MusicWater
Banned
Hello all! I had been a member a long time ago, and finally joined back.
I wanted to know what you guys listen for, what you do, and what you use in order to create open sounding mixes where your rhythm guitars sound like they're pushed far out to the sides and the center of the spectrum left clear for kick, snare, and bass to punch right through in near perfect isolation. You can check my mix tests on the link in my signature.
I currently use an AxeFx II for guitars and bass into Cubase. On the more recent mixes I use two different rhythm tones hard panned Left and right. I High and Low pass guitars, with minor eq cuts around 3.5kH, maybe 800ish Hz and 250ish Hz to sit better in the mix. Multiband compress the low end so the palm mutes don't trigger my buss compressor when necessary. Rhythm bus goes into Slate VTM. I monitor through Adam A7x's in a completely untreated bedroom
So, let's share some tips and tricks and get these mixes to open up wide! I don't like that I can't get the guitars out wide, but maybe I need to look somewhere else.
All comments appreciated.
Thanks!
Carlos.
I just listened to your latest clip "Re-tweaked WIP Riff", I listened to some of your clips and among those I listened to, this clip was by far the clip I found to be of the highest quality, but considering that an AXE FX was used, this was not bad at all.
I did find issues, things like the drums being a little too quiet, the center and stereo image being a bit muddy, the bass guitar being a bit unclear, the guitars on the side being a bit harsh, slightly too loud and a bit too similar, the other guitar in the center too quiet and a few things around the use of compression contributing to some issues with transients and clearity (which also comes from the AXE FX) in regards to the overall sound. In order to improve things from here, if you can you should look into replacing that AXE FX with a really high end real non-virtual solution and try out the stereo miking approach I suggested. That will make the guitars more clear and provide some added clearity and vibe to the mix.
I also find you should look into the use of compression * EQ combo, the sound sources are now gliding into each other in the stereo image, causing center mud. (look into how you distribute the frequency density across the stereo field with your compressors, EQs and volume faders) In this last demo I found the SIDE to be a little too dense, just lowering the release time on the compressor a little and lowering the volume on the rhythm guitar a little should fix some of that - the guitar in the middle will cut through a little more and the drums and bass will also start cutting through some more. I also found that you should push the mix a little harder to add some detail, I'm not sure what kind of monitoring solution you have but with a good monitoring solution this should definitely clear things up even more. Another thing I found was your use of reverb, which I thought was too wet overall (especially on the drums), which usually contributes to these kinds of issues also.
illimmigrant, I think that you have come a long way with your sound, it's mostly a number of little bits and pieces that together cause a number of issues. If you try some of the techniques I've posted in this thread, you will very easily penetrate these without even addressing those issues the way I pointed out, in this post I just kind of explained some symptoms and some causes.
BTW. If you decide to stick to the AXE FX (which I find you should think carefully through also because it limits the project to 48 kHz sample rate), look into its routing capabilities some more. You can change the signal path on each speaker. I'm not sure if you are familiar to the attack features of it, but that's really great, so use that as much as possible to your advantage. Please note that, in this case you probably want loud clear powerful rhythm guitars on the side hence that's how you balance, but because the AXE FX is distorted in its timbre, then with the amount of signal you assign it is going to color the whole mix as somewhat unclear. In your case you reduced the high end of it and I think that's good it then goes from harsh to muddy, but at that point I do find that if you stick to the AXE FX, you should also not give it much enough signal to color the mix as a whole as somewhat muddy. So this is a scenario where you kind of need to re-consider the kind of sound/priority you are going for with those fat guitars on the side due to their quality, in order not to lose ceretain qualities about the mix as a whole. When this is the case, that's something you might decide is either OK and then you balance accordingly in mixing or you decide it is not OK and then you fix it in the recording, it all depends on what your goals are and what you feel you are able to achieve with what you have to work with in mixing.
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In the last post I was talking about a lot of small issues with OP's mix, the product of those is why OP look for added qualities in regards to the guitar and the center. In reality what happens is that a product of various issues cause this mix quality and I'm trying to partly point out why those issues are there but instead of just looking at those issues I also go beyond those and try to provide him a different mixing model that addresses these kinds of things automatically for him so that he can focus beyond those classic issues and reach the next level of mix quality and much more. 
