Motherload

[pauli]

This is a very quick mix with a healthy bit of polish at mastering. Still having some sub issues and it seems like the upright bass is really hard to pin down anyway. Main issue is that working with room mics can be a real drag, even with such nice recordings. Really limits what you can do to the individual instruments without getting that puke-sounding phase coloration... but I like where it's going.

[HbGuitar]

I like where its going too....really enjoyed the guitar solo section - nice separation and balance

As with many acoustic mixes, especially with banjo, bright snare and accordion, there is a mid range build-up happening so its starting to sound a little harsh - and the vocals a little thin.

My fix for that is usually a wide (q=0.25) 2 db cut in master buss EQ centered at 500Hz. I tried it on your mix in my DAW and it softens the harshness and warms the vox slightly - but its your call - maybe you have a specific track by track EQ plan

Ending was pretty abrupt - did you leave the stove on or something!

[juanjose1967]

Hi, Pauli! I agree with hbguitar about the separation and balance. The only thing that I caught my attention is that I missed warmth from the acoustic guitars (probably because I've heard a lot of flamenco living here in the south of Spain); and I don't know too much about country music to tell you exactly if guitars should sound like this or not. But anyway, I like your mix a lot! good work!

[ptalbot]

Good one pauli! I think the vocals are a bit low/not present enough (whatever that means).

[Andreas Tyranopoulos]

Hello Pauli! Nice balance as always, I like your vocals but your guitars and banjo are very thin and harsh to my taste. I expect a lot more from you!!

[pauli]

Hey guys, thanks for your input. I'm working some speaker issues so I haven't had a chance to really look into this one much... mainly posted this one to see if anyone had any idea what was giving me trouble with the low mids. At the moment I think my balance processing has created some sort of phase snag with the decca tree that I haven't sorted out yet, which is why I generally don't like using room mics when there's a lot of bleed on the individual tracks anyway. This one probably needs lots of automation (which doesn't quite dodge the room track difficulty without issue) and linear phase EQ to get the low end right.

Or I could just mute the room tracks, which I'd ordinarily do in this circumstance anyway, so I'm not sure why I didn't.

One thing I wanted to ask HB: I'm not sure why cutting 500 hZ would help with harshness... if anything it would probably expose it even more. Did you mean 5000?

[Spede]

Yeah, just ditch the room mics. IMO it's impossible to get an immediate, intimate sound out of those. Especially solo vocals hate the roomy sound. I guess I sound a bit provocative when I say that some engineers have this wet dream where the music comes together with only room mics. Maybe it works for classical music but even the Sinatra stuff feature close mics blended tastefully together; if nothing else then the lead vocal mic Also we must remember these Telefunken sessions have quite a lot of mics setup simply for showcase and sometimes for very little function.

To me it seems the addition of the room mics is the main source of clutter in your mix. After you've taken them away you can feature some of the bottom end of the acoustic guitars more liberally (maybe keep it under control with some dynamic EQ?), which might solve the low mids issue. To me the issue seems to be lack thereof low mids.

More a matter of taste but you could pan the acoustic guitars fully to sides to achieve a bigger sound; the leakage will blend everything together to create a coherent sound even then.

[Olli H]

I agree with Spede. You lack some low mids, and it makes a thin feeling to your mix. And singer feels little distant. Otherwise you have nice balance and sound to my ears.

[pauli]

Thanks for comments, guys. The wet dream comment made me laugh and I agree completely. I honestly hate working with room mics unless I absolutely need them to get the full tone from each instrument... and modern convolution reverbs basically render them otherwise unnecessary in my opinion.

Spede and Olli both make very good points, and upon further examination of some stereo qualities and the phase relationships between the room mics and the close mics, I've come to a few conclusions that may be of benefit to you guys (who are very patiently waiting for my reciprocated comments... sorry for the late, it's been hellish here lately).

The number one issue to my mind is that given the leakage between tracks, using all three of the room mics makes is basically impossible to maintain a natural stereo image in the mix... which seems pretty necessary to me. Every time you pan a close mic to align it with the room mics, you're smearing the stereo location of another track with the (often out of phase) leakage, and the inevitable comb filtering consequences of spreading out phasey tracks with lots of leakage are compounded.

On top of that, you can't really EQ any of the close mics without furthering the phase cancellation problems caused by the inherent blend between each mic and the bleed.... which further confuses the "stereoness" of the mix... and in this case case completely eviscerated the low mids (especially in the vocal). And panning anything further than 20 percent or so became absolutely disasterous whenever I tried. This mix is probably pretty easy if you ditch the room mics, really, because the close mics sound really good... except for the bass. Dunno if there's any helping that

[The_Metallurgist]

.....Every time you pan a close mic to align it with the room mics, you're smearing the stereo location of another track with the (often out of phase) leakage, and the inevitable comb filtering consequences of spreading out phasey tracks with lots of leakage are compounded.

in an ideal world, (or even a decent studio one), we'd have access to the microphone and musician arrangements in a Studio Plan which are absolutely crucial in order to avoid the issues discussed herein. without this fundamental piece of information, it's a crapshoot....basically it's academically unmixable in the true sense. having said that, it is possible to glean [some] information from the tracks available regarding musician/mike placement by using some acoustic science and donning a deer-stalker hat...but life is short, eh? and it will still be missing the target to a greater or lesser extent.....

....so, it ends up being a damage-limitation exercise, which immediately brings to mind issues of major compromise. which is why we track dry when at all possible, of course.

was the spectral skew a direct consequence of your speaker issues, by any chance?

hope the dust settles shortly over there