Anybody up for a quick mix critique?

    Hi Michael,


    this indeed does justice to your song which was already impressive. It has drive, it has punch and it has lots of good music in it. Well done.
    Now:
    When I do mixes I always have my "precious" guitar sound in mind that did cost me quite a bunch and thus tend to loose perspective of the song as a whole which is more than just instruments and vocals. .
    You could try to take down some of the mids between 150 - 250 Hz in the vocal track. Sometimes it's really worth while. I don't use an eq to do this but a multiband compressor where I lonly ower the band between these markers that are allright for my rather old voice and leave everything else flat. If it works at all you'll hear it at once. If you have already done it, skip my remarks!


    Greetings Joachim.

    OK, so now I've moved on to automation etc, and worked on the space in the mix. Apart from a few small tweaks, this is approaching the end I think.
    If anybody is still listening in, you're very welcome to offer with any feedback you might have :)





    EDIT: Removed the soundfile, since there was a "defect in the mix" (a reference plugin I'd forgotten to turn off). See this post instead: Anybody up for a quick mix critique?

    Quote from Michael_dk

    OK, so now I've moved on to automation etc, and worked on the space in the mix. Apart from a few small tweaks, this is approaching the end I think.
    If anybody is still listening in, you're very welcome to offer with any feedback you might have :)


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    I'd compress the low-end between 50Hz - 125Hz. It sounds wildly out of proportion compared to the rest of the mix to my ears. The rest of the mix sounds great, however I'd definitely compress that low-end and run a high pass around 45Hz.

    Nice mix well done. One thing that I would address is the lead breaks aren't loud enough in the mix. If you don't want to increase their volume, another way to go about it would be using a dynamic compressors on other tracks to only kick in when those little leads start. Example would be at 1:32

    Still got that great stoner rock groove and justice lyrics ....careful Michael soon your gonna be too kewl for your Avatar :D
    The Latest mix sounded perfect to me, rigs cut right through the mix :)


    Ash

    Have a beer and don't sneer. -CJ. Two non powered Kempers -Two mission stereo FRFR Cabs - Ditto X4 -TC electronic Mimiq.

    It's better now , I can hear the bass very well ;) It's also much brighter and instruments are well separated. I somewhat miss a little bit of the initial guitars punch. Drums are perfectly clear.


    I still like the old mix, sounds a little bit roomier & direct which fits the style very much, with more punch

    Quote from ColdFrixion

    I'd compress the low-end between 50Hz - 125Hz. It sounds wildly out of proportion compared to the rest of the mix to my ears. The rest of the mix sounds great, however I'd definitely compress that low-end and run a high pass around 45Hz.

    Yeeesh..... finally heard what you're talking about on my stock apple earphones. Thanks for pointing it out - the bass gets completely out of control on some notes. I'll have to find out what's up with that. Didn't notice that at all in the monitors or studio headphones 8|



    Thanks for all the further comments, people! Glaring bass issue aside, I think I'm getting it to where I want it :)

    Quote from Michael_dk

    Yeeesh..... finally heard what you're talking about on my stock apple earphones. Thanks for pointing it out - the bass gets completely out of control on some notes. I'll have to find out what's up with that. Didn't notice that at all in the monitors or studio headphones 8|


    Thanks for all the further comments, people! Glaring bass issue aside, I think I'm getting it to where I want it :)

    Well, here's a lesson in patience and meticulousness (is that a word?)....


    I'd apparently forgotten to turn off the sonarworks room correction plugin while exporting the latest two mixes, AND not listened to the mixdown before uploading. Hopefully this lesson means I won't do anything this stupid when I export for the mastering engineer (hopefully shortly).



    So - Here is mix 4 again, WITHOUT that plugin - which seemed to be the culprit for the out-of-control bottom end:


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    Sounds great already. Minor tweaks I'd do: kick seems wimpy compared to that huge bass sound. Maybe add some small amount of that fake low end at 60Hz with a signal generator. (If you're not familiar you create an empty track, put a sine wave generator on that track tuned to the kick fundamental and gate that track with the kick hits). Guitars have slightly too much hair makes it sound too grating imho. I'd shelve some of the >6kHz down.

    Lol! I've done that once or twice before now!


    I'll give the mix a listen at work tomorrow :)

    OK, after many tweaks of incrementally smaller magnitude (including a lot of automation), the mix is finally DONE.


    Next is mastering, and then release - after that I will of course link to the completed song for the two or three people who are not yet thoroughly sick of hearing it.


    I want to thank all contributors in this thread - your advice has been invaluable! :)