Eyes Mix (Chad Hollister Band)

[Mixinthecloud]

I like the environment you put this into but I don't think it is doing a good for the low end, which has a boxiness to it which really gets in the way. Mybe for filtering on the low end reverb would help?

The low end on this song is probably the biggest challenge. The song, IMHO, is all about the guitar and mandolin bounce. It drives the song and everything else needs to serve that feel. Unfortunately the low end in this song does not drive the song well when it is too prevalent in the mix. Balancing out the bounce and the bottom end is the trick.

Interesting thoughts - thanks for taking the time to listen and comment!

I do agree that the low end is difficult on this song - and that is reflected in what seems to be an over-inflated bass emphasis on much of what I'm hearing in the other mixes put up to this point. Would love to get a bit more detail on the 'boxiness' you're hearing. Is it a particular kick 'sound' you're not liking, etc.? The reverb is high passed quite a bit, but I suppose it could be shunted off even more. I'm seeing a very balanced frequency response on a spectral analysis (on my mix), but I take your point.

I'm hearing (in many of the mixes here) the results of untreated rooms...which inevitably push the low end as a result of uncontrolled low-freq response. Mine (as a result of having run a commercial studio for a while) is quite well treated - as I think that is the best investment in many ways (before other 'sexy' gear choices). Thus my follow-up question (i.e., I'm not hearing the boxiness/distraction - esp. when compared to other mixes here). (I'm *not completely happy with the translated snare sound, btw, but this is not a commercial project, so I'm moving on at this point - I think it *is a bit boxy at times, and I would probably want to automate some eq settings for different passages.)

Loved your mix, by the way. Very clear and 'studio-like', which is certainly one direction to take this song. I intentionally left a bunch of the (how did you put it) "quagmire" in to remain consistent with what seemed to be the "vision" of the performance - but were I to be hired to mix this, I would have gone more in your direction.

Cheers and thanks for the discussion!

I think I am hearing it in the snare and kit, in general. I think a lot of this can be attributed to the bleed in the vocal mic. I took a very strange approach to the vocal tracks in the recording. I severely hi-passed the condenser and low-passed the dynamic and combined them with de-essing in several places.