Jules King: Never Stop AndyGallasMix

[AndyGallas]

Hey there!

I did this Mix today in about four hours. I had to stop now.
Comments are welcome!

Cheers,
Andy

Edit: Replaced Mix with Final Mix 3

[AndyGallas]

So I worked further on this mix. Overall a bit more depth, Vocals with less strident topend, snare with more punch, Bass treated separat in verses and chorus to get more consistens with the lowend, etc.

Comments are welcome.

Cheers!

[Bold Beagle]

The vocals are still a bit harsh, mate, and a little burny at times. Maybe take a look at those esses, too.

Oddly enough, though, in the choruses the guitars are eating the vocal just a little overmuch at times, and the low mids are a bit muddy here and there.

The loops have been a little distracting in most of the mixes I've heard but your attempt has been more successful in this regard. They're very close to complimenting the groove, but the wide stereo spread is throwing me off a little when a loud transient fires off on the far sides.

Main thing I think is lacking is dynamic control on the individual tracks, because it sounds like you're using a lot of EQ for clarity. I think you'll find if you compress things a bit more (especially the guitars) that you won't need as much EQ. It's hard to say for sure, but I also suspect there's quite a bit of additive EQ going on. Maybe consider focusing a little more on cuts when you're trying to solve masking issues... boosts are often better suited for changing the overall flavor of the sound than balancing.

Good call multing the bass for verse and chorus processing. I should have done that on my mix.

Keep it up.

BB

[AndyGallas]

Thank you BB!

I used this mix to try out the Waves NLS Console emu. It was the Mike Hedges TG Console. I have to say I used almost no individual eq on channels except a little on vocals, bass, kick and snare. I used overall eqing on the mixbus though. The lowmids in the chorus where directly a result how the console emu reacts when pushed. In the chorus I wanted the vocals rather to fight with the guitars, more rock like than singer songwriters like, as I felt this is a good way to create an interesting contrast. Looking back I find the cymbals a bit to bright and the guitars perhaps a bit to prominent at 3K. On eq I boost and cut whatever works it depends also what type of eq I use.

Well, I found the TG emu at first spectacular how it builds up the lowmid warmth without getting too muddy, separation seems also better. But I have to try it more. Sometimes I feel one has to work against the sound the emu creates.

Anyway, thanks again for your time and comments. Always interesting to hear what one suspects :-)

Cheers!

[jrk]

How is this mastered?. There's a lot of "loudness" Also, it's a bit subby isn't it?

[AndyGallas]

I's just converter clipping on the mixbus and perhaps one dB of GR from a Sonnox limiter. The subby thing comes from the drivne TG emu. It's actually a kind of lowmid distortion.

[AndyGallas]

So here is my final mix. I was not so happy with my former mixes. I ditched the idea of the plugin summing thing, sounds just odd and distorted to me. And jrk you are right I measured the plugins with pink noise – there is a lot of build up in the subs.

Anyway, comments are welcome.

Cheers,
Andy

[Bold Beagle]

Just some quick tips on plugin summing. I like to sum with plugins also, so maybe my methods might work for you on future mixes.

Sometimes console emulators are a little too heavy handed with the distortion for the purpose of summing, depending on the source material and how it was tracked. It's a matter of preference and workflow, but I don't really like most of them personally. If your goal with summing is coherence/glue, something you might try is a somewhat simpler distortion model, like a tape simulator or a transistor simulator. Generally you get a little more control over how much color you're adding. Personally I like FerricTDS for this. It's free and sounds great.

I don't know what your workflow is like, but with ITB summing it seems to work best for me if I'm mixing into buses with the plugins active on light settings. Any plugin useful for this generally adds loudness and affects the frequency response, so adding the summing treatments after the fact can mess up mix balances, kinda like adding a master bus compressor too late in the mixing process. So it's best to mix with the summing active and you'll know what it's doing to your audio as you work. That's my big issue with outboard summing, really.. it always seems to screw up my work unless I'm mixing into it. And a summing box runs more than I make in a month, so it's ITB for me!

Hope that helps,
BB

[Bold Beagle]

I's just converter clipping on the mixbus and perhaps one dB of GR from a Sonnox limiter. The subby thing comes from the drivne TG emu. It's actually a kind of lowmid distortion.

Clipping your is a pretty ballsy move. What converter are you using?

[Bold Beagle]

Here's a really crude diagram I whipped up to clarify how you might use my strategy. Note that on the master out I'm not including any additional distortion, which isn't how most people work with console emus. I'm also sending the FX straight to the master outside the summing busses, since summing the FX sends always seems to muddy up the low midrange.