First mix on my new interface!

[dcp10200]

The other day I bought myself a new audio interface as my Mbox Mini that I've been working with is starting to show it's limitations (the single mic pre is pretty lack lustre, the converter inside isn't the greatest, and I'm not in school anymore so Running Pro Tools 8 isn't my main concern anymore ). So I made the decision of getting a Focusrite Scarlett 18i20 and am really loving this thing! This is a test mix I made just to see what I could do with some of the scarlett plugins and other plugins I have on my computer,

The mixbuss only has my usual Waves SSL Compressor on it but it was put on at the last minute of mixing, and the drums are pretty much what I used on my Devil Words mix.

For this mix automation was my main tone shaper, especially on the vocals. When I had the vocals sitting where I wanted them I used 2 compressors, Waves CLA 76 doing the more heavy lifting, and the stock Reaper Compressor to smooth things out a touch. After compression came a Highpass at 150 Hz and a parametric cut at 800 Hz. I used some De-essing to keep the vocal from getting too harsh. Some mono delay and reverb were used for some space.

The guitars are automated to fit with the vocals and just have a High and Low pass on them to clean them up a bit.

Bass was literally just run through Nick Crow Tube Driver for some growl.

On the Snare I used 2 reverbs: My usual R Verb Plate, and a gated reverb made from the Scarlett Reverb and Gate. These two verbs seem to work well with each other and suited this style fairly well. The toms just have the gated verb.

In mastering I was a bit more liberal in processing, the top end was brightened and some compression and limiting brought it up to K14.

Overall there's still some work to do on the mix, the automation I think could be more refined and the master came out brighter than I was expecting, but overall it seems half decent so far, Please leave your comments and critiques below and enjoy!

[loweche6]

Really nice sound. Sounds great man. The only thing I can think of is that maybe the gits can be brought up a couple dB in general to give it a little more aggressive sound, but you have a really clean mix as it is.

Draper

[Dangerous]

Sounds great though headphones. I really like it.
Got to love Reacomp there's not much this bad boy can't do. I only critique I have is the Hihat in the left ear. although I like the effect of it far left it's occasionally sounding like it needs reigning in a bit. Nothing too major though. Certainly wouldn't want to loose the ear candy.

Dave

[dcp10200]

Really nice sound. Sounds great man. The only thing I can think of is that maybe the gits can be brought up a couple dB in general to give it a little more aggressive sound, but you have a really clean mix as it is.

Draper

Thanks Draper, I agree with you there, the guitars ended up being fairly quiet in the mix I did do a new revision with the guitar up, more verb on the snare and toms, and the original snare track blended with the sample. On this mix I used some Tape saturation on the master and my Usual Waves NLS for some more grit.

Cheers,
Dcp

[dcp10200]

Sounds great though headphones. I really like it.
Got to love Reacomp there's not much this bad boy can't do. I only critique I have is the Hihat in the left ear. although I like the effect of it far left it's occasionally sounding like it needs reigning in a bit. Nothing too major though. Certainly wouldn't want to loose the ear candy.

Dave

Thanks Dave, glad you like the mix! All the stock Reaper Plugins are great, a few times I've actually used the reacomp as a side chain compressor on kick and snare during fast double kick passages to make sure that the kick stays out of the way of the snare hits. The Modern Vocal setting really works well when stacked with an 1176 style compressor to smooth the vocals.

In the revision I just posted I actually used a de esser over the whole mix set at 11 kHz to tame the hats a bit, between that and the tape saturation it seems to have done the job.

Cheers,
Dcp

[Cudjoe]

Hi dcp mix 2 is definitely better you've got a almost live feel going on,thanks for sharing.

[dcp10200]

Yesterday I uploaded my new remix of Devil's Words and that ended up making me want to revisit this mix here. As the title of the post suggests this was my first mix on the Focusrite interface I bought last summer, listening back I really don't think this mix really sounds that great (it has a similar bass problem to my Devil's Words First Remix in that it sounds like a bad And Justice for All Tribute ) so this is the result of those efforts.

I wanted to keep it similar sounding to my new Devil's Words mix so alot of the processing is the same, the snare is altered slightly but I'll explain that later. The mastering chain on this mix is also the same as Devil's Words but tweaked to fit this mix, in the end I think they're pretty darn close in terms of sound and character.

Now more on the snare: I was watching URM's Jason Richardson Mixthrough excerpt on youtube last night, this part was a half hour video taken from the section on the drum mix but it focused all of the video on mixing the snare. In the mixthrough Taylor Larsen was basically running through the signal chain of his top and bottom snare, 2 things that really stuck out to me were his use of a transient designer and an SSL Style Eq. The transient designer wasn't really that special but the SSL Eq was, he mentioned a trick he uses on some of his mixes (this one still had that plugin on the track but the trick wasn't used) he said that he used to always boost 3 kHz on the snare but after mixing for a couple of other bands getting a really punchy sound by cutting the 3 kHz area. It forces the snare to have this darker sound, and with a boost at 200 Hz and a bit of air around 10 kHz, it sounds really powerful. So I ended up trying this out and I love what it does to the snare, it really gives you a punhy snare without it poking out in an annoying and harsh way, just add some attack(about 50%) at the beginning of your chain with a transient designer and boost the sustain about 20%(or just till you can hear the ring of the snare come out abit)and you're golden!

Anyway, doing this mix also gave me an idea to do the challenge assosiated with the three songs here from Actions and get all three mixes to sound like they belong together on an EP. This should be fun

Cheers,
Doug

[Before You Jump]

can you post the youtube link of this snare tutorial?

[dcp10200]

can you post the youtube link of this snare tutorial?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgHdWW4KY6w&t=20s, here it is

[Before You Jump]

thank you !