"Lake Katherine" an acoustic ballad

  • Thread starter Thread starter GONZO-X
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GONZO-X

GONZO-X

Well-known member
this is a next-to-final mix,
checking out the FLAC format for the first time.
this will be on the upcoming bats brew "The Wild Animals" album.

The FLAC process makes it seem a bit soft to me for some reason.
looking for overall playback balance comments.

 
I'm not referencing the early(er) version that I have of this track to compare. I can only say that this mix sounds about perfect. Really balanced. Everything separated and crystal clear. Even the harmony vocals are distinct from the out front vocal. Just superb. This has been one of my favorite tracks of yours for many years now. It's without question some of your best vocals. Wonderful lyrics, too.

1) I wouldn't change a thing and 2) you should be very proud of that.

It is not lost on me.... how much work you put into your music dude. It shows.
 
As usual, I listened using my cell phone, no headphones/ear buds.

It's perfect!
 
One thing that I just did was to take one of my tracks and render it in both 24bit Wav and 24bit Flac. I then loaded both into the DAW and flipped phase on one and I got a perfect null. If you're getting 100% cancellation, you shouldn't be getting any softness. That doesn't happen with MP3 as there's always a slight bit of difference even if I use 320KB.

As for the song, I don't hear anything amiss with this track. Sounds pretty damn good to me. Guitars are well balanced, the lead lines stand out from the accompaniment just enough.
 
Sounds very nice. No nits at all.

Not sure what your comment about FLAC means. It’s just a non-lossy compression, like a zip of a document. If you uploaded a wav or aiff, then the flac download should be identical to that once converted.

Streaming content is always lossy so you’ll lose something, unless it clearly says it isn’t (like my Apple Music subscription).
 
PorterhouseMusic said:
I'm not referencing the early(er) version that I have of this track to compare. I can only say that this mix sounds about perfect. Really balanced. Everything separated and crystal clear. Even the harmony vocals are distinct from the out front vocal. Just superb. This has been one of my favorite tracks of yours for many years now. It's without question some of your best vocals. Wonderful lyrics, too.

1) I wouldn't change a thing and 2) you should be very proud of that.

It is not lost on me.... how much work you put into your music dude. It shows.
Click to expand...
thanks so much Porter!
yes, earlier version was close to what i wanted, but this should nail it.
and i appreciate your comments, thanks for the kind words,
they encourage.
 
GONZO-X said:
this is a next-to-final mix,
checking out the FLAC format for the first time.
this will be on the upcoming bats brew "The Wild Animals" album.

The FLAC process makes it seem a bit soft to me for some reason.
looking for overall playback balance comments.

Click to expand...

Not sure - I’ve listened to it a number of times - the overall mix does sound soft to me - and there is a bit of distortion in the mids.
 
The song is great, real nice.

I don't love the timing of the delay on the reverb picking out the sibilance.

 
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60's guy said:
As usual, I listened using my cell phone, no headphones/ear buds.

It's perfect!
Click to expand...
thanks 60's guy

never made a mix for cellphones before....
i guess it's good that it translates well, without even trying...
 
TalismanRich said:
One thing that I just did was to take one of my tracks and render it in both 24bit Wav and 24bit Flac. I then loaded both into the DAW and flipped phase on one and I got a perfect null. If you're getting 100% cancellation, you shouldn't be getting any softness. That doesn't happen with MP3 as there's always a slight bit of difference even if I use 320KB.

As for the song, I don't hear anything amiss with this track. Sounds pretty damn good to me. Guitars are well balanced, the lead lines stand out from the accompaniment just enough.
Click to expand...
wow, thanks for that info talisman...
i just thought i'd try a flac upload.
usually, my M.O. is to upload 24 bit 48khz waves, and let bandcamp do whatever it does to the file for streaming..
if you buy a file, you can download the high def files, or any of the other options,
i just never tried the flac before.
 
keith.rogers said:
Sounds very nice. No nits at all.

