First Mix in Reaper

[FytaKyte]

Unfortunately, cakewalk products are all very poorly programmed and buddy, and Sonar 7 Home Studio is horrendous in that respect. I tried to figure sidechain compression out for 3 months, only to find that S7HS has no support for that, and that's become an extremely important part of my mixing since making the switch.

I'm no expert on programming, but Reaper is certainly miles ahead in stability & efficiency. I understand that many of the big name DAWs that have been around for a while have similar issues.

Sonar Producer actually has had sidechaining for a long time (at least since version 7 when I started using it). The downside was that, until Sonar X3, sidechaining would only operate with some of the bundled native Sonar Plugins. It wasn't until X3 that they enabled VST3 plugins, which finally meant that I could sidechain 3rd party plugins.

You can always count of me for a detailed listen, friend.

I've always been a big proponent of this since I discovered Recordingreview.com with their "Bash This Recording" forum back in 2007. If you listen to & critique just 1 song each day, over a few years, that adds up to a lot of "on the job" learning that is invaluable for us enthusiasts who don't get to do this all day, everyday. This site is great for that, but I haven't had as much involvement over here, as their is only so much time in a day.

I particularly liked the way you offered some suggestions on how to address the issues you raised... this is so much more helpful than just stating what you hear is wrong & moving on.

This mix is deceptively tricky, and since we don't have the band to work with and guide us as to their intentions, Personal Taste reigns supreme over many elements of mix processing, I think. So possibly it's not distance from the mix that you need, you may just not agree with my sonic preferences, and you may have referenced something completely different (based on your taste) than what I did, which is to be expected considering that the band isn't here and therefore hasn't supplied us with references.

Definitely, personal taste plays a big role. I usually try to preface my comments on those type of issues with a disclaimer of sorts stating as much. There are cases when personal taste crosses the line into affecting basics like mix clarity or fundamental frequency problems.

Personal taste aside, I do find that a baseline of sorts can be established by referencing a commercial mix. Whenever I doubt myself as to what I'm hearing in a mix I am critiquing, I put it up against a commercial mix to make sure I'm not just imagining it.

Also, because monitoring situations can vary greatly, if there is a discrepancy between perceptions, I tend to go straight for a spectrum analyzer...

One thing I'd like to ask you about: You mentioned on my mix that the bass guitar wasn't coming through enough for you and was too heavy in the 200 to 300 department. When I compare our mixes side by side and volume match (I tend to keep my peaks lower) the bass on my mix sounds a lot louder, and I also savagely cut in that range on both the bass and guitars, along with highpassing the side channel at 250 kH. I think something is going on with the room mic, maybe I should highpass that up to 200? 250? it's at 100 at the moment.

So I ran both of our mixes (roughly volume equalized) through Voxengo's Spectrum Analyzer. I've attached the results below. As you can see, your mix has a peak around 130hz, then rolls off fairly dramatically in the lows & down into the subsonic region, whereas the bass energy in my mix is spread out over a larger range.

Ultimately, if you trace the plots on the graphs & compare, you can see your mix is down roughly 6dB at around 80hz in comparison to mine. This is pretty significant on a full range system (I have a subwoofer in my system). You can also see that, in your mix the level of energy in the 300hz area is equal to the energy at around 130hz, which would explain my perception of some muddiness coming through.

It's hard to say if the room mic is the culprit. I actually boosted mine @ 216hz by 3dB! I also cut it by 3dB at 630hz, rolling off the low end @ 80hz... But then again, I triggered the room mics to be expanded when the snare, kick & toms close mics hit via side-chaining, so my purpose in using it that way was probably fundamentally different.

It's hard to say which approach is right or wrong, because all the different elements in a mix are so inter-dependent. In your case, high passing the room mics more stringently may clear things out a bit.

I generally find that the close mics in other elements are where the buildup of muddiness occurs, and more often than not, I tend to also cut some of that area on the master buss as well.

One thing I'm certain of is that we are both hearing things very differently in the low end... I don't know if that information is helpful or not