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Forkupines - Sleep By The Fire... (CRMC Mix)
#11
(18-10-2015, 07:39 PM)grizwalter Wrote: Hey guys, I apologize if I made my comment too aggressively or in a mean-spirited way. I can assure it was not intended that way at all. It is hard to criticize people's hard work, so I tend to just strap myself in and get right too it, which I can understand may seem abrasive.

I was mostly trying to say that, for this style of music (Punk Rock/Grunge as it is self-proclaimed), bass mid range and harmonics are really critical, and we all know that the more low and subs which are added, the less prevalent those mids become.

Look up Green Day's "When I Come Around" online, and I think you'll see what I mean.

No offence taken Smile we're all here to learn from each other and far to often forums like this turn into daft arguments which can avoided :p

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#12
this is a bit of a tricky mix when it comes to negotiating the bass and low mids... the drums are the tricky bit in my opinion. There's quite a bit of proximity effect and a few of the mics are picking up quite a bit of cymbal bleed off axis that sounds a little strange to me.

I personally find the phase interaction on the tracked drums overall to be a little troublesome, and it sounds like the drums were miked pretty closely, most likely to accommodate a small recording space. Trying to tame the proximity effect with minimum phase EQ seems to introduce a bit of comb filtering which, as callum1145 aptly noted, robs the kick and snare of power in the mix. This is just my personal taste, but linear phase EQ sounds gross to me almost always, but fortunately, the producer is aware of the situation and very sensibly included samples to repair any sort of phase difficulties in that department.

If you choose to revise your mix to further clean up the low mids, my advice is to be bold with the EQ on the live drums, then gradually introduce whichever samples you like to fill out the timbre/fundamentals to your taste. Try bussing the live kit components together with the samples so you can apply additional enhancements to them all at once. That will really help glue them together. The tom mikes have picked up quite a bit of unnatural sounding cymbal bleed, so if you haven't already, it would be sensible to use the trigger tracks to replace the tom mics entirely.

Furthermore, I've personally chosen to bin the room tracks and rely on a convolution reverb to create space around the drums. That's completely a taste thing, and it's important to keep in mind that your personal taste will sell your mix to a client more than your engineering, but also be aware that the room tracks may introduce further comb filtering or conversely, low end mud, depending on your processing decisions.

There are a thousand ways to skin a cat and my solution is only one, but maybe that might help you if it fits with your work flow. Overall, a good effort, but I agree with the others that the low end needs quite a bit of attention.

BTW, in no way am I downing the producer for his recordings. I think these tracks are a great example of the "rock what you got" philosophy, and we were duly provided with everything we need to get a decent lo-fi punky sounding mix. Hopefully I'll be satisfied with my rendition enough to post soon.
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#13
Hey Beagle, Forkupine's producer here,
you are right! The drums were recorded in a professional studio, but in a small room, and that's why we had to deal with quick reflections and phase issues a lot. The snare didn't fit our expectations, that's why I added a phase coherent sample for that. The kick was fine in my opinion and really well isolated from the rest of the kit, but the sample added the special feel for it, I relied on drum layering for that.
What's funny about the tom trigger signals is that I only used them for gating the toms via side chain processing, not replacing them (snare and kick triggers are used for sampling and gate opening of the original signals). I really liked the material and, if you compare to "semantics" by Forkupines which is provided here as well, it's way better regarding phase issues and audio quality in my opinion. The toms were fine for me and were used completely without samples in the official mix, but sure, if anyone feels the urge to replace them with samples, go for it! That's why I posted the material here Smile But I have to agree with you in this point: The toms are a bit tricky. I don't like the toms in my mix. They lack a certain "magic", they sound flat and unnatural. Not because of any bleeding but because I'm not a professional and I don't really know how to properly deal with, say, a compressor. My mix was entirely based on instinct and it's not perfect.

Picking up the point of the room mics: I figured they'd sound good if you mash them with a 100% wet reverb that lifts up the snare. The kit sounds big because of digital reverbs and the room mics are only used to make the snare sound huge, bussing the sample onto the same reverb.

There have been quite a bunch of interesting, if not to say, awesome and creative mixes here and I'm absolutely stunned by the response, guys! Thanks a lot! Go on! Try everything you like! Add stuff, remove stuff, change the structure if you want to, add all the samples or more instruments or make a dubstep song out of it, I'd be honored!

Greets,
Till // Wurstdrummer // Forkupines
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#14
Listening for the revised mix...

In terms of amount the mix is actually lacking some low mids. And some midrange focus in general. I like the way you've turned up the bass from a conceptual standpoint; I feel many mixes feature a quiet bass mainly because the bass doesn't sound great in this recording.

IMO you're approaching the energy thing from a wrong perspective. You have a powerful low end and a crispy top end. However this being rock music that'll be all in vain if the midrange doesn't have the clarity and edge. This mix'll sound wonderful when monitoring loud but turns progressively worse when you turn it down. You'd rather have it the other way around. Why? Because often people listen to new song/mix in a quiet level, being all bigoted lol! Big Grin And to make a mix sound great on low levels is all about getting the midrange right.

Level match your mix against your references (preferably slow a-weighted LUFS) and A/B while monitoring very, very quietly. I think you could learn a lot from that (I certainly did and do).
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#15
folks....

the discussion concerning bass and it's comprehension is basically flawed and valueless to all intents and purposes, if the speaker in question doing the validating is employing a resonant