I think I'm getting better at this...how's this mix?

Wow man, that sounds great! You're doing better at this than me, I got no nits for ya :D Good mix, cool song.
 
Thanks, suprstar! I appreciate the listen, and I'm glad you liked it :) I checked out your website - it looks like you are doing just fine at this ;)

Dave
 
Yup, sounds great Dave !

Great guitar sound, vocals, drums all sound great with a perfect mix.

The only thing I dont hear are the deep lows from the bass guitar, but I think it works OK as you have it.

Hard to believe its a home recording, great job!

Pete
 
Thanks, Pete! These are great times to be a home recording hobbyist, huh? It blows my mind what is possible now with a home recording setup :)

Very Best,

Dave
 
Man, Dave. I love your songwriting. Your arrangements also are pretty freakin' awesome. So glad you're here and sharing your stuff. I love listening to it!

Gotta say, though, I hear some *serious* pumping going on. I listened twice, and compared against 2 or 3 other songs, just to make sure I wasn't hearing things. I'm pretty sure it's compression problems. Your hi-hat has some weird compression artifact-ish stuff going on almost the whole time. High-end seems to be pretty messy, but it's not harsh, so it's not that you have lots of HF going on, it's just that the HF that is there, seems to be messy. The more I listened, the more I think that the kick drum coming in seems to cut out the high-end completely (or cover it up)... Just some weird pumping issues, along with some HF weirdness.... I hate to say it, but your vocals seem distorted, and kind of low-quality in a way. It's almost like they were recorded with a really low quality mic, and EQ'ed up to make them sound better. I've heard better vocals from ya, though, so I doubt it's your mic. Drums sound good (love your island-ish toms going on!) I think your snare could come up 2-3 db. It's get covered up a bit when things get going. Kick sounds nice! Other than the weird cymbal / hihat / and kick interference going on, I think they cymbals sound good, too.

Man, I love your stuff. Gotta keep it real, though. I hope my ears are just whacked, but it seems like this mix has some pretty bad issues...
 
I agree with everything PI said. Too pumpy, compressed, harsh, hot, etc. It seems to be smashed to death. I'm not an anti compression guy by any means, but it's gotta be done tastefully. This thing doesn't breathe at all. Total lack of dynamics. The song and performances are all fine. The mix needs to be re-done.
 
View attachment Last Straw.mp3View attachment Last Straw.mp3

Hey Guys, Thanks for listening! I'm scratching my head a little bit on my end, because I'm not hearing any of the things you are describing. I have some compression on the stereo mix, but not really that much, and honestly, when I'm listening here it's sounding like the best mix I've ever done :confused:

There was a thread I posted on awhile back here where I was listening to a track that everyone else was gushing over, and when I listened it sounded like a mess. I commented to that effect, going into great detail about everything that was wrong with the mix, only to come back the next day and discover that the site I was listening was streaming it to me in lo-fi for some reason (no way was it a user error...no way). :o:o:o I am hoping maybe there is something similar going on here...maybe an issue with the streaming or something...although when I just went out to soundclick and listened to double-check, it sounded fine.

Just as a check, I've attached the mp3 directly to this post, and I'm hoping you might give it a quick second listen to rule out any streaming shenanigans :)

If it's a bad mix, then it's a bad mix, and I'll need to take a closer look, but honestly, I don't think I can make it much better than it is now!!!!

Very Best,

Dave
 
It may be the best mix you've ever done, but that doesn't mean it can't be better. The direct MP3 link has the same problem (to me) that I heard in the streaming version. Very "hot". There is a fair amount of compression/limiting on the master bus and it seems the individual tracks (particularly the vocals) have some pretty heavy processing done to them as well. I know from personal experience that when I compress the snot out of my vocals or record too hot, I get that almost distorted sizzly kind of sound that your vocals have in this mix. Everything is hot and right up front. The build up doesn't build up. It's the same perceived volume all the way through. There's simply no dynamics. Like at 2:12 when everything drops out and comes back in. There's no suspense there. The lone guitar is just as loud as the whole track and when the "band" comes back it's not a powerful surge of music because the supposed-to-be quieter part before it is just as loud. And at the end when the band drops back out and it's just guitars and vocals, it's still damn near as loud as the most rockin parts. Know what I mean? It just never lets up. It's just a blast of loud from beginning to end. That's fine for metal or punk or hard rock, but this doesn't fit into those categories. This song naturally wants to have dynamic range and build ups and calm downs and it's just not there. I brought this mix into Reaper and checked it with a frequency analyzer and according to Voxengo Span, it's peaking in the -7/8 RMS range and averaging around -10/11. Voxengo's numbers might be wrong, but I use it to compare lots of stuff, and your track is tickling pro commercial release loudness. That's pretty hot for what I'm assuming was "mastered" with consumer level non-professional gear and experience. Nothing wrong with that, but if you're gonna go that loud, the pre-master has to be good and you have to really sneak up on it carefully. I'm not anti loudness or limiting or compression, but like I said before, it has to be done more tastefully so it sounds good. This sounds heavily processed. I think just calming down on the individual track compression and overall master compression will let this breathe more naturally and sound better.
 
Have to agree with that.

It really really reminds of of more recent RCHP recordings.
Great songs, great arrangements, great performance, but squashed

Stuff to look at there. It's already been detailed but other than that I loved it!

Great stuff.
 
Ok, that definitely makes sense (damn you, Greg, for making sense!). In this mix, I just threw a generic compression setting on the stereo bus, mainly to get the volume up, so it's definitely not an optimized setting. I'll be removing those settings and sending the dry stems over to Jan Ohlhorst for mastering before it goes on the album, so I didn't really spend any time trying to find the sweet spot.

