Everybody's Falling Apart - Olli H

[Olli H]

Old mix that I made some time ago. I just forgot to send it here.

I remember that I tried to practice modern sound with modern frequency balance. I used Daft Punk as a reference for a modern sound.

I remember that the bass was very difficult as I didn't have any clue how it should sound.

[pauli]

Hey Olli.

You mentioned on my mix of this tune that your low end was a mess, and I see what you're saying, but there are a lot of good qualities, too. I'm not sure if the route you've taken is what the band was shooting for, but I can clearly see how daft punk influenced your sonic decisions... it's got a very up-front, in your face, beat-driven quality that you see in some of their older tunes, like better faster harder stronger (or whatever it's called ), and that is a cool alternative choice and an interesting direction in which to take this song. The way the solo blends in with the mix is very tasteful... I tend to succumb to the "more of me in the monitor" syndrome, where lead guitarists tend to make the solos a lot louder than they need to be and throw the balance, but you've done very well here.

You've got the right amount of bass for sure, but the balance is wobbly due to issues with the raw tracks... unfortunately the amped bass track isn't punchy enough and the DI signal is really lacking in low end, so I found standard EQ wasn't introducing enough bass without wobbling the bass around. You also mentioned my mix sounded more open, and that's probably because I didn't put a limiter or master compressor on mine and it sounds like you have, but the market today generally wants tighter dynamics in a rockin' song like this, and openness is sometimes the price you pay.

The issue is that the kick and bass guitar parts need to be very short and punchy to work with eachother, but the best way to manage that is rolling off low end (which doesn't help us much, does it? ) so the only strategy that makes sense to me is frequency based compression. Or maybe dynamic EQ but I haven't got one of those at the moment. A little more diligence in that department might have given me more options!

I'm gonna download your mix and open it up in my DAW alongside mine and fiddle with them to see if I can figure out a way to balance our differing approaches. If I strike gold I'll post it as a reply here!

[pauli]

So I took 10 minutes to fiddle with your mix using the same technique I did on mine to tighten up the low end. Whether it's an improvement or not is up to your taste although you could probably get much better results if you used a similar strategy at the front of your mastering chain.

From a glance at the waveform though, I'd suggest you let up on the input gain a bit on the limiter, and I think it'd open up a little more.

[Olli H]

Thanks for the mastering. I'll give it a listen today.

I'll also try to do tonight a new version of the low end. And with lesser limiting Nowadays I do have a dynamic EQ, which I didn't have when I made that mix. I haven't tried it so far with low end problems. This time I have to listen with my headphones as my monitors (and room) doesn't go deep enough.

[pauli]

no thanks necessary, it's was a very quick and dirty experiment, but it does seem to confirm (at least to me) that multiband compression could smooth out the bass inconsistencies. The only trick is making sure you can get enough makeup gain and dialing in the settings just right, so I think a heavy dose of compression, maybe 10 db or so with equivalent makeup, from 20 to 200 on the bass guitar is a god place to start, and perhaps a more subtle low end compression on the master fader followed by some dynamic EQ to even the bass out with the kick and preserve the attacks might be the best way to go.

this is what we should be doing on this forum... working together closely to find good solutions. fun fun, yeah?

[Olli H]

This is the version that I tried to rescued with BX dynamicEQ. I used my old mixing decision, changed little bit balances here and there and then I applied couple of version of dynamic EQ to fix those problems that I heard in my headphones.

@Pauli, thanks again for the quick and dirty experiment. It gave me some direction to go.

[pauli]

It might just be my room/bad monitoring situation, but the kick and bass seem to be disagreeing a little bit more now. If you let up on the limiter, is could be that the limiter was smoothing things out in the low end, so then you might have to do a little more compressing in addition to your dynamic EQ to get the results you're after. Either that or the frequency settings in the dynamic EQ might be off a little, but it's hard to tell.

What were your other rebalancing decisions? Apart from the low end, it feels more spacious and generally more comfortable to my ears, so there's definitely been some improvement but I can't spot it. Which is good... it's the subtle things that really make a mix in my opinion.

[thedon]

Sound great Olli I like it the bass and kick translate well on small monitors !

[Olli H]

Thanks for comments Pauli and Don

In this song I tried to go to deep sounds, but the lowest low is very problematic to me because it's the area where the main problems of my current room and monitors are.

Before I treated my room there was 30dB difference between 70Hz and 110 Hz. (So now chance to make any wise bass management decisions)

Now the frequency spectrum from 55Hz upwards in my room (or in this one particular measuring spot) is within +-4dB area, but despite of that I know that there's weird things happening. I can hear how the bass sound changes weirdly in certain notes when I play test signal, although simple measuring doesn't reveal it.

But anyhow, I'll continue the low end practicing with other songs.

[pauli]

I have the same weird monitoring issues... I wear earplugs when I'm doing detail work between 20 Hz and 125 and put a temporary low pass filter cornered at 1000. The ear plugs help to hear if it's lumpy and a spectral analyzer on each instrument in question and the master bus helps figure out where it's happening... so you can tweak until you can't hear the lumps anymore... although in about 3/4 of case I find some degree of compression is needed in the bass frequencies if not recorded in a treated room, and that makes for quicker, cleaner easier work. I lay my pinky on the subwoofer cone to see if it's pulsing too quickly, too, because that can be a sign I've got too much going on.