Updated Mix: Loud and Clear V3

[pauli]

Kay, so that last mix was crap. This one is much better.

Started from scratch using the mics I'd chosen, but deleting a few superfluous double tracks that were hurting the immediacy of a vocal. Fixed the ambiance, too... many plates going on in addition to the global verbs and drum chamber.

Updates: I revisited many aspects of the mix.. gave the horns, piano, violin and acoustic guitar more room to express themselves.

Attempted to address the bass resonance and slot the violin into the mix better, although I'm beginning to suspect it's hopeless.. there's a leveling compressor at work and some strategic EQ, but it's not cooperating.

Reworked the acoustic guitar extensively to add a little warmth and tame the string rattle. I think I managed this at the expense of a little excess mid-range girth?

Did my best to tighten up the vocals and bring them forward... the bridge vocals are still struggling and need more automation than I've attempted as yet.

Dialed up the global ambiance a bit and decreased the length tone/size/sustain plates to try and work the depth field a little better.

Thoughts?

[The_Metallurgist]

this is much better, you've neatly addressed the pressing issues. you've got some good dynamics going on here too, i like that especially.

i hate the acoustic guitar tracking....just started mixing it last night. i had promised myself i'd wait until the new monitor trials but things are hanging around on that score; perhaps next week. given i've been burning some houses down in feedbacks here and there, i thought i needed to Man Up and get stuck in and better understand it's challenges at first hand. i'm glad i did, because it's showing why so many in the forum are not getting the top end of these guitars sorted. the tracking is bright and brittle but the guitars will shape up well. the challenge, however, is finding the space in the mix for a more desirable delivery that's warmer but still present. there is a solution...and it's all about placement, from my perspective. without fixing the treble, it hurts. you might find this post helpful? http://discussion.cambridge-mt.com/showt...7#pid23877

i'll just mention the violin, which also seems problematic in the forum and it is here also. i spent some time on it, far more than i'd normally do perhaps. it doesn't respond to compression and in each of it's performances - 3 places, the wave file has a different structure. the variation between the quiet and the dominant is too large to get fixed with conventional compression in my humble. it needs fader riding and perhaps a gentle application of a real LA2A clone, just to fine-tune...but i mean fine in the strictest sense. a choice reverb to place it in the room in the depth field helps to give it some exposure without it being overly burdensome and obvious in the mix and help it to deliver the lyrical phrasing. i think it needs more presence here, but some thought needs to be put into finding the best way to make it happen. well, that was my take on it anyway....other's may vary

the bass guitar could do with some automation, it gets a bit up-front in the quieter sections. i'd also tame it around the 90/100Hz area where there's serious resonance that's over-extending the frequency at this point to my ears. i found a gentle, well aimed notch tamed it well and gave it a more even delivery.

there's a challenge going on between me and Alan in his thread...i started it! http://discussion.cambridge-mt.com/showt...6#pid23806 To get -14LUFS was difficult to begin with in the rough mix. i started digging deeper and discovered it's the tape machine that's preventing it's achievement. i often used a Studer in the past, but for some reason i've been moving off it the last 2 months or so. don't know why. anyway, i was using it a fair deal in this mix but found it was impacting quite negatively on the loudness meter? pulling it down and using the LA2A clone caused significantly less drama. the moral here, might be to ease up on tape in your mixes generally and see how they fair, assuming you are seeking a more dynamic presentation that is. the more i look at this loudness thing, the more i'm fader riding instead of compressing, the better the outcome it seems. a rider to that statement that's just invaded my head, is that the applied compression during tracking might be causing the tape clone to over-do things a bit? dunno....needs more investigation.

i'll pop in later if i can and have a more extensive listen. this was a quickie.
have a groovy weekend

[azwayne]

I think perhaps the vocals should be more forward in the mix. Feels like they're hiding behind the rest of the band. Maybe back the snare and the EG off. That might take care of the vocal positioning. Also ~3:30, that lower vocal part sounds like it needs to come back about 2-3dB. Stands out from the others a tad much.

I haven't started the full mix quite yet so haven't looked in detail at the instrument parts. (I'm fussing over the vocals and trying to get the all marching in step right now. I'll probably be ready to hit the rest of the tracks in a day or two.) I might be able to see more of what Metallurgist is refering to after some closer listening. I can already tell though that I'm going to have similar problems getting the vocals to settle without being either smeared all over the place or burried by the cymbals and that EG chording.

[pauli]

Hey azwayne. I've been looking into this and relooking into this mix, as I'm aware of this issue. I'm coming to some conclusions about the very issues you're mentioning that may help you and others who are about to attack this project. To be honest, I think the high quality of the recordings is what's tripping many of us up, especially since most of us are more used to source material that wasn't recorded in such ideal conditions and good equipment... it catches us off guard, or it did me at least.

