What the heck. Another mixdown. I reloaded the original audio files and started from scratch with the goal of improving my drum treatments. I got carried away and worked the whole song. Here's what I did differently:
- no Hammond :-)
- Used a single room verb aux and sent several tracks to that.
- Tried a pile of different dedicated verbs for the snare, finally ending up with a large chamber, no predelay, and a gate. I really like how it turned out.
- Lead and rhythm guitars are still split, and I copied the rhythm guitar to two tracks, panned, then re-amped one of them with Boogex and a miced cab impulse to create some contrast.
- I wanted the acoustic to sit further back in the mix, so I used the stereo field enhancements in Amplio during the main body of the song, just not the intro or the break section. It's easy to overdo that, so I hope I backed off on it enough to sit right, but not be too resonant in the sides.
- The backing vox are mostly just the lead vox duplicated, so I panned the two tracks 60% each way, and added a chorus on their bus. In some places I ducked the lead vocal part so the backups would become more prominent.
- I added a longer delay to the lead vox, but wanted it only audible at the ends of phrases. I sent the lead vox to a separate track, added the delay, then put a compressor after it sidechained against the main vocal track. Compressed the hell out of it so the delay ducks when he's singing. The compressor releases when each phrase ends so the delay comes through. What a pain in the ass. Was it worth the effort?
Otherwise, the usual EQ, compression and reverb to taste where needed.
And for funzies, I'm uploading both the mixdown and the master. Mixdown ended up around -22db RMS, peaking around -8.5, so dynamic range around 12. Master was pushed to about -7db RMS, and with the limiter set to -1.5, the render from WAV to MP3 ended with peaks around -.5db. I did some small EQ tweaks on the master, none more than about 3db.
Reaper probably isn't the best choice for conversions. I'm open to suggestions on this if anyone has an opinion.
- no Hammond :-)
- Used a single room verb aux and sent several tracks to that.
- Tried a pile of different dedicated verbs for the snare, finally ending up with a large chamber, no predelay, and a gate. I really like how it turned out.
- Lead and rhythm guitars are still split, and I copied the rhythm guitar to two tracks, panned, then re-amped one of them with Boogex and a miced cab impulse to create some contrast.
- I wanted the acoustic to sit further back in the mix, so I used the stereo field enhancements in Amplio during the main body of the song, just not the intro or the break section. It's easy to overdo that, so I hope I backed off on it enough to sit right, but not be too resonant in the sides.
- The backing vox are mostly just the lead vox duplicated, so I panned the two tracks 60% each way, and added a chorus on their bus. In some places I ducked the lead vocal part so the backups would become more prominent.
- I added a longer delay to the lead vox, but wanted it only audible at the ends of phrases. I sent the lead vox to a separate track, added the delay, then put a compressor after it sidechained against the main vocal track. Compressed the hell out of it so the delay ducks when he's singing. The compressor releases when each phrase ends so the delay comes through. What a pain in the ass. Was it worth the effort?
Otherwise, the usual EQ, compression and reverb to taste where needed.
And for funzies, I'm uploading both the mixdown and the master. Mixdown ended up around -22db RMS, peaking around -8.5, so dynamic range around 12. Master was pushed to about -7db RMS, and with the limiter set to -1.5, the render from WAV to MP3 ended with peaks around -.5db. I did some small EQ tweaks on the master, none more than about 3db.
Reaper probably isn't the best choice for conversions. I'm open to suggestions on this if anyone has an opinion.