14-12-2018, 11:50 AM
It’s a tricky arrangement.
Cutting to the chase, the choruses especially are suffering from poor audio quality. I think that being aware of the consequences of having so many tracks playing at the same time would be advisable. This is a very dense arrangement, too dense given we are useless as a species at multitasking? If you want power, authority and loudness, I'd suggest removing elements which aren't necessarily contributing, to find the headroom in this song. Less is more and all that.
But I don’t agree with making one guitar louder than hell, yet the guitar that’s playing the melody, as weak as the melody line is, seems all but absent in it’s balance and placement. Other’s seem to have done this too, but I can sympathise with the temptation to give that one guitar all the sound stage though. There’s also a significant amount of masking throughout the mix from your instrumental bias; the synths are particularly losing a lot of notes.
I also think the vocals could be tonally more in-keeping with the instruments; they sound a little congested in the lower mids, no doubt from the room’s contribution. More presence in the upper mids would help with clarity and definition too, but cutting the mud might automatically benefit them sufficiently? More voices means more room effect in the problem area from the build up, so it gets worse with more vocal tracks, in other words.
As a "listener", must say I’m highly critical of your approach on the intro. Firstly it’s mono (985 posts? Come on fella). Secondly, the radioed effect is just a little too cheesy and cliché these days from over use. As an effect somewhere in the mix to bring some contrast, perhaps, or during a transition, but I think it’s fatal at such a critical place where it’s essential to engage an audience, especially those who’ve been around a while. Also, because it’s in the 1-5kHz range, it doesn’t respond as well to louder listening levels (you can blame Fletcher and Munson for this
) which might also reduce potential impact?
If you don’t already know, one of the features of headphones is they are utterly, totally and completely crap at enabling accurate or even reliable assessment of dynamics because of poor excursion and single transducer issues, so this is acting against you and will bring addtional compromises to your work.
Listened to DragmeDownShulFINAL only.
Auditioned this time with Focal CMS50’s, midfield.
Cutting to the chase, the choruses especially are suffering from poor audio quality. I think that being aware of the consequences of having so many tracks playing at the same time would be advisable. This is a very dense arrangement, too dense given we are useless as a species at multitasking? If you want power, authority and loudness, I'd suggest removing elements which aren't necessarily contributing, to find the headroom in this song. Less is more and all that.
But I don’t agree with making one guitar louder than hell, yet the guitar that’s playing the melody, as weak as the melody line is, seems all but absent in it’s balance and placement. Other’s seem to have done this too, but I can sympathise with the temptation to give that one guitar all the sound stage though. There’s also a significant amount of masking throughout the mix from your instrumental bias; the synths are particularly losing a lot of notes.
I also think the vocals could be tonally more in-keeping with the instruments; they sound a little congested in the lower mids, no doubt from the room’s contribution. More presence in the upper mids would help with clarity and definition too, but cutting the mud might automatically benefit them sufficiently? More voices means more room effect in the problem area from the build up, so it gets worse with more vocal tracks, in other words.
As a "listener", must say I’m highly critical of your approach on the intro. Firstly it’s mono (985 posts? Come on fella). Secondly, the radioed effect is just a little too cheesy and cliché these days from over use. As an effect somewhere in the mix to bring some contrast, perhaps, or during a transition, but I think it’s fatal at such a critical place where it’s essential to engage an audience, especially those who’ve been around a while. Also, because it’s in the 1-5kHz range, it doesn’t respond as well to louder listening levels (you can blame Fletcher and Munson for this
) which might also reduce potential impact?If you don’t already know, one of the features of headphones is they are utterly, totally and completely crap at enabling accurate or even reliable assessment of dynamics because of poor excursion and single transducer issues, so this is acting against you and will bring addtional compromises to your work.
Listened to DragmeDownShulFINAL only.
Auditioned this time with Focal CMS50’s, midfield.
"Nearly half of all teenagers and young adults (12-35 years old) in middle- and high-income countries are exposed to unsafe levels of sound from the use of personal audio devices": https://tinyurl.com/6xeeahc5 Read my bio.