You ceartainly made a loud mix. Too loud if you ask me. Verse and prechorus are kinda ok, but chorus are so squashed its not perceived louder, as I think it should be.
You have a cool bright sound on all, are the acoustics a bit too loud in verses ?
My advice is: back off the limiter a lot - only take 1 or 2 dB in mastering.
You have close to no dynamics in this.
Sound of your mix I think is very good.
Old ears, old gear, little boy inside love music and sounds and my wife, not necessarily in that order
I know what you mean, the refrain is really squashing. I haven't recognized that before. What i try to do in the mastering process is to bring up the song to a common level of volume, some EQ changes and dynamic editing. I compare the level of the mastering output to a reference song i choose, and try get nearly to the same volume level.
Attached you will find the mixdown of the song. As you can hear, the volume is far a way from the common level of commerce songs.
And the sound is SO much better !
The most important volume boost in in the listeners power, the one he reach out for when a good song is on the playlist.
Listenin now the kick is bigger than rest o the kit, includin the snare, maybe the overheads should be little louder.
Or instrument bus could come down a dB ?
The brass is a bit loud too I think.
Vocal lvl could come up a tad in chorus.
Thx for postin this much clearer mix
Old ears, old gear, little boy inside love music and sounds and my wife, not necessarily in that order
Not that Im any kind of expert in mastering, but I know what I dont like and used to do: squash the mix.
My new approach is some kind o saturation, Often its some UAD plugins not doin anythin but havin the music go through them, the Pultec, the LA2A, the Fairchild.
Then a compressor to event things out before limiter, compressin most o the time with fairly long attck and release, 90ish atck and 1500 release, set to rms mode.
Then an eq and limiter last, takin some 2 dB at most from loudest part of song.
It works for me but I know not evrybody would agree with this
Old ears, old gear, little boy inside love music and sounds and my wife, not necessarily in that order
Had a listen to the mixdown version here, and it feels rather bottom-heavy. I wonder whether you can hear what's going on down there. It feels like it's pumping some kind of buss compression slightly unnaturally too, but maybe that's my imagination... Cymbals feel a bit overwhelming too in the balance too, and the piano and acoustic guitar could do with sustaining more, I think.