so it seems that lots of people used limiters on the entire mix? isnt that cheating in a way of a mix contest, not a mixing/mastering contest?
No, I don't think so. And I don't care someone does use a limiter on the stereo bus, if they do it right and it helps punch. You might get an extra point that way. But if you do it wrong, I will punish you mercilessly
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My earlier comments are more for the lowest scoring group, because they need the most help. The middle group is on the way, and the high group . . . well, mixing is the sum of doing 1,000 little things right, and they got I guess like 850 of them. This is why I don't like mixing, I don't have the patience! It's much easier to tell what is good than to actually do it.
Let's go back to the middle group. If a song is well tracked, then a faders up mix with some basic panning is going to be about a 5. Add some editing, volume envelopes, etc., to clean up the obvious stuff, you probably have a 6. When I mix, I do all that before a touch an EQ. Next, I'll high pass where necessary. Some people feel that's generally unnecessary, but I like high passin'.
Next, tracks I know are going to need compressors, I'll add the compressors. Bass. Vocals. Not too hard on the vocals to start with, just trying to get the general color of the vocal to see how it fits in the mix.
Now the drum submix. In a style like this, that is going to take some time. In fact, more time on edits and envelopes could pay off in the end. Get the relative levels of the drums right! Now it's ready for a bus compressor, if that's your approach. Mostly I would do the drum edits while soloing the bus, but never compression or EQ, I'd want to hear that in the mix.
OK, now what is still wrong? Go after it with EQ, whatever else you got.
You will note I don't spend a lot of time on guitars. I heard a lot of time spend on guitars, because the guitar tones were often very different. I am guessing many of you are guitarists. Here's the thing: I am also guessing the guitarist spent a ridiculous amount of time getting their tone the way they wanted during tracking. This is simply because they are guitarists, and most of them are that way (on the flip side, if you track a guitarist who is an idiot and has a horrible amp and horrible tone they insist on using, well then you probably need to try to fix it in the mix . . . and I don't envy you!)
Now, that isn't a bad thing; in fact, if I am mixing somebody's tracks I generally assume they spent all that time in tracking because they wanted the guitars to sound that way. So I tend not to change them unless there's an obvious conflict with another instrument, or a hole that needs filling.
When I judged, generally I didn't pay much attention to guitar tones. This is because I pretty much like nearly any tone I hear, unless I think it's really horrible. This is also why it's good to have another judge . . . I was first a bassist, so I like to hear tight drums. If you are a bassist, you will understand that.
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More on volume . . . another thing I did was run RMS on every mix. Then I ignore it (well, it's not like I can't hear it, but it's not important). Once I have everybody scored, it never fails: there is almost no correlation between final score and RMS. OK, there is a slightly higher average RMS in the top third, but the standard deviation is high. The top third ranges from -10 to -16, and not in that order. #1 was on the lower end of that range.
So there is no reason to try to mix to a number. It won't help your score.
In the bottom third, there was some crazy stuff going on . . . mixes from -7 to -22. I already talked about the superloud mixes. The really low level mixes, I just feel like they never finished mixing the song. When I say -22, I mean peak to RMS, so I consider there to be no difference between a 0 to -22 mix and a -6 to -28 mix, for example. A totally natural, uncompressed drum bus will be -20 or so. Add guitars, totally uncompressed, that's probably -16. Anything much less than that is likely to be unbalanced, either in relative levels of instruments, or some crazy EQ goin' on.
So you can use the numbers a little, at the extremes, as an indication that something is wrong. But in that middle range, say -11 to -16, it doesn't mean a thing.
So why do I keep referring to numbers? Well, I can type them. I can't make you hear what I am hearing, but I can show you how what I can see relates to what I hear.
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PS to LemonTree: my notes say that I thought yours was a bit muddy in the low mids, and that harmed the punch. Those low mids . . . they are hard. Maybe the hardest part of the spectrum.