In general, I'm between the proverbial rock and hard place, because I want commercial loudness, but then parts like the breakdown won't get the dynamic range they'd naturally have. This is probably not something I should admit, but I think I'm ok with that tradeoff.

I'm more concerned about the sizzling, almost distorted vocal sound you mentioned, and/or the HF weirdness that PI mentions. I have an exciter on the vocal track, because I was trying to get the vocals a little more out front and "clear" sounding, so maybe I'll start there to see if I've just gone too far with that. The weirdness with the hats is probably also the result of another calculated tradeoff that I always make - to correct some timing issues on the drums tracks. It works pretty well in general, but the overheads are what suffer the most with that, and there are usually some artifacts left over that I just can't seem to get 100% "fixed" after the timing correction. Again, for me, the timing is more important than audio perfection of the overhead tracks. Of course I'd prefer to have it all, but it's a compromise I have to make :)

As always, thanks for taking the time to listen and to provide such helpful and thoughtful feedback!

Very Best,

Dave
 
Steenamaroo, thanks for taking the time to listen. I just went out to your website and had some fun looking around for a bit...you have some great sounding tracks there!

Best,

Dave
 
dewhitt said:
Ok, that definitely makes sense (damn you, Greg, for making sense!). In this mix, I just threw a generic compression setting on the stereo bus, mainly to get the volume up, so it's definitely not an optimized setting. I'll be removing those settings and sending the dry stems over to Jan Ohlhorst for mastering before it goes on the album, so I didn't really spend any time trying to find the sweet spot.

In general, I'm between the proverbial rock and hard place, because I want commercial loudness, but then parts like the breakdown won't get the dynamic range they'd naturally have. This is probably not something I should admit, but I think I'm ok with that tradeoff.

I'm more concerned about the sizzling, almost distorted vocal sound you mentioned, and/or the HF weirdness that PI mentions. I have an exciter on the vocal track, because I was trying to get the vocals a little more out front and "clear" sounding, so maybe I'll start there to see if I've just gone too far with that. The weirdness with the hats is probably also the result of another calculated tradeoff that I always make - to correct some timing issues on the drums tracks. It works pretty well in general, but the overheads are what suffer the most with that, and there are usually some artifacts left over that I just can't seem to get 100% "fixed" after the timing correction. Again, for me, the timing is more important than audio perfection of the overhead tracks. Of course I'd prefer to have it all, but it's a compromise I have to make :)

As always, thanks for taking the time to listen and to provide such helpful and thoughtful feedback!

Very Best,

Dave
Click to expand...

Wow, lol, that logic is like the total opposite of mine, but it's your song. Good luck with it. :)
 
dewhitt said:
Steenamaroo, thanks for taking the time to listen. I just went out to your website and had some fun looking around for a bit...you have some great sounding tracks there!

Best,

Dave
Click to expand...

Wow, you think so? Thanks Dave.

I'm startin to get a little embarrassed about it TBH.lol.
Been studying for three years and there's petty much nothing recent up there apart from my uni project.

Who knows, maybe that'll change soon.
 
this seems to be a nice mix...if the compression on the masterbus was removed. ;-)
from my experience i think this is just a rather unoptimized setting & therefore pumps a bit & also makes the HF a bit sharp & the overall dynamics a bit "restless". the vocals sit nicely on the refrain, in the verses they are a bit too upfront. the bass area is nice & round with the bassdrum snapping with the bass nicely. in general this mix has a nice glue, but is also open, which is typical for current commercial tracks & to be honest this still is far away from the upper bound regarding volume of today's commercial releases (even more from latest records of RHCP ;-)).

its one of your best mixes i've heard so far, its just the masterbus compression that blurred it.
 
Hi Dave

I'm no expert. This sounds a lot more polished than anything I've done. I intentionaly listened before I read the previous comments, and the only thing that struck me was that is sounded a little more compressed than is my taste for my own music, but the compressed sound reminded me very much of the production on Duran Duran's wedding album (which I do like). Mix wise i think it's a good mix, a great song and great performance.
 
Thanks very much Jan, and toad_uk, I really appreciate the comments! Ok, well, I think I'm going to start working on the stems for this and hopefully the issues that folks are hearing are mainly related to the ham-fisted stereo bus settings that I applied :)

Best,

Dave
 
Dave, I listened to the tune from my dropbox to make sure it was 'pure'. First off, I gotta say that my personal comments to you before the listen were only partially accurate. This song is another departure for you (Movin On was the first I've heard in this direction) and therefore might be outside of where I so conveniently labeled your sound. So, I like it! It's great. I think the mix overall is fine and sounded great on my monitors. I will give you my only two nits and you can compare them to the rest and go from there. I hear something 'swishy' with the cymbals and high frequencies, so I think I'm pretty close to PI on that. But, I don't think it's real prominent. The other is right around 1:25 I heard what I thought was the 'pumping' that Greg and PI talked about. I'm not very capable or experienced with compressors, so I replayed it a few times and then just with left or right on the monitor. It was then that I realized you had a Rhodes on the right channel and your guitar on the left. Then I realized that one is syncopated and together they give a pumping effect. The guitar and the organ are so similar in pitch and eq that I think I has a strange outcome on the sound. Anyway, those were the only things that stood out to me and gave me any notion that this mix was less than professional by the smallest degree.
That's my two bits, I hope it helps.
 
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