Howlin

[bmullen]

Bob, I like very much where you're going with this. Overall, I like your balance decisions, and the levels seem appropriate for the most part. You've created an energetic mix that creates a feeling of urgency and forward momentum, which is often one of the mixer's most challenging tasks. The mix is a bit hot for my taste, but it's very comparable to commercial releases in that respect... which means you've given consideration to the target audience. I respect that a lot.

Opportunities as I see it:

For me the SFX tracks, specifically the crash and impact tracks, are too loud. In a few spots they're covering the vocals and drowning out musical elements I was wanting to hear. That could be a taste thing, but I think it might make someone listening on headphones jump out of his seat if he were listening at a typical pop music level.

In Mike Senior's book (which I love, by the way, if you don't have it... it's very useful and also funny as hell) he mentions how we become accustomed to high frequencies, only to find out the next morning that our mix sounds like "a wasp, shaving." That made me laugh when I read Olli's comment In this case, I think he's talking about the track called "arp" because I found that track to be a bit abrasive on the high end as well in both versions. Not enough that it spoiled your mix for me or stressed me out, but I think your work here could benefit from a low-pass filter up around 12 or 13 on that track. An added benefit to this tactic, at least the way I see it, is that it makes more room for those lovely airy frequencies in the singer's voice to shine.

I'm not sure what's causing it, but I think the sub frequencies in the kick drum are lagging behind the attack a bit, which muddies up the bottom end on occasion. It could be that any compression you're using is emphasizing the natural tendency of sub kicks to behave that way... but if you low cut it around 30 Hz prior to the compression, I think it'd help without hurting the impact of the music.

Great work... really nice overall sound.

I do have Mike's book. I think it's time to give it another read