Atrophy - Dags mix

[Dags]

*phew* my overnight 12 hour mix of this awesome track.

Trying out a few things here.
Some of the stop-starts are clunky owing to the arrangement not being written to accommodate them, but you'll get the idea

Yes, it's a particularly 'wet' mix in places - I couldn't help myself

Created the impulse response for the 'common' instrument room myself in my studio. Interesting process!

Dags

[Robert]

Real nice, Dags.

Just as matter of personal preference, there's just a few tiny things worth considering - then this one's it's pretty much 'done'.

I'm finding the mix a little bass-light and the guitars want a bit more 'meat'. The lead part towards the end is just a tad low too (for my taste). When the song gets aggressive, the energy / drive / momentum is falling away due to this [apparent] loss of lower-middle / bottom-end. I agonise over this area of the audio spectrum a lot too, Dags. Having not mixed this song and also having no idea what the tracks are like, please take my comments with a pinch of salt. I reserve the right to be wrong :o) Cracking mix though.

[takka360]

Nice mix Dags,i think more bass could tip it over the edge myself.
Nice clear mix i think.Great vocal sound too,your getting good Dags

[Dags]

I'm finding the mix a little bass-light and the guitars want a bit more 'meat'. The lead part towards the end is just a tad low too (for my taste).

Hi Robert and thanks, as always, for your constructive feedback.

Just a quick clarification, is 'bass light' the overall volume or frequency content?
I always have trouble clearing out the boominess of the bass to get it to sit a little tighter, but to me it still seems a little boomy, especially during the sparser section towards the end (when I haven't used the 'lo fi' bandpass on it for effect like I did at the start) but I might have gone a bit too far with my EQ cuts.

Guitars are also a weakness of mine, so I'll see what I can do to get some more weight in there. I seem to end up cleaning out too much of the 'mud zone' in order to try to make space for everything else!

I'm really grateful to be able to get hold of these songs and I'm venturing into areas I haven't had a lot of experience. I think Takka had it right in one of his posts when he said (to paraphrase) that the only way to get better is to just keep at it. I'm certainly getting better at listening for problems in the mix, but I obviously still need more practice

Cheers!
Dags

[Robert]

Hi, Dags.

Sorry for the confusion. 'Bass-light' (to me) refers to the frequency spectrum of the mix itself.
I've a hunch that more work on getting the guitars beefier will come from fixing the lower-mids. Sometimes when I find problems like this, I'll take the bass out completely to work on the 'weight' of the guitars then add the bass next - just to see how you can get it to 'poke' through the guitars. You'd be surprised how much 'bottom' you can roll off a bass guitar and still get it to work well in the mix.

Yes... the more you mix, the 'better' you get. It all takes time :o)

Hope this helped a bit.

[Dags]

Ah excellent.
Yes it did help, and I have already spent the evening tightening up the bass so that it sounds more evenly 'weighted' across the range of notes.
(reading your later post told me that I was on the right track)
Made changes to my EQs (the shelving cut now extends up to around 120Hz) and also spent ages tweaking the multiband compressor to find the right bands and attack/release settings.
I don't know if it is just my ears giving up on me but the bass now seems much fuller and punchier.
I also ran more automation in the sparser section at 3:38 which was bothering me with how out of place the bass seemed to be to further lower the shelving volume and overall volume at the beginning then slowly creep them up across the duration of the build.

Guitars have had a little 200-400Hz added, a bit of a poke in the 800-1000Hz range and a lift somewhere in 4-5kHz to give them a bit of life (varying frequencies for each guitar)
I have always been cautious of adding anything in the mud range of guitars and usually cut loads in this area, but these were pretty well recorded and benefited from the boost. Thanks for the tip!

Oh, I also used this opportunity to fix the more obvious missing consonants in the vocals that were annoying me.

Thanks again for the input everyone.

Now to bed - perchance to sleep!

Dags


[edit next day - volume of bass is a little loud so I'll take it down a bit. I'll make an update to the V2 file and repost later]

[takka360]

Just had a listen with some crap hi fi speakers and it sounds great mate good work

[Robert]

Very like Porcupine Tree ??

Much better, Dags. This one has better clarity. You've put in a lot of work and it's paid off.

If I'm going to be real nit-picky..... there's just one thing...still.. and that's when the song gets 'heavy' and aggressive..... there's an apparent loss of 'loudness' [here] when it *should* be getting louder. It makes me think you're starting to run out of headroom and this could be making it a tad harder to 'elevate' these sections??? Just guessing though. If this 'is' the case and IF you really want to lower all your levels to accommodate any modification to the 'aggression' and get the guitars here beefed-up, try using a Pultec-like plugin to add that weight and 'roundness' - if that makes sense ? I can live with this mix though, Dags. I'm just being super fussy :o) As always... (because I've never mixed this one or 'seen' the tracks).. please take my comments with the usual pinch of salt. I hope you've found some value in the commentary though. Bed time for me !!

[Dags]

On the money as usual, Robert
I did run the mix through a limiter to try to get things sounding as full as other people seem to be able to do on this site. I also tried an OptFit setting instead of the default NoOvers, so I'll back off the send into the limiter and try using the default setting to be more of a hard knee processer and live with the reduced overall volume.
I'll leave the loud mixes to the mastering engineers

Dags

[Dags]

Sorry for the delay - I hadn't forgotten about you all. Been a bit too busy to get time to work on music lately.
Finally got an hour to do the final tweaks to this mix.

Robert, I checked the limiter and it wasn't really working that much harder at the end than elsewhere in the track. The song didn't actually get any more dramatic by way of performance dynamics so I had to fake it by raising the level of drums, bass and guitars for the big finale.

Thanks again to everyone who has given me feedback on this track.

Dags