal mixes with the gain reduced to about -10 rms, but with the same DR as the original, so they wont be "loud as f**k".
 

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