You are the One (pushed mix)

[drFiend]

Another quick one.

Not much panning, mostly balance (really obsessed with it), some conservative EQ (fixing mostly), reverb here and here.

This time another experiment - pushed some channels and mix bus through a preamp (not vintage) as hard as could, think of wall-of-sound style. Nearly turned it to a solid brick.

No limiting and no compression. Everyhting that sounds "kinda like compression" is in fact distortion.

Is that distortion sounds appealing or at least not distracts from the music?

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Update: did a new improved version using suggestions and my own ideas.
Much more cleaning, tried to improve drums and bass sound and balance on synth and organs.

Isn't the synth too low? And does the organ at 3:47 work better in center rather than right? IMO it appears louder this way.

Have forgotten to mention that both previous and new version are mono compatible.

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Update #2: Noticed that I've messed EQ settings on second version which resulted in degraded quality. Also, sculpted the synth and tried blending it more into background instead of upfront. Finally happy enough with it and replaced previous version with new. The first left in peace.

[azwayne]

There are some interesting things in this mix. I think the reverb/delay that you've chosen really works.

I think, though, that the organ is too high up front. I'd bring it in at the level you do but over about 4-6 bars, dip it down about 3-5 dB so the guitar comes out more. Similarly once the main song gets going, it comes in again and draws my ear away from the real action.

The compression that the preamp is generating (you're technically limiting as well as distorting) doesn't sound that bad but once you get it back into the DAW, you still need to mind level controls. It's a decently fat sound but things are competing for attention instead of cooperating.

Remember, the "wall of sound" was about more than big sounds. It was also about making sure that everything had its own space (horn not overlapping with the trumpet or the vocal wrt range, etc) so that everything could play and still be heard and thus BAM! MUSIC!

[drFiend]

Thanks for your review.

This is more a quick idea test rather than finished mix, thus marked as version 0.1 and not 1.0. Wanted to play around distortion as tone shaping and dynamics tool a bit. This is quite new to me and the preamp in question even not considered audio gear (it was designed for video and spoken voice production).

Reverb on synth and piano is not just a reverb, it's reverb + pitch shifter in feedback loop in 80's fashion. Luckily Reaper allows feedback routing.
Vox reverb is convolution with very short plate impulse and predelay.

Do you mean hammond organs (there are two panned hard left and right quite low) or the synth that playing one long note all the time? Thought that was too annoying indeed next day after posting. Was used to this sound after listening all the time and stopped noticing it at all.

Automated it a bit and shifted to background for the most time (except of pair of places when it's really playing something interesting). Cleaned more tracks with substractive EQ a bit, so the mix is less muddy and bass is clearer now.

Still need to patch everything again and redo mix distortion (will do some mix adjustments before as well). Probably I'll back off couple of dB this time (IMO overdid it and the mix came out too soft). Will post the newer version if interested.

[drFiend]

Uploaded updated version. Probably did something better and something worse this time.
Personally, not happy with synth.