No worries, even the top pro, multi-gold-records, award-winning mixer is a normal guy 
I do take your comments "normally", but I still think they are spot on !
Thanks for those on my mix ! About the distortion, between this version and the previous one, I did some global changes and it probably got the mix hotter overall, therefore hitting the limiter on the mix bus harder (too hard). I probably just lost perspective at that point and should have given a few days to the mix before listening to it again post-tweaking, I didn't realize it. The distortion comes from that. I use a free TLS plugin to bring the mix level up, it's not that transparent even if I don't push it...
I think the pumping (triggered by the kick indeed) is also due to the post-tweaking hotter mix, hitting the mix bus compressor too hard. I used a compression plugin that I like on the mix bus to give a little more energy to the song. I don't normally exceed a couple of dbs of GR, but I just re-opened it and noticed it was compressing much more, so again, didn't pay attention enough after tweaking.
I also just found a nasty resonance peak at around 8khz in the vocal tracks that I never noticed before for some reason. It gets very strong on the "me" in choruses, so did a little cut there.
Thanks for your perspective, I'm going to be uploading version 5 soon, I'd be glad for you and anybody else to tell if the mix got better (or worse), just to make sure I heard and corrected the same things you're hearing and mentioning (important for the learning process)!
Cheers
I do take your comments "normally", but I still think they are spot on !
Thanks for those on my mix ! About the distortion, between this version and the previous one, I did some global changes and it probably got the mix hotter overall, therefore hitting the limiter on the mix bus harder (too hard). I probably just lost perspective at that point and should have given a few days to the mix before listening to it again post-tweaking, I didn't realize it. The distortion comes from that. I use a free TLS plugin to bring the mix level up, it's not that transparent even if I don't push it...
I think the pumping (triggered by the kick indeed) is also due to the post-tweaking hotter mix, hitting the mix bus compressor too hard. I used a compression plugin that I like on the mix bus to give a little more energy to the song. I don't normally exceed a couple of dbs of GR, but I just re-opened it and noticed it was compressing much more, so again, didn't pay attention enough after tweaking.
I also just found a nasty resonance peak at around 8khz in the vocal tracks that I never noticed before for some reason. It gets very strong on the "me" in choruses, so did a little cut there.
Thanks for your perspective, I'm going to be uploading version 5 soon, I'd be glad for you and anybody else to tell if the mix got better (or worse), just to make sure I heard and corrected the same things you're hearing and mentioning (important for the learning process)!
Cheers