23-07-2014, 10:04 PM
Quick question before I give you my thoughts... from my perspective most mix engineers fall under two categories: those who prefer EQ as the first potential solution to balance problems and those who generally try compression first. Where is your leaning on that continuum? I lean very strongly toward EQ personally, which is silly as hell considering I'm quite a bit better at handling compression 
but my mixes these days, usually only about 10 to 20% of the tracks ever really wind up getting compressed individually. Just curious 
Anyway!
It's all too easy to focus on the negatives when reviewing a mix on this board and I'm as guilty as anyone, maybe moreso... but in many ways I think this is a strong step forward. I'm not an expert, far from it, and I think there's still a lot can be done... but your effort here shows me you went back to your mix and listened for what Ollie and I were talking about and made efforts to improve it. And you did improve it. The reverb situation especially is much better. There are a few places where it's still a bit washy for me, but we're getting really close to subjective taste if I keep on about that... the most important thing is that it sounds more pleasant and it's not burying everything like it had been.
The clarity and separation are better, but I think there's still a bit of room for improvement (or just food for thought). I think the steels are still masking the nylon a bit too much, and maybe you took it a little too far with the boosts in the electrics. They're brighter but harsher, too.
The main thing that I'm hung up on now is that the mix sounds congested from about 200 to 1000/1100 (not scientific numbers, just an educated guess). Chief offender instrument-wise is again the steels, but my instincts are telling me that compression is involved in a huge way and it's probably causing some frequencies to "bunch up" and accumulate. It's hard to give specific advice in this situation because different compressors behave differently... but my gut tells me there's probably compression in varying amounts on most of the tracks individually, which can cause frequency balance problems between instruments that live in the same frequency ranges because of the slowing effect that compression can have on note decays. Basically, the note is taking longer to decay, so any other instruments strong in the same frequency region has less "room to breathe." Short frequency buildups that cause a very small ripple in the frequency balance are important for music to sound natural, but if too many notes are taking too long to decay in the mid-range, then you get much longer buildups that make much bigger ripples, which is going to hurt the "openness" of a mix. Reverb can also do this, and parallel compression can cause very serious problems too, but in this case, I'm thinking you've got a lot of compressors on individual instruments. In the mixing stage sometimes this goes unnoticed (because it's not an issue at that point) but then when compression is applied during mastering, it can severely exaggerate that issue. Happens to me ALL THE TIME, where I'll take a mix to mastering and find I can't compress things the way I'd like without taking it back to the mix and rethinking compressor insert settings. There are a dozen other things that can cause what I'm hearing (and some people prefer this sound, so it could even be your taste) so I'm not sure if it's compression or not, but that seems most likely to me because it's so easy to do, and most of your reverb problems you handled quite well in my opinion.
My general rule of thumb for compression in almost any scenario is that I want the VU meter to return to 0 dB of gain reduction at least once, if only for an instant, every few seconds. The reason for this is that your sound will be more natural and free of artifacts/tonal coloration. It will breathe better, so to speak. Give Eminem's track Monsters ft. Rihanna a listen... listen for her vocal where she says "the VOICES inside of my head" and you will hear the compressor very audibly kicking in hard and holding. It's a nice effect and I love it for pop vocals, and obviously it makes balancing a vocal a hell of a lot easier, too... but pop vocals don't mostly need a natural sound and she doesn't have 3 other singers with the same range to compete with, as is the case with the guitars. On this tune, I think altering your attack/release times to get more efficient compression will help. Yu may have to adjust your post compression EQ slightly but probably not much. And on the master bus... honestly, I think any compression you apply to the whole mix should be returning 0 dB of reduction quite often, ESPECIALLY if you're using a good deal of compression in the mix.
Anyway, I hope some of that helps in some way... just my opinions and I'm wrong as often as right. Your new mix is a step in the right direction IMHO.
but my mixes these days, usually only about 10 to 20% of the tracks ever really wind up getting compressed individually. Just curious Anyway!
It's all too easy to focus on the negatives when reviewing a mix on this board and I'm as guilty as anyone, maybe moreso... but in many ways I think this is a strong step forward. I'm not an expert, far from it, and I think there's still a lot can be done... but your effort here shows me you went back to your mix and listened for what Ollie and I were talking about and made efforts to improve it. And you did improve it. The reverb situation especially is much better. There are a few places where it's still a bit washy for me, but we're getting really close to subjective taste if I keep on about that... the most important thing is that it sounds more pleasant and it's not burying everything like it had been.
The clarity and separation are better, but I think there's still a bit of room for improvement (or just food for thought). I think the steels are still masking the nylon a bit too much, and maybe you took it a little too far with the boosts in the electrics. They're brighter but harsher, too.
The main thing that I'm hung up on now is that the mix sounds congested from about 200 to 1000/1100 (not scientific numbers, just an educated guess). Chief offender instrument-wise is again the steels, but my instincts are telling me that compression is involved in a huge way and it's probably causing some frequencies to "bunch up" and accumulate. It's hard to give specific advice in this situation because different compressors behave differently... but my gut tells me there's probably compression in varying amounts on most of the tracks individually, which can cause frequency balance problems between instruments that live in the same frequency ranges because of the slowing effect that compression can have on note decays. Basically, the note is taking longer to decay, so any other instruments strong in the same frequency region has less "room to breathe." Short frequency buildups that cause a very small ripple in the frequency balance are important for music to sound natural, but if too many notes are taking too long to decay in the mid-range, then you get much longer buildups that make much bigger ripples, which is going to hurt the "openness" of a mix. Reverb can also do this, and parallel compression can cause very serious problems too, but in this case, I'm thinking you've got a lot of compressors on individual instruments. In the mixing stage sometimes this goes unnoticed (because it's not an issue at that point) but then when compression is applied during mastering, it can severely exaggerate that issue. Happens to me ALL THE TIME, where I'll take a mix to mastering and find I can't compress things the way I'd like without taking it back to the mix and rethinking compressor insert settings. There are a dozen other things that can cause what I'm hearing (and some people prefer this sound, so it could even be your taste) so I'm not sure if it's compression or not, but that seems most likely to me because it's so easy to do, and most of your reverb problems you handled quite well in my opinion.
My general rule of thumb for compression in almost any scenario is that I want the VU meter to return to 0 dB of gain reduction at least once, if only for an instant, every few seconds. The reason for this is that your sound will be more natural and free of artifacts/tonal coloration. It will breathe better, so to speak. Give Eminem's track Monsters ft. Rihanna a listen... listen for her vocal where she says "the VOICES inside of my head" and you will hear the compressor very audibly kicking in hard and holding. It's a nice effect and I love it for pop vocals, and obviously it makes balancing a vocal a hell of a lot easier, too... but pop vocals don't mostly need a natural sound and she doesn't have 3 other singers with the same range to compete with, as is the case with the guitars. On this tune, I think altering your attack/release times to get more efficient compression will help. Yu may have to adjust your post compression EQ slightly but probably not much. And on the master bus... honestly, I think any compression you apply to the whole mix should be returning 0 dB of reduction quite often, ESPECIALLY if you're using a good deal of compression in the mix.
Anyway, I hope some of that helps in some way... just my opinions and I'm wrong as often as right. Your new mix is a step in the right direction IMHO.
I'm grateful for comments and suggestions. Thank you for listening!