Colour me Red mixed by Dcp

[dcp10200]

hey Dcp.

Listening to v4. Love the intro..... but it nearly blew my ears out when the band came in! Lol. The level contrast could certainly be tweaked.

Very solid mix. Love the bass during the drop.....and the drum balance sounds great then too. Vocal also sound very good to me and when the band comes in after the intro it sounds fantastic

The mix does pump and as the mix goes on i find it increasingly fatiguing to listen too. I read that you thought the pump came from the parallel processing from your your kick...but for me....the only time the mix doesn't pump is during the drop when i think the drums, bass and vocal work really well together.

The pumping seems at its most obvious when the band is playing which suggest to me possibly your MBC setting are causing the pump. I remember that you left a comment on my thread recommending some MBC settings

..... as a suggestion try using a 4:1 ratio on your SSL buss comp with a 10 ms attack and 100 ms release and aim for about 2.5-4 dBs of reduction, that's my usual setting when I'm using it on my master buss.

To me, the release time of 100 ms may be too fast to allow for a natural sounding recovery....the recovery will tend to be ahead of the natural groove and make the mix rhythm more staccato than one would expect.

Coupled with a fairly hefty amount of gain reduction at a solid 4:1 ratio.....if you're running anything like this, then i would expect your mix to pump.....

Also.....when the vocal comes in for the first time with the line "meet me at the hollow", the vox drops in volume really unexpectedly .... this may be your MBC or maybe its automation but the effect is dramatic and a little bit unnatural.

I guess my overall comment would be that if you allow the mix to breathe more by reducing the pump, I think you have a lot of components in place for this to be a really good mix.

well done and keep it up.

Cheers, Simon

Hi Hb my mixbuss comp here isn't actually the SSL at all, it's the Focusrite Scarlett compressor that came with my interface. I do agree with you though, the mix is definitely pumping pretty hard(I think it was plulling 5 dB every time the kick hit ). The 4:1 ratio on the SSL is actually is abit different to most compressors (as far as I know, I could be wrong too) where it actually pulls less gain reduction in that mode due to a harder Knee, the 2:1 ratio is more gentle on the knee but pulls lots of gain fairly quickly, the 4:1 is more of a "gluey" sound that 2:1.

The vocal dip you heard was in my automation and I did end up finding it after you mentioned it.

Cheers and thanks for the comments,
Doug