In the vocal multimic situation, it's becoming clear to me that if you want to use all the mics, it's going to be necessary to apply careful compression to each track individually for control of the dynamics and stereo symmetry (assuming you're spreading them out), and compress the group channels for each set of mics to glue them together.... and obviously that could well turn into a disaster unless you spend a few hours carefully adjusting the timing and tuning. Without that sort of aggressive dynamic control, I dunno if it's going to be possible to properly bring the vocal forward in a way that will respond well to compression during mastering. Automating the level of the vocal could make mastering a thorny, thorny issue if you have to boost the level more than a dB or two....

Now I almost always jump at the opportunity to use vocal multimic setups to create a big, wide vocal spreads during the choruses, love that sound... but I'm not really sure this mix needs it, the more I consider. I think the backing vocals will create plenty of width during the choruses when panned in opposition, and they'll stand up a lot better to the sort of dynamic abuse I'm talking about. Careful timing/tuning edits, when applied across an entire mix, can really strangle a song like this... it should sound natural and maintain a certain level of human error. If that means sacrificing a bit of width in the vocal, well, it's worth it for me

The bridge/prechorus bank of mics seems to require a significant bit of multing/automation to put everything to work without really mangling the dynamics, too. A few of those tracks provide different harmonic/supportive in different parts of the song, , and it's just too easy to be lazy about things like that.

And yeah... those cymbals, huh? I completely ditched the ride mic, it was just making the mix exhausting... I've been using the tom mics as something supplemental to the overheads when the toms aren't playing, but I'm obviously going to have to trim that out... the drummer for this ensemble is really digging into the cymbals

[juanjose1967]

I've listened to all the versions you've done, and this last one is by far the best one.

Well, since you're using all the vocals provided, I think that it wouldn't hurt a little bit of time just to trim them all separately in order to make them blend together better. In fact, here we don't have the pressure of a client or a deadline. Not here, but in other tracks, I remember spending a few hours just to make all the performers sing more synchronized. Of course, it doesn't need to be exact but at least a little bit more accurate.

But anyway, the result of the mix is much better than the past ones and that's what we all want, don't we? At least I do

[takka360]

It sounds to me like the vox are really fighting against the music,it all sounds a bit out of control with not much definition to anything if you get me.

[pauli]

I've listened to all the versions you've done, and this last one is by far the best one.

Well, since you're using all the vocals provided, I think that it wouldn't hurt a little bit of time just to trim them all separately in order to make them blend together better. In fact, here we don't have the pressure of a client or a deadline. Not here, but in other tracks, I remember spending a few hours just to make all the performers sing more synchronized. Of course, it doesn't need to be exact but at least a little bit more accurate.

But anyway, the result of the mix is much better than the past ones and that's what we all want, don't we? At least I do

It's a valid criticism I keep trying to rush this mix when it clearly needs some editing, tuning and automation to shine properly

[pauli]

It sounds to me like the vox are really fighting against the music,it all sounds a bit out of control with not much definition to anything if you get me.

Yeah, I agree entirely. It's a great song and the tracking is really nice, but it's not an easy mix if you want to use all the vocal mics. Controlling the dynamics across all those doubletracks is really hard and EQ is effectively useless if the dynamics aren't properly controlled.

It seems to me like the electric guitars are making it really hard to get the vocals right... there's probably a lot of automation needed to keep the guitars under control and bring out the piano licks, and Juan makes a good point in that the vocals would work a lot better if I tightened up the timing.

Thanks for your comments, guys. I've learned a lot from mixing these tracks, so it's done for me for a little while. We've had lots of good discussion with this one.

[azwayne]

Yeah, that bass line is a little challenging to sit into the mix nicely. I am finally to the point of working with the instruments and I kinda raised an eyebrow when I got to the bass guitar. Decided that the only way for me to deal with the bass sustain was to basically go the other route and sacrifice a lot of it so I put a low shelf to knock it back and then added some careful compression to even out the attacks, such as they were, and push it back even a little further. It's interesting that, raw, even though you don't hear a great deal of the bass attack, when you mute the track, you sure notice that it's gone and not entirely in a "hey, there's the rest of the band!" kind of way you would hope for.

The big burden here is that the transient on the bass is already not well defined and that is surprising considering that there's what sounds like a little pick slap in there but it also seems that the amp may have been driven to the saturation so the soft clipping is taking that away from us. I was not actually happy with the pick slap but since I couldn't get rid of it, had to find a way to work with it. Fortunately, against the acoustic strumming, it doesn't seem to poke through.

Slowly getting there... This one is proving to be not so straight forward and I'm not sure I'll be able to get something really pleasing but we'll see. Yesterday was running through EQ/inserts on drums, today was cymbals/hat and bass... One mic at a time and I'll get there eventually.

[Mike Senior]

Latest version seems too dominated by the hihat/cymbals for me during the choruses -- probably needs some automation here, though because the verses sound better. The vocals are crying out for a bit of tempo delay in the choruses, I think, because they feel a bit stranded over the backing at the moment.