MIXWOLPH3 - Draft Submission - Ruari

[ruari]

Hey guys

I've finally got something ready for you to listen to, I don't know what you lot made of it but I thought that the mix was soooo busy in places. I could go on tweaking this one for ever I think - I've spent most of the afternoon hunting down those pesky little peaks, got to tame them all somehow.

Between now & my final submission I'll look to make things a bit more clearer in the mix, if you think there's anything majorly wrong with it that needs sorting out please let me know.

Click here to listen to the mp3

[Pinknoise]

Overall rythm section is nice I like it.
Eq on voice cuts the body of the voice,it sounds thin.I'd prefer the voice a little closer but I think over did it in mine near the end...
To my taste: a little bit too much effect on verse and not enough on chorus.
Flanged effect a little bit to much during begining of chorus 2.
Chorus 2 sounds a bit too dry I would throw something there..reverb? delay?...sample?...
Way different than mine.
In Chorus 3 , the way you deal with effects and background is interesting and also disturbing the main focus at the same time...overdoing it maybe..
sorry for all the bashing I may be completely wrong these are my thoughts feel free to bash mine!! ;-P

[fader8]

Hey ruari,
I fixed your file and named it properly. For next time, you only need to zip the .logic file and the project name has to designate which MixWOLPH project, your LPH username, and whether it's draft or final.

[ruari]

Thanks fader8, I wasn't sure about the fade files & the naming was just an oversight on my part. Apologies.

[camillo jr]

I don't think clarity is a problem here and I agree the voices are kind of thin and "essey" in this mix - that would be my main critique. Maybe because of the voices, the mix in general sounds kind of sharp and pointy on my system.

I really like the burbling synth that comes in on the Outro. I'm only listening to the MP3 at this point so I don't know yet how you did that - if it's song file or an effect that you've added?

I also like the phaser stuff you put on the synths in the chorus, it adds some great animation to the mix. Also nice are the echoes on the outside voices in the verse.

The voice entering on Chorus two sounds a bit too low all of sudden, like the volume got turned down by accident, compared to the outside choruses.

Putting up the whispers by themselves is a cool idea! Someone else did that for a section of their mix. I'm might explore that one myself. Looking forward to your final mix!

[iStudio72]

Hmmmm, where to start.....?

Initially i thought my 2 year old daughter had pulled some wires out of my speakers (again) making the woofers disabled but on trying headphones (and double checking they were plugged in correctly) i found the low end of the track had been ripped out like the heart of an ox in a zulu ritual.

I notice from your remarks on the other mixes that you are very keen on removing the low end of the bass frequencies but i can't help thinking you have taken the theory a bit far by taking out all of the low end (apart from about 10 seconds at 1:50 in your mix).

You have also commented on some mixes having too much reverb but then have put the whisper section into your own, without any of the other vocals, and put a massive echo on it....can you imagine how that would sound in a club with it's own natural reverb?....i see punters running for the exits in fear of a white noise convulsion attack!

For me the whole mix sounds "tinny" and not fit for purpose (euro clubland). I am no expert but it just doesn't seem to compare to the other mixes submitted and seems more produced to your own taste (and maybe monitor setup) than what i imagine the artist would want.

I am sure there is a happy medium somewhere between the more bass heavy mixes and this one, and isn't it amazing how different mixes and interpretations of the same song can be!

To me, the layman or the late night listener, my only advise would be to but a wee bit more bass and punch into the mix.

(flack jacket and helmet on.....and await reply)

[ruari]

Thanks for your feedback so far guys, maybe I have been a bit to aggressive with the high pass filters - that shouldn't take long to fix. I wasn't taking part in any zulu rituals or even other indiginous people of bass removal ceremonies I guess this mix is the opposite extreme of some of the others - in a direct comparison then mine will sound really thin I suppose. The thing is, in my listening position & through my headphones the low end of the track is fine. I'll listen to it on a few different systems to double check.

The vocals in general, I'll have to put my hands up & say yeah, you guys are probably right about those. My thought process was that I didn't want the vocals to be fighting with the low frequencies so I've pretty much removed anything below about 200 - 250hz. Again, that's not too much trouble to tweak.

The voice going into Chorus 2 does drop in volume during the mix, I was trying to bring the synths & flanged rhythm out more but perhaps I need to work with it to make it sound more natural. I was trying to make that section a bit of a mini stop & go before the bridge.

The synths in the outro section, all I've done there is lift the high shelf slightly on the bridge synth & run the plucked bass through Delay Designer with a patch I've made (you can take it straight from the project if you want to, I'll let you. It's the lower of the two delay designers in the Crs Dly aux strip), throughout the mix I switch between 2 delay designer set-ups to try & keep it interesting.

The whispers part I knew I wanted to do when I first listened to the stems, I start off with the two whispers at about 11 & 1 o'clock then as the bridge develops I slowly pan those left whilst introducing the rest of the voices. iStudio72, you made an interesting comment about the whisper section and the massive echo - that's nothing I've added by the way, it's the track we've been provided called 52 Ambience. Again I can tweak it some more to try & make it sit better within the section.

