Andrew Cole - Dead Roses

[Mixinthecloud]

sadly, there's only 10 percent of your original mix here to engage with; is there a technical reason why you are only posting 128kbps? the issues of 128kbps mp3 warrant some research so you can understand the issues it presents for critical listening, including how it's messing with ambiance, bass, and treble generally, losing stereo information and 'pushing up' the mid channel (by making it more mono) etc etc. and i won't even begin to mention distortion deluxe.

the acoustic guitar has a major problem at about 2000Hz because my ears are burning from it, even at a very modest audition level. this can actually be a difficult zone to pin down during mixing depending on your monitor speakers because it's where the woofer and tweeter cross-overs [generally] occur and phase issues subsequently arise. you might want to check out how you missed it because i think it's a far bigger problem than all the points so far discussed due to the issues of fatigue, primarily.

i couldn't hang in to the rest of the mix past the first ~15 seconds for these two reasons, so i'm not going to be much good to you beyond the above.

i will flag up briefly the problem between the male and female vocal in the tracking though. despite using the same mic, clearly it suits one singer better than the other, even putting aside any mic-address differential which is no doubt aggravating things. getting past this inherent mismatch issue is quite a struggle (no thanks to the recording engineer who also managed to distort the fem' vox somewhat during the vamp!). so, creating a subjective illusion where both are sharing the same depth-field and placement needs a lot of careful thought regarding amplitudes, compression, presence/proximity-effect and resultant spectral composition between the two singers vis-a-vis the band.

actually, just typing that last paragraph has me thinking back to the 2000Hz'ish problem? given that any depth parameter judgements are fundamentally shaped by the monitoring environment as a whole i.e. the room, it's treatment or not, and how the monitoring system interacts with it, if we take the general theme of ambiance from the interesting discussion, one might actually be seeing only the top part of the iceberg? for example, if you can't hear the 2000Hz resonance despite working on v2 which takes habituation out of the equation, and you are unable to discern the quality difference between a 128kbps file and 320kbps, then assessing finer and more subtle details concerning psychoacoustics will be challenging. sooooo, i'm now wondering even more if your monitoring environment is hampering critical assessment and judgements perhaps?

any thoughts?

I think the mp3 argument is a bit moot when it comes to frequency balance. When this was being mixed and mastered the only thing MP3-ish was the final output. the mp3 output file is not the arbiter of the final mix. That is somewhat pointless as the mp3 format sucks, regardless of the sample rate. I will admit to just taking what is given in the mp3 output without auditioning it. This is the only place I post mp3. My Soundcloud entries are posted up as 24 bit .wav but then Soundcloud does its own thing to that file. It sounds significantly better than what is listenable here, but here, you can only upload mp3s. I will check on the difference between the 128k and 320k files. As for my monitoring I use all manner of monitors to check my mixes from Yamaha HS5s, to Dell desktop speakers with a sub, to ROR/Visonic David's, AKG K44 headphones and my Jeep Cherokee's audio (the best of the lot!). I do know that if my mix sounds good on the RORs, then it will translate to pretty much everything else. Honestly I do not listen to the mp3 output files on the other systems, preferring .wav or Soundcloud. I will pay more attention now that you mention the issues you have enumerated. I would also say that a good majority of the mixes posted here sound muddy when played back on my RORs

You are correct about the distortion of the female vocal at one point where it just seems to get squashed and gravely. Being that that is common for all of the mixes here, it is also moot when it comes to the freq. balance and instrument balance of a mix. Otherwise I really liked her vocals.

I truly wish I could afford some really good monitors but alas, I cannot and must make due with my meager choices.