Justin Myles - Shortened arrangement (mix now posted)

[dcp10200]

I can appreciate you reasoning about the loudness wars and just smashing everything to bits for no good reason, however, Till gave the trigger track for every close mic on the drums, distorted electric guitars aren't dynamic to begin with, and the vocals are going to need automation and fair amount of compression to smooth them out. The fact that you cam out and just hammered someone and told them that their hearing was damaged and that they are causing others on this forum to go deaf while then saying you're not trying to be confrontational is quite a condescending and pretentious statement. Don't give an excuse as to why you can't mix something, mix it, find out what mistakes you made in the first run though and fix them in the second mix, repeat till you have a good mix. Also listen to Songs for the Deaf by Queens of the Stone Age, that's an example of how loudness wars mastering was used as a creative effect and it actually works really well for the style.

I'm not sure about the genres of music you listen to but I'm assuming that your're main genre isn't punk or metal. Punk rock, Metal, and Hardcore Punk generally are loud and abrasive genres of music and dynamics aren't really the focus of the music. Sleep by the Fire isn't really monotone the whole way through and who says that all the tracks have to be playing the whole way through in your mix, I for example took the guitars, bass, and drum close mics out of the mix to change the musical dynamic of the track up and removed some guitar parts that I felt were unnecessary to make the arrangement more sparse.

Get a new DAC as well, my cheap mbox mini wasn't crapping out on Till's mix and it's not a good DAC whatsoever.