(25-01-2017, 09:00 AM)thedon Wrote: Hi Doug ,
I have had a quick try of these multi tracks too and not even close to your version !
I like how you have managed to make your mix sound nice clean and punchy in the bottom ,the vocals maybe a touch sibilant but I like how they vocals cut through.
Any chance of sharing how you achieved this mix ?
Thanks.
Well Done 
Thanks Don, there's actually not too much going on with this mix. One thing I will say is that recently I'e started to use a reference mix for everything I mix now. I used to frown on the idea of using one and always mixed "with my ears", the problem always was though that my mixes would never stack up to a commercial mix (at the same time I'm not going to blame my gear or monitoring directly, I am using a pair of AKG K240 MKii Headphones as my room is too small to my monitors in
).
For this mix I referenced Big Wreck's Hey Mama for the overall balance and frequency spectrum. The first thing I did was use a Highpass on the kick at 40 Hz to make sure all the subsonic crap didn't muddy up anything, I then followed that up with a wide cut at 200 Hz to clean up the low mids of the kick and give me a slightly more modern sound and finally a 5 dB boost of 5.8 kHz with a Lowpass at 8 kHz to give the kick some attack without making it a Terry Date Pantera Kick
. From there I used Rbass to give the kick some body and GST GClip to keep it consistent.
For bass my fist move was to use TSE B.O.D (a really cool VST version of the SansAmp Bass Driver), when I threw it on though it seemed to make the bass sound worse (I think this bass track here was already reamped because of some of the distortion already there), so I took that off and went straight to an EQ. I highpassed the bass at 80 Hz to keep it from messing with the kick, and made a fairly deep cut at 160 Hz to clear it up abit. This is probably the most important part of the chain, a multiband compressor (I used Waves C4 but really any multiband will work) clamping down on frequencies below 100 Hz about 5 dB and 100-800 Hz about 8 dB. The 100 Hz comp has a fast attack and release to grab the low end aggressively and keep it even and the 800 Hz comp is basically a limiter (0.5 millisecond attack and a 5 millisecond release) just to keep that area from fluctuating in the mix and making the low end loose. From there I used Cakewalk's free LA2a emulation (it's not free now I don't think but they did introduce it for free, and it actually sounds better than Waves CLA-2a plugin for bass and vocals!) pulling 7 dB of gain reduction, Waves L1 limiter with a 4.84 millisecond release pulling 6 dB of gain reduction to prevent any massive spikes from killing the master buss. I did use TDR Nova to control some crap around 100 Hz. The rest of the low end control was a Waves Puigtec Program Eq attenuating 30 Hz over the whole mix, Wave Puigtec Mid Eq scooping 200 Hz, and boosting 500 Hz.
Mastering is where things got interesting, the low end still has louder than the reference mix so I used a low shelf at 220 Hz and a subtle 466 Hz boost to bring up some of the warmth there. That was followed by a Waves API 2500 Stereo compressor with 2:1 Ratio, 3 ms Attack, 100 ms Release, 60% Stereo Link, Medium Knee, and the thrust control on Loud. I did also use Waves MaxxBass to add some harmonics at 90 Hz to give some mobile friendly bass to the mix. From there I did a similar Multiband move to what I did on bass only rhis time with Waves Linear Multiband and followed that up with some T Racks Classic Clipper and Waves L1 to bring it up to a commercial level.
The kicker here is that even after all my compression, the mix still managed to get an average loudness range of 15 LU! I've made mixes on here that weren't compressed hard at all that have less loudness range than this track. Really it comes down to the fact that this track was quite dynamically performed when it was being tracked, I think this is where alot of people on this site get tripped up, particularly Metallurgist. They see a set of multis, download them, and think "there's not alot of dynamics, these multis must be over compressed, I can't do anything with these!" when in reality they aren't, the performances are just not performed with alot of dynamic range. People seem to get so caught up in the hype that "compression is evil" often overlook the other aspects of their mix and end up with "dynamic mixes" that when compared to commercial mixes (even when level matched) don't stack up. Yes, dynamics are a huge part of music but they can't be exploited unless the performance itself was dynamic, a loud rock and roll band isn't going to hae the same level of performance dynamics as a Symphony Orchestra, naturally you can get away with squashing the crap out of a rock mix than you can a classical mix because rock has a greater loudness potential and generally leans towards a dirtier sound. This set of multis here has a fair bit of dynamic range and also benefits from being squished a little without a big loss in dynamic range, really it's an almost perfect situation!.
Well, that was longer that I was expecting this response to be, hopefully this explains what I did with the low end of the mix clearly enough, the vocals if you were wondering actually don't have alot of high end to em, I ust forgot to automate them down during the choruses and I did use a CLA Bluey 1176 plugin along with RVox to level em out along with a de esser, some chorus, and alittle CLA style Plate reverb.
Cheers, and hope this helps,
Doug
Mixing is way more art and soul than science. We don’t really know what we’re doing. We do it because we love music! It’s the love of music first. Eddie Kramer
Gear list: Focusrite Scarlett 18i20, Mbox Mini w/Pro Tools Express, Reaper, Various plugins, AKG K240 MKii, Audio Technica ATH M50x, Yorkville YSM 6