That's the trouble with this track, there's so much going on in it I could tweak it for ever & yes, personally I do like to hear everything that's been recorded.

Keep the feedback coming though, good or bad I don't mind. One mans wine is another mans vinegar, or something like that…

[ruari]

Just out of interest, this can't be used for a submission as I've used Reaktor on it but what do you think about this one?

[fader8]

ruari,
I'm glad to see you're amenable to istudio72's comments. I too had felt you had gone way over the top with high pass and compression. With so many, on so many tracks, and so steep, you really put the mastering engineer in a tough position if they are trying to pull detail out of that mix.

Filters and dynamics can be a life saver, but they don't come without a price. That price is lots of broadband noise from dynamics and lots of ringing from filters. As your mix stands right now, by the time the mastering engineer finishes their job, and it gets pushed through the DJ's rig, possibly as an mp3 shoved through whatever dynamics and EQ they like, that tune is going to end up sounding like a bunch of trash can lids banging together on the dance floor.

This project (with a couple exceptions) pretty much had all its tracks sorted already for being suitable for mixing. In fact, I did not find one track that required any hipass from a utility/suitability point of view.

I know it's easy when you don't have very specific formal training on a particular craft to fall victim to myths and shortcuts propagated by armchair engineers. Mixing is full of these, (doesn't come close to the acoustics field actually, but it's getting there) like, "Start with a comp and EQ on every channel" and "Hipass everything" and (one of my favorites) "Mix into a compressor on your outputs", or "Carve up each track into its own frequency space", among many others.

Mixing, and mastering too, is more about taking what's already good about something and making it better, not finding things that "might" be wrong and trying to fix them.

I'm going to bend the rules here a bit and let you submit an alternate draft mix with a different approach, if you want to. Don't replace your original project, just post a new one in this thread. But..., only if you want to.

[ruari]

Thanks fader8, for me the whole idea of doing a workshop like this is to get invaluable feedback from many sets of ears. That's why I will take advice & happily listen to suggestions that people make, as well as listening to all the other mixes posted & hopefully as a result we can all come out the other end as slightly better mixers.

I'll do what I can to make the time over the next few days to complete an alternate version with all comments taken on board & I'll get it up here, I do appreciate you allowing me to give it another shot.

[iStudio72]

Phew i think i got away with that!!

[Pinknoise]

Hello bunch of mixing freaks...?!...(especially me)

Kick sounds better you did something or is it just this perfectly good wine I bought..?

Hey I've listen to your new mp3 on this pioneer boombox...no way i can crank it up...the highs are ripping my ears off.Kind of the opposite of mine where it's because of the lows I can't krank it off...

I'd like to know what are you listening your mix into...?

iStudio72 ...no one is getting away..,hopefully within a couple of mixes and/or years...we all can appreciate the differences within our mixes...or speakers...or ears... ;-P

[iStudio72]

Pink i know what you mean about the highs, i actually head to fling my headphones off before the end of the track as it was hurting.

And yes, so much to share and learn....i love it!

[Pinknoise]

The whispers: I found them too loud on my monitors and tought I had to get them down.
(with ensemble and dir mixer on them I believe not at home right now)
On my phone : perfect!!! actually almost everything is very forgiving and sounds good in mp3 format...or on my phone only??

Ruari...it's funny you have this avatar...I still have a hard time understanding how can a simple cone of paper play a complex song with drawned lines in vinyl it blows my mind...

[ruari]

I've booked myself in for a hearing test, after some of your comments I'm not sure I'm hearing things properly anymore.

There's nothing wrong with my monitors or listening environment, so the next thing that needs to be checked out is me.

I will be asking for a high frequency hearing test as mentioned in other parts of the forum, so I'll let you know what the otolaryngologist has to say after I've seen him/her.

Pinknoise - That paper record player is a bit mad isn't it, it's fully functional too apparently. Here's a link to the guys site:

http://www.simonelvins.com/paper_record.html

[Pinknoise]

We don't have treated rooms or top of the line so it's normal that our environnement has a lot to do with how we ear. Earing test ?! You think so ??

[ruari]

My room & equipment isn't so bad, here's some pics of some of my gear that I posted recently. I don't usually work completely within Logic so that's surely a factor in things but it shouldn't make that much difference really.

Hearing test, absolutely!! If it's getting worse it's better to catch it now while I still might be able to do something about it.

[Pinknoise]

Nice outboard gear!! so your room is treated I guess?!?
What's the access thing rackmount there??
I noticed your desk is next to the wall but we don't see your speakers surely they're farther away from the wall....

[ruari]

Nice outboard gear!!…

Thanks!

My rooms been partially treated, I've got bass traps in the corners behind my monitors, which are situated either side of my computer display - they sit a few feet away from the wall. The walls to the side & behind me have foam panels for early reflections, the computer & monitors have some really heavy curtains behind & to the sides. This leaves the room sounding pretty good, it's not perfect but it's a nice place to work.

When I'm looking at my computer screen the mixer is off to my left, further round there are keyboard stands & a rack containing other bits of sound making/processing equipment, to my right there is a wall of records & behind me is a dj station. The Access thing that you see in the rack is a Virus TI2 Desktop, it's a beast of a synth.