18-04-2014, 03:37 AM
Hey man! I also recently made the switch to Reaper from Sonar, about 3 months ago, and it was a very good decision. I was using Sonar 7 Home Studio and had no idea how buggy it was and how much it was limiting my progress until I made the switch!
So my thoughts on your mix... I think the tone you've gotten for the guitars is very good and you've balanced them with the vocal pretty well. I think your overall mix balance could be greatly improved by compressing the bass guitar a bit and bringing it up higher in the mix because I'm losing it behind the kick drum and I don't feel it's giving the excellent guitar tones a very stable platform. The cellos are a bit harsh in the upper mids... I imagine you probably boosted that region (or cut the tones elsewhere) to help them come through, although I think your mix would be better served by letting them lay underneath the guitars like you might with a synth pad.
Reverbs and delays are mainly creative choices as far as I'm concerned, so you might not agree with me here, but I think there's quite a bit too much verb on the lead vocals and guitars, which contrasts oddly when the comparably dry sounding mob vocals come in during the bridge. Go for longer pre-delays on the more upfront sounds... maybe 100 ms or more, and keep the reverb tail under half a second long. Do the opposite with things you want further back in the mix... shorter predelays and longer reverb tails. Just be careful that the tails aren't muddying up your mix and EQ the effects returns to keep them from upsetting your balance, particularly in the bass. All of that will help create more illusion of depth, which is why I personally prefer reverb to delays, which in my opinion are overdone these days in an effort to avoid reverb. It's like people are afraid they might accidentally sound like Phil Collins, although I can hardly fault them for that
Catch you later, keep posting!
So my thoughts on your mix... I think the tone you've gotten for the guitars is very good and you've balanced them with the vocal pretty well. I think your overall mix balance could be greatly improved by compressing the bass guitar a bit and bringing it up higher in the mix because I'm losing it behind the kick drum and I don't feel it's giving the excellent guitar tones a very stable platform. The cellos are a bit harsh in the upper mids... I imagine you probably boosted that region (or cut the tones elsewhere) to help them come through, although I think your mix would be better served by letting them lay underneath the guitars like you might with a synth pad.
Reverbs and delays are mainly creative choices as far as I'm concerned, so you might not agree with me here, but I think there's quite a bit too much verb on the lead vocals and guitars, which contrasts oddly when the comparably dry sounding mob vocals come in during the bridge. Go for longer pre-delays on the more upfront sounds... maybe 100 ms or more, and keep the reverb tail under half a second long. Do the opposite with things you want further back in the mix... shorter predelays and longer reverb tails. Just be careful that the tails aren't muddying up your mix and EQ the effects returns to keep them from upsetting your balance, particularly in the bass. All of that will help create more illusion of depth, which is why I personally prefer reverb to delays, which in my opinion are overdone these days in an effort to avoid reverb. It's like people are afraid they might accidentally sound like Phil Collins, although I can hardly fault them for that
Catch you later, keep posting!
I'm grateful for comments and suggestions. Thank you for listening!