Okay, so I did a mix of this back in 2018 and I thought it was pretty good at the time but every time it came up on my playlist, I always felt it could be better. Mostly, I was unhappy with the kick drum and the chorus vocals however there were other shortcomings as well. So after literally not doing anything with audio production for two years (it isn't as easy as it used to be since the hearing injury keeps me from listening at a good mix level for long periods, combined with HF attenuation in my right ear and mixing on headphones--AKG K240 mkIIs-- can be extremely difficult because it's now very easy to overload my ears), I decided to sit down and have a go at it. While I originally went in only intending to fix the big problems, eventually, I tweaked almost everything and completely redid a number of things (I even changed the arrangement slightly) so for all intents and purposes, even though the mix takes the same direction, it should be thought of as a complete remix. Because I was completely out of practice and my ears lost their tuning, it took me a full two weeks to get everything under control again.
Beware that the audio I posted is a limited mix and the climax may be louder than you are expecting.
Even though the lead vocals sound very dynamic, you would be surprised to see how much compression I actually have on them. I started with a Fairchild 660 emulator for the transients and followed that by the DAW's prepackaged compressor (Sonitus) in its "vintage" (optical) mode with moderate reduction and soft knee at I think 5:1 with a long release timer for more general compression. What you're hearing is fader riding (volume automation) both to fix some stuff the compression couldn't catch and still be transparent and to help with intelligibility by raising/accenting certain syllables. I added a good bit of drive to the guitars in the grand chorus using the Blue Tubes Valve Driver from Nomad Factory. (Was included as part of a basic Nomad bundle way back when I bought what was then Sonar X3 from Cakewalk and I just love most of their plugins. The CP2S compressor is my go-to for a great many things and its been hard for me to find a deesser I like more than theirs.)
The only things I think are potentially real problems are the low end management since mixing in an apartment while trying to keep on good terms with the neighbors means turning off the sub-woofer, save for relatively short intervals during the daytime when most folks are at work, which has its crossover set at about 100Hz and the monitor speaker's rolled off starting at that same threshold. I think I'm okay there but not entirely certain. The second problem would be the last two choruses. I fear I may have overdone it a touch! There is a lot of treble there and I did my best to manage it while still trying to keep it bright and lively without being piercing. There also may be a tad too much dynamic contrast between the start of the song and that climax even though the kick drum is at a constant level throughout the tune, along with the lead vocal, save for about a 1-2dB boost in those choruses.)
Anyhow, comments are always welcome.
(Oh, the original pass can be found in this thread https://discussion.cambridge-mt.com/show...?tid=23778)
Beware that the audio I posted is a limited mix and the climax may be louder than you are expecting.
Even though the lead vocals sound very dynamic, you would be surprised to see how much compression I actually have on them. I started with a Fairchild 660 emulator for the transients and followed that by the DAW's prepackaged compressor (Sonitus) in its "vintage" (optical) mode with moderate reduction and soft knee at I think 5:1 with a long release timer for more general compression. What you're hearing is fader riding (volume automation) both to fix some stuff the compression couldn't catch and still be transparent and to help with intelligibility by raising/accenting certain syllables. I added a good bit of drive to the guitars in the grand chorus using the Blue Tubes Valve Driver from Nomad Factory. (Was included as part of a basic Nomad bundle way back when I bought what was then Sonar X3 from Cakewalk and I just love most of their plugins. The CP2S compressor is my go-to for a great many things and its been hard for me to find a deesser I like more than theirs.)
The only things I think are potentially real problems are the low end management since mixing in an apartment while trying to keep on good terms with the neighbors means turning off the sub-woofer, save for relatively short intervals during the daytime when most folks are at work, which has its crossover set at about 100Hz and the monitor speaker's rolled off starting at that same threshold. I think I'm okay there but not entirely certain. The second problem would be the last two choruses. I fear I may have overdone it a touch! There is a lot of treble there and I did my best to manage it while still trying to keep it bright and lively without being piercing. There also may be a tad too much dynamic contrast between the start of the song and that climax even though the kick drum is at a constant level throughout the tune, along with the lead vocal, save for about a 1-2dB boost in those choruses.)
Anyhow, comments are always welcome.
(Oh, the original pass can be found in this thread https://discussion.cambridge-mt.com/show...?tid=23778)
Old West Audio