MikaelaDavis&SouthernStar - HomeInTheCountry (BigCityLights Mix)

[novalix]

It’s the same problem I’m experiencing with all auditions – vocal placement vs the harp. Many/most/all have also taken the route of hard panning. It only works for musicians; it is spatially surreal, brings excessive focus and fails miserably to translate but more on this below:

Firstly, you have 2x Mikaelas. One is in my face.  The other, playing the harp, appears hard panned left. Detached. Not a good idea for a harpist/vocalist or fans who know her work.  So there are Rules, contrary to what one chap mentions irresponsibly in this sub!!

Well, the harp was not recorded as an acoustic instrument. It is equipped with pick-ups. Their signal goes out to two amps in the room and an additional DI-Signal to the board. There is next to no spill of her voice in the recorded signal. The "second Mikaela" you hear comes from other sources (room mics). The amplifiers where actually placed opposite to the lap-steel in this specific session. There is no guessing involved. You can hear it, when you listen to the side signal (the Fig.8 Mic) of the room recording.
So, in the recording of the actual performance the artists along with the engineers decided to present this specific sound stage to a listening audience. Which rules do apply in this given situation?

   
The stick ... 

I could have tamed it a bit, yes. But it does not bother me that much, really.

Increase the auditioning level (fletcher-munson non-linearities), and things can, and do, become very irritating!

Actually, i 've used a plugin which draws a fletcher-munson curve to a given level reduction (-8dB in this case, compensated by increasing the output level of the interface) in my monitoring chain for the first time in this mix. Your post lead me to review this approach with much higher settings (up to -24dB) which in fact revealed some problematic aspects of my mix (more low-end related).

The drums would contribute more to the rhythm if brought forwards subjectively.

Well, they certainly could. For my taste they are forward enough. Again, it was the room recording i used as a guide for my mixing decisions. Therefor i relied on the dynamics of the actual performance.

Do you really need to include the stick counts for the listener?

It is part of the actual performance. I do not *need* it to be there. It 's just there and i didn't feel the need to remove it, ymmv.

The vocal is sibilant. I also find the gasping breathers she takes to be excessive and  therefore distracting.  Your processing also tends to emphasise this feature.  She’s not a trained vocalist(?). Irrespective, we surely need to help her.  Yes? No? 

I did three stages of de-essing to where i 've figured it is still sounding natural. I am reluctant to putting a blanket in her mouth.
I've actually tamed the breathes, but again not to extent to make it sound clinical. It is a live recording and i like the notion of an human being singing to me. And no, i'm not feeling obliged to "help" her singing.

The bv’s would benefit from more inclusion and participation. In mono they are lost for most of the time, and near impossible to define for the rest without effort.

Well, how much real estate you give to the bvs is always a question with different parameters at stake. In this specific case we are obviously faced with some addional technical problems. The signal of both of the voices is very inconsistent but it comes with a consistent quantum of bleed which is edited out for the most part of the song where no background singing takes place. That means: no pitch correction, no using the spill to your advantage and very limited ranges of volume automation, compression and even saturation. Pulling up the faders means pulling up the sudden blob of additional spill.
That said, i for once am quite satisfied with where the bvs sit in my mix, but of course ymmv.

The low end is muddy, boomy, and ill defined from serious masking issues.

Yes, the low end, low mid range is a trouble area in all of my mixes (not that there aren't any other). That said, it is not that bad as your wording suggests.
In this specific case i wanted to explicitly utilize the bloom of the low end out of the room recording. Setting a goal and achieving it are two different stories, but in this case my own intuition is i am more than half way there.

This mixmaster doesn’t translate and mono playback shows up the issues and shortcomings of stereo mixing and hard panning.

Well, i did not audition my mix in mono and indeed it shows some problematic areas in my mix. It is inmho by far not that troublesome as your wording suggests. There is no hard panning.

All side elements end up inclusive in a mono downmix!

No they do not. The side track of the room recording nulls completely in mono.

The mixmaster is missing macro dynamic energy – i.e. E M O T I O N. Furthermore, having all elements wanging around all the time (4 strings bringing long sustains and slow decay and a tonne of masking), risks losing listener interest and it gives you nowhere to go during the chorus other than louder (i.e. more unpleasant distortion artifacts, less dynamic range, lost emotions).

In all honesty, your wording is getting seriously out of whack here.
Regarding the dynamics processing, i have applied small amounts of compression (around 2dB at max) on individual instruments (including voice) mostly to bring out or tame some aspects of the sound. On the instrumental bus i've used some glueing compression of again 2dB at max and on the mixbus put a peak limiter at the end of the chain which catches some snare transients here and there in the choruses, mostly somewhat around 1dB.
The result of my pseudo mastering is at -14LuFS and not squashed at all. It is way more dynamic than the original mix.

The wash/blanket of cymbal accompaniment sounds like static hiss.

At this point i'm not sure if actually listened to my mix.

I really appreciate that you took the time and effort to listen and comment. You have made some serious points. They were sometimes covered in a mix of strange assumptions and attitude, though.
I did another revision of my mix where i gave the bass compression a slightly longer release time and filtered the low end bloom in the side channel.