Motherload

[HbGuitar]

One thing I wanted to ask HB: I'm not sure why cutting 500 hZ would help with harshness... if anything it would probably expose it even more. Did you mean 5000?

Ahh Pauli, now you want me to get all technical.....And first up, yes I meant 500Hz.

To my ears your mix was getting a bit "mid-rangey" and from my own anecdotal experience with mixing vocals and acoustic instruments this occurs in the 250-2000hz area. Now maybe my description of "harsh" threw you but its the opposite of the word smooth - which is what i personally want a mix to sound like, especially in this critical area of the lower mids where most of the lower order harmonics reside.

As i mentioned, I processed your mix in my DAW using these settings (a wide (q=0.25) 2 db cut in master buss EQ centered at 500Hz), and to my ears your mix sounded smoother and more pleasing. You may not like the effect or maybe aren't looking for your mix to sound that way so I was only offering some empirical data to support my observation and offering a possible solution.

The thinking behind this EQ cut is that a build-up of low-mids puts the spectral balance out of whack with both the top and bottom ends of the frequency spectrum.....so a solution would be to add both top and bottom shelving boosts to balance tonality, followed by a cut in gain to normalize levels.

However, the nature of most digital EQ's - and certainly my native parametric eq - is that they aren't often that musical and using boosts can result in some unwanted EQ -processing artifacts. So I'll use a single shelving cut instead (that replicates the top and bottom boosts) and add an appropriate amount of make-up gain.

Cheers

(btw did you say you had new speakers?)