Not sure what your comment about FLAC means. It’s just a non-lossy compression, like a zip of a document. If you uploaded a wav or aiff, then the flac download should be identical to that once converted.

Streaming content is always lossy so you’ll lose something, unless it clearly says it isn’t (like my Apple Music subscription).
Click to expand...
hey keith!
thanks for listening.
yea, streaming on ANY platform, other then the high def ones, always make my mixes change.
i'd love to be smart enough to know how to mix for the lowest common denominator,
i just try to find the best mix i can get at 48khz, and hope it translates well.

i try to make my masters be 'un colored', and louder without adding distortion.
but i don't always hit the mark.
 
GONZO-X said:
hey keith!
thanks for listening.
yea, streaming on ANY platform, other then the high def ones, always make my mixes change.
i'd love to be smart enough to know how to mix for the lowest common denominator,
i just try to find the best mix i can get at 48khz, and hope it translates well.

i try to make my masters be 'un colored', and louder without adding distortion.
but i don't always hit the mark.
Click to expand...
The services can adapt to what they think is the available bandwidth, i.e., it can be different from day-to-day, or listener to listener. And, you can assume they start no higher than something like [lossy] 320/256 kbps to as low as they want, honestly. If you want it to not change much (audibly), you'll remove stuff panned out to the very edges and mix nearer to mono, and lowpass probably around 12k, but that's going to be pretty extreme.

I upload non-lossy, 16-bit WAV/AIFF to SoundCloud these days, but only because I can (lowest, paid tier). I specify 256kbps AAC in my YouTube videos, because they're going to squash stuff anyway, and, presumably, the video content tends to distract from the audio enough I don't think it matters, especially for my solo or very small acoustic group/duo stuff. I just don't have that much real high frequency or content out at the edges to worry about!

iZotope's Ozone has had a "Codec Preview" option which might [probably] be available in other plugins or DAWs that lets you A/B what happens to your mix at different lossy bitrates, and let you decide whether you want to bounce your mix at one of those. (But, I still think it's better to upload the higher bitrate and hope for the best, since they tend to be not too ruthless on my small stuff.)
Screenshot 2024-12-28 at 1.35.54 PM.webp
 
Papanate said:
Not sure - I’ve listened to it a number of times - the overall mix does sound soft to me - and there is a bit of distortion in the mids.
Click to expand...
hi papanate!
thanks for listening critically for me,
yea, the file i'm listening to in the studio, is anything but soft. i mean, yea, i roll highs off of voices and guitars to make them more ballady,
but you know what i'm talking about....i could strictly be the way that bandcamp process it so poorly for the streaming.
distortion in the mids, it'd have to be a certain range of the guitars, i'll try to hunt that down.
 
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HumanPlanet said:
The song is great, real nice.

I don't love the timing of the delay on the reverb picking out the sibilance.

View attachment 148091
Click to expand...
THANKS for listening human, i appreciate it.
the delay on reverb, hm, i'll look at that closely...
i can't remember the settings on the reverb, sometimes i use predelay, and maybe that's the issue.
 
GONZO-X said:
THANKS for listening human, i appreciate it.
the delay on reverb, hm, i'll look at that closely...
i can't remember the settings on the reverb, sometimes i use predelay, and maybe that's the issue.
Click to expand...

Maybe there is no issue if it sounds good to you. Just because I would have done something differently doesn't mean I'm right, just different.
 
HumanPlanet said:
Maybe there is no issue if it sounds good to you. Just because I would have done something differently doesn't mean I'm right, just different.
Click to expand...
it's still a cool suggestion, and is making me try something i hadn't thought about the first go round, so thanks!

movin' on with this one now.
 
Has the link to the track disappeared for everyone? I can't see it. Can you directly attach the latest mp3 to the thread?
 
Thekesslerboy said:
Has the link to the track disappeared for everyone? I can't see it. Can you directly attach the latest mp3 to the thread?
Click to expand...
SEE PREVIOUS REPLY.

i figured after 2 weeks posted, it was time to move on to final mixes, sorry.
mix is already gone obsolete!
 
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