Dino on the Loose – Queen’s Light

[Bombe]

Hi.

What a nice track! A first, very rough mix using only the volume faders already resulted in something that sounded very good.

I did, however, proceed to add a couple of things to round it off even better. Enjoy, and please tell me about things you like and things you don’t.

[Monk]

Hi.

What a nice track! A first, very rough mix using only the volume faders already resulted in something that sounded very good.

I did, however, proceed to add a couple of things to round it off even better. Enjoy, and please tell me about things you like and things you don’t.

Hi Bombe, Thanks for dropping by, reciprocating herewith

I'm immediately getting a sense of an overall timbre. The raw materials had a lot of midriff bulge between 300Hz and 1kHz which gives a nasal-like quality and I can hear this tone coming though.

The drums feel too far away in the depth field relative to some of the synths. I like the snare and the fact you took out the annoying ring. However, you've given the kick a very uncharacteristic click on the attack which sounds front-of-stage and feels pretty irritating to me. The drums are robotic, just like the other percussive elements. Over 5 minutes, this lack of dynamic in the musicality doesn't make for a good, entertaining listening experience. Perhaps try and find ways of making the record more dynamic in it's ebb and flow, but in a way that complements the needs of the arrangement, as best as possible.

On the audio quality front, the distortion you've brought us by posting low quality swishy bit rate makes any real analysis fraught with challenges and it also tends to make things appear monaural. VBR is much worse too. Please post 320kbps in future and in constant bit rate (CBR), if you can. I'd encourage you to find ways of training your ears to hear the artifacts because this will help sharpen listening skills too on the lookout for distortion, for example, during the mixing process and while auditioning other mixes.

Hope this helps both yourself and others.
See you on the flip side

[Bombe]

Hey Monk, I totally have not forgotten about you, I was just… busy! Yes, very busy.

Thanks for the detailed answer. You’re right, there is some signal in the lower mids that the track can wonderfully do without.

The drums are sitting a bit in the back because I think they are less important in this song and I don’t want to distract the listener too much from all the soloing instruments. The kick doesn’t have any extra processing (well, it didn’t, it has now: I’ve removed some of the high end), there’s a little bit of compressor on all of the drums, though. And there’s plenty of dynamics in there, too. The percussionists of this combo are quite good, really. (I already mentioned that I very much like what you did with the muted drums in your mix and I still do but I wouldn’t want to change a song in a way that would require the band to play it differently to match my mix.)

I’m totally ignoring any of your advice about the “low quality swishy” MP3 I posted because half of it is crap and I’ve known the other half for close to 20 years now. A VBR MP3 at that bitrate is almost indistiguishable from “the real thing” unless you’re one of a very few who can best a double-blind test. Most people can’t, I can’t either, especially at the bitrate I’ve been using which is why I’ll keep using it.

Thanks again for the comments!

Anyway, here’s the second version (for real now, totally uploaded the wrong file):