Trafficker, My Father...

[tgraph]

I try to have my mixes sound like a band playing... not like an engineer crushing the life out of everything for maximum loudness. It's a philosophical choice.

-14LUFS, -1.2 True Peak

[thedon]

Love the live sound ,The shaker sounds a touch upfront !

Cheers

[Monk]

Hi Tom,

I'm also not into fatiguing, mega distorted loud mixmasters and applaud your philosophy.

-12LUFS was about optimum in this material for balancing audio quality with loudness. Even a little more heat beyond this made it collapse significantly.

I'd recommend keeping eyes'n ears on the LRA unit, which is the program's macrodynamics. I found the song difficult to keep musically dynamic, though an electric guitar centric mix is going to be a challenge because of the instrument's traits. A good reason not to compress them further in the mixmaster, if you ask me.

Took a listen to some of your soundcloud stock to get an idea of your approach and liked the fresh, individualistic and creative ideas with the soundstage. Nice music too, well arranged. Thanks for sharing your Art, I enjoyed it.

So for me, the shaker is in the right place, though some of the other elements have a perception of being too far away, the vocal especially. You might want that, however for me the distance loses connection and gave the impression that he's behind some of the instruments.

On-axis to the tweeters, the mix is bright at conversation level. The slow decays of the ambiance is adding to spectral build up as well as implying somewhat less dynamics in the instruments. EQ'ing the verbs might help.

[Shul]

Too much reverb here. Especially on the drums. I would bring the reverb down. I agree those shakers are super loud and is problematic for the mix more than it is benefitial. Having said that I see why you went that way with the whole "live like" approach.