21-10-2014, 09:13 PM
Hey Markus. I haven't as yet been able to get a decent mix out of these tracks, so keep that in mind as you read my comments:
Pretty much every track in these recordings is out of balance spectrally (at least in my opinion), and those balance issues are carrying forth into your mix... most of the guitars have serious midrange bloat from 600 to 900 and it sounds pretty unmanaged to me... the chorused rhythm guitar, however, is very jangly in the higher order mids, but I'm missing the body around 500, possibly because other guitars are cluttering up that area a bit, which'd tempt just about anyone to give it a cut around there.
Others have mentioned that the drums are heavily over-compressed, so I won't dwell on that too much, but instead might offer a suggestion: consider using the drums to drive a compressor over the entire mix buss.... then introduce the other instruments once the compressor is responding the way you want it to. If you follow any of my comments you'll notice I've been suggesting this a lot lately, but there's no particular reason for that other than I've been hearing many mixes that could benefit from that technique. I think getting the drum compression you like and then mixing in the rest of the band will help you give the drums the oomph that you're going for without separating them so completely from the mix.... I could completely forgive many of the artifacts of overcompression if it weren't making the drums sound so completely disparate to every other track.
As for the vocal, the sibilants really do sound very phasey/colored, and of course that's no fault of yours. I already know from having tried that de-essing isn't going to help and I really doubt you'll be able to get a dynamic EQ to help much either... because I'm thinking that there was some signal processing performed during tracking that exacerbated some room issues... probably a compressor overemphasizing some tonal coloration that's inevitably introduced if a singer moves and the mic doesn't.... phase is a tough, tough thing. But when life hands you lemons, make lemonade... try modulating the vocal track intentionally! It might be passing the buck, but if you try it and it sounds good, problem solved, so far as I'm concerned
I think processing this mix in chunks might be what needs to happen to get everything working... a multiband compressor on the guitar buss makes a lot of sense to me to put a firm ceiling on the midrange buildup, and it'd help you EQ a decent tone into the offending tracks without making the problem worse, almost kinda like EQ boosting into a limiter during mastering. And after you apply any sort of global reverb (if you choose to) try muting the drums and bass while the mix is running. That'll help make it more obvious whether or not the level/type of ambiance you're using is contributing to midrange buildup or mud.
Eh, I always come off like I'm a self proclaimed expert, but I'm not.... these are just my opinions, and hopefully they're helpful to you. Let me know when you post a revision, I'm keen to hear it.
Pretty much every track in these recordings is out of balance spectrally (at least in my opinion), and those balance issues are carrying forth into your mix... most of the guitars have serious midrange bloat from 600 to 900 and it sounds pretty unmanaged to me... the chorused rhythm guitar, however, is very jangly in the higher order mids, but I'm missing the body around 500, possibly because other guitars are cluttering up that area a bit, which'd tempt just about anyone to give it a cut around there.
Others have mentioned that the drums are heavily over-compressed, so I won't dwell on that too much, but instead might offer a suggestion: consider using the drums to drive a compressor over the entire mix buss.... then introduce the other instruments once the compressor is responding the way you want it to. If you follow any of my comments you'll notice I've been suggesting this a lot lately, but there's no particular reason for that other than I've been hearing many mixes that could benefit from that technique. I think getting the drum compression you like and then mixing in the rest of the band will help you give the drums the oomph that you're going for without separating them so completely from the mix.... I could completely forgive many of the artifacts of overcompression if it weren't making the drums sound so completely disparate to every other track.
As for the vocal, the sibilants really do sound very phasey/colored, and of course that's no fault of yours. I already know from having tried that de-essing isn't going to help and I really doubt you'll be able to get a dynamic EQ to help much either... because I'm thinking that there was some signal processing performed during tracking that exacerbated some room issues... probably a compressor overemphasizing some tonal coloration that's inevitably introduced if a singer moves and the mic doesn't.... phase is a tough, tough thing. But when life hands you lemons, make lemonade... try modulating the vocal track intentionally! It might be passing the buck, but if you try it and it sounds good, problem solved, so far as I'm concerned
I think processing this mix in chunks might be what needs to happen to get everything working... a multiband compressor on the guitar buss makes a lot of sense to me to put a firm ceiling on the midrange buildup, and it'd help you EQ a decent tone into the offending tracks without making the problem worse, almost kinda like EQ boosting into a limiter during mastering. And after you apply any sort of global reverb (if you choose to) try muting the drums and bass while the mix is running. That'll help make it more obvious whether or not the level/type of ambiance you're using is contributing to midrange buildup or mud.
Eh, I always come off like I'm a self proclaimed expert, but I'm not.... these are just my opinions, and hopefully they're helpful to you. Let me know when you post a revision, I'm keen to hear it.
I'm grateful for comments and suggestions. Thank you for listening!