Seeking Constructive Feedback on My Mix of W.A. Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 12 K414

[IharBild]

Hello everyone,

I hope you're all doing well. I'm thrilled to share with you my mix of Andrey Yaroshinsky & The Gnessin Academy Chamber Orchestra's rendition of W.A. Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 12 K414 (Allegro).

As someone relatively new to mixing classical orchestral music, I've tried to bring a fresh perspective to this piece. I've used the Haas effect (stereo delays) on mono channels for more realistic panning. Volume automation was written on the master channel. All instruments were divided into three groups - foreground, middle, and background. They were then sent to three different reverbs with slightly different settings. The balance between the main stereo pair and the hall was changed depending on the dynamics of the composition to give more depth  and width in loud places.

I'm posting my work here to seek your valuable feedback. I'm interested in hearing your thoughts on the mix, the effects used, the balance of the instruments, and the overall feel of the piece.

Please feel free to share your constructive criticism and suggestions. Your feedback will not only help me improve this particular mix but also aid in my overall growth as a sound engineer.

Thank you for taking the time to listen and share your thoughts. I look forward to reading your comments and engaging in enriching discussions.

Best regards, Ihar

[Mixinthecloud]

Hello Ihar.

An interesting approach, to be sure and I believe you have achieved what you have stated. I do feel there are some consequences to your approach, though.
With the normal amounts of bleed in each of the section mics and pairs, adding delay seems to have caused some phase issues in places in your mix. Can you explain what you were trying to achieve with these? I am also hearing a flattening of dynamics especially on the piano and especially on the low end of the piano. It feels a bit mushy. I think your front, middle and rear grouping is very interesting and would like to hear more about that. I hear it enhancing the low end of the hall and adding space. Please don't get me wrong, your presentation is nicely balanced and an enjoyable listen. There are nuances in your mix not in mine or others. That is the privilege of having freedom to express your musical ideas with a great piece of music.

I would like to know what compression you applied and where and the character of your three reverbs. I would also like to hear about your panning choices.

Good work.

[IharBild]

Hello Mixinthecloud and thank you for your answer,

Yes, you're absolutely right about some phase issues, but it seems like it was due to my mistake with the width enhancer Waves S1, so I turned it off.
The main idea was to mix the main pair (center) with the side pair to achieve an adequate M-S balance, then add the hall channel to provide some depth. After that, I added a sum of the spot channels to enhance the presence of certain instruments.

Regarding the spot sum, I split it into three parts: front, middle, and back. Each part had its own EQ (high shelf -1, -2, -4 dB) to position them in different sound planes. Every part was sent to its own reverb. Basically, the reverb was the same but with different pre-delay and balance between early and late reflections to imitate different planes.

About the Haas effect: The typical size of a human head is 16-18 cm, which means sound needs 0.17m/343m/s = 0.000495s, or 0.495ms, to travel through this distance. When an object is right in front of us, the sound reaches each ear simultaneously. However, if it's positioned strictly to one side, the sound needs an extra 0.495ms to reach the opposite ear. Therefore, we can place a mono instrument in the stereo field not only by its L-R volume but also by its time delay in the 0-0.5ms range or even more. I used a correlation meter to control the phase and avoid more than 90 degrees of phase rotation.

I used gentle upward compression to enhance some quiet moments of the track and a relatively slow SSL compressor on the spot mics (ratio 2:1) with a small reduction on the loudest parts to glue the mix a bit.

I placed the instruments as they sound in the main mics: piano a little bit to the right, 1st violins on the left, 2nd violins on the right, cellos on the left, violas on the right, woodwinds slightly to the left, and bass on the left.

I used Waves H-Delay with a large hall preset, and I reduced the reverb time to 2.3-2.5 seconds.

So, I've made some changes to the mix in order to address some of the issues we discussed.