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Dead Roses 01 and 02
#1
Hi all, new to the forum, but I love the great book from Mike.
This is the second attempt on the mix that supersedes the previous.
- Minimal clips cuts and some gain editing for better balance.
- I selected (by instinct and ear) the best tracks for the voices. and excluded the remaining.
- I had the feeling to try to achieve a clean and smooth mix.
- I played a lot with phasing setting. kind of unsure about the result.
- I am using this and other mixes as a testbed to get used to PT10.

Some addl details:
- Most tracks get an EQ, a Waves SSL channel strip plugin. Sometimes a Waves RCompressor.
- Group busses get sends and tailored Reverb (mostly Lexicon plugin).
- Drum set is also buss sent to a NY style slam (Waves CLA 76 compressor set to All). But just a little bit. Not really sure about this.
- Voices get a bit of EQ, SSL strip, deessing and are buss sent to Rev and Ampex Exciter plugin for analog smoothness.
- All tracks are summed through Waves NLS to Master.
- Master gets a Slate FGX mastering (a touch of compression and limiter - that is actually boosting).

comments and advice appreciated :-)
cheers


.mp3    Dead Roses rough 03.mp3 --  (Download: 6.12 MB)


"... I'm listening. Yes."
from Switzerland
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#2
This is a beautiful mix! Maybe let the female vocal "win"(gain-ride) the end of the track/song. I bet there would be some additional melodies/relationships there.
Great "old" nashville style sound!
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#3
(03-11-2012, 02:50 AM)davidpaulpaige Wrote: This is a beautiful mix! Maybe let the female vocal "win"(gain-ride) the end of the track/song. I bet there would be some additional melodies/relationships there.
Great "old" nashville style sound!

Thanks very much for the appreciation.
I'll try the suggestion , rescuing also the alt female track if possible. Intresting...
When I have some time, and I'll also try a little more balance as well on the bass / kick / oh.

thanks again
best
"... I'm listening. Yes."
from Switzerland
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#4
I like the overall sound here. The piano, slide guitar, and drums all come across nicely, for example. The guitar sounds too much like a DI for my taste, though, and the lead vocal sounds like it's behind the other intruments in the depth perspective, so experimenting further with the levels of the multi-mic rigs and the effects sends here might be sensible.

Whatever you've done to the bass is good on one level, in that it adds warmth to the mix as a whole, but on the other hand I think you've probably overcompressed it, because it's coming across uncomfortably like a synth, which feels at odds with this style. That said, however, I'm still getting the feeling that some bass notes aren't speaking clearly compared with others. This is partly because I think you're hitting the fundamental frequency too hard in the balance (you can hear a lot of the warmth disappear on the Avantone, for example) and that region doesn't really stay at a consistent level in relation to the bass sound as a whole. I'd probably compress the low end separately in this instance to get more control.
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#5
Mike, thanks very much for the detailed and constructive feedback. I'm honored. I'm accepting all of them.

(14-11-2012, 02:18 PM)Mike Senior Wrote: Whatever you've done to the bass is good on one level, in that it adds warmth to the mix as a whole, but on the other hand I think you've probably overcompressed it, because it's coming across uncomfortably like a synth, which feels at odds with this style. That said, however, I'm still getting the feeling that some bass notes aren't speaking clearly compared with others. This is partly because I think you're hitting the fundamental frequency too hard in the balance (you can hear a lot of the warmth disappear on the Avantone, for example) and that region doesn't really stay at a consistent level in relation to the bass sound as a whole. I'd probably compress the low end separately in this instance to get more control.

The bass channels get the stuff documented in the screenshot. I'm attaching the settings for documentation purposes and to foster discussion:

- Bass Amp - EQ + CLA Bass (Waves)
- Bass DI - EQ (same settings) + SSL Channel tweaked to taste
- no sends
- as mentioned summed to Master with NLS (Waves)

CLA Bass is a Swiss knife (look where I come from Big Grin ) that quickly fix and tweaks the channel (with disappointing results some times, to be honest). I will investigate and focus the tuning of the bass based on your advice.

Again the feedback allows me to refine and focus the listening. Greatly appreciated. I hope I will be able to post a new version soon.
humbly said


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"... I'm listening. Yes."
from Switzerland
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#6
(15-11-2012, 10:00 PM)Lammy Wrote: Bass Amp - EQ + CLA Bass (Waves)

I think it might be the Sub slider on this that's doing what I'm hearing. I think it's almost certainly a subharmonic synthesizer, and you're pushing it very hard, judging by the settings. I'd maybe rein that in a bit to get a more natural sound.

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#7
I enjoyed reading the details of your mix and Mike's responses. Thanks for sharing!

It sounds pretty good, but the male vocal in the verse seems like it has an EQ issue - I'm guessing too much in the 800-1000hz. (I'm still learning to identify specific frequencies, so I could be off on that.)
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#8
I'd like to thank Mike and everybody for the feedbacks.

During the Xmas holidays I found some time to pick this track back up and apply improvements to all aspects noted by you folks commenting. I hope these comments are relevant and interesting.

** Some notes on the equipment and DAW. **
I took the chance of this and other threads here (and Mike's book reading Big Grin) to experiment and make some improvements on the workflow, and template used on PT 10.
- I have selected some "preferred" IR reverb settings, out of the Bricasti IR freely available here http://www.samplicity.com/bricasti-m7-im...responses/ (thanks Uzi!), and created/reviewed the related busses for those: a plate rev for Drums, a specific reverb (based on small hall) for the snare, another series of reverbs for voices, piano and guits. Running these IRs through Wave IR1, that is CPU-vore in native mode, is not yet the best workflow I can think of but so far the CPU is still holding.
- I'm afraid that I'm more and more convinced PT 10 running the same version of the plugins (Waves native) is delivering higher sound quality than Logic. It could be related to the declared 32bit internal processing. Unfortunately I'm not yet very proficient with PT.
- Finally apologizing about this version if the balance is going its way. Changes were made with headphone monitoring, being waiting for the much longed Genelec that should come in a few days.

** The track and the "improvements" **
- Picking up Mike's comment first, the Bass. As documented in the previously posted screenshot the CLA Bass plugin was re-tweaked to get rid of the synthiness, that in my opinion was in the Growl setting of the Treble slide. Now the result is... I don't know, maybe too smooth.
- Acou guits. Make them less "DI like", acou guits are sent to an additional Amp emu buss that is mixed to the track original, with a "touch" of clean amping. Maybe still too clean.
- I wanted to improve and give more control to the snare. This was done by slightly different settings of compression, in the SSL channel strips and with slightly more aggressive compression of the RCompressor plugin. Played around with phasing adjustments with not much success, since the overall sound is a combination of the Snare tracks and the bleeding of the other drum tracks.
- The snare also got a touch of specialized reverb with the mentioned buss send.
- The voices have been reviewed with different de-essing settings and some more balancing. I also had the impression there was some voicing issue, but I'm not sure if the touches have improved anything
- I added some very mild master compression and linear phase eq (touch of high and low shelves), to glue together. I would not consider this yet mastering. I was not looking into leveling or target track gain/limiting.

As before, no DAW automation introduced, but some gains have been touched. That what I discovered of PT that the gain can be modified prior to any processing. Pretty cool (I believe it's called Clip Gain).

** Lessons learned **
- snare is damn difficult to tweak
- I have to learn a lot more
- I don't have the needed consistency yet
- I will never remember PT shortcut keys (Tongue)

I attached the latest bounce and a couple of screenshots of the tracks and the busses settings.
Comments more than welcome.
humbly said


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.mp3    Deas Roses 05.mp3 --  (Download: 7.02 MB)


"... I'm listening. Yes."
from Switzerland
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