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Don't Let the Devil - Live Punch
#5
(18-05-2015, 01:20 PM)londonmatt Wrote: Hi there, this is essentially a great mix but I do wonder whether it would be improved considerably by backing off the master buss compression / limiting considerably. I'm a sucker for loud mixes myself, but with this type of dynamic, organic live music, I feel it needs a lot more room to breathe. Once the whole band kicks in the LU range is 3 for pretty much the rest of the song, which is tiny. You'd get much more contrast between song sections if you increased that considerably.

Only other point is I wonder whether the reverb and distortion on the lead vox are a touch overdone? That's a personal thing obviously, but I reckon you could back off the distortion quite a bit and still have a nice edge to the sound. (Are you using the Waves Butch Vig vocals plugin by any chance?)

Hope that helps, as I said overall it's a great mix but I think these points could improve it still further.
Cheers, Matt

Hi LondonMatt,

Thank you for the critique. I was going for a definite distortion on the vocal as for me it worked to create a "dirtiness". I went back and forth a few times with and without. In the end I heard it lending some interesting character to the performance. There is a delay on his voice that is activated in and out for various trailing phrases and the reverb is just noticeable if I solo the vocal. I've had this one in the can for a couple of months, but I'll revisit it again using new ears and try your suggestions. I'll post it as soon as I can.

I purchased the Butch Vig plugin a few weeks ago so it didn't make it in that mix. I've been experimenting with various components of the plugin for other uses. It is quite the Swiss army knife with it's many features. I'm looking forward to using it perhaps on my next mix after the current one, which is the disco song "Siren" by Georgia Wonder found here on this site.

I used the Slate FG-X in my mastering chain. It definitely can make things hot. I routinely played the song through a couple of dozen different systems and settled on this comp/lim combo during the mastering. I didn't use anything on the 2bus save for Waves NLS for each respective mix group. Each vox was parallel compressed, very little to no comp on the guitars (primarily used for subtle color), bass was comp'd and supplemented with the Waves Bass Rider.

I'm trying different production techniques as well as purposely working with music that forces me to be creative (Metal, Rap, New Age, ...). In my future mixes I'll try the Michael Brauer "Brauerizing" technique, Steve Albini approach (which is what I'm finishing up), and Andrew Schepps LCR, to name a few.

Work is getting v-e-r-y busy for me right now as several of my products are gaining some traction. I hope I can get back to this song soon to try out your suggestions.

-Jim
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Messages In This Thread
Don't Let the Devil - Live Punch - by jmullis - 17-05-2015, 09:45 PM
RE: Don't Let the Devil - Live Punch - by jmullis - 20-05-2015, 11:28 AM
RE: Don't Let the Devil - Live Punch - by sysrq - 20-05-2015, 10:41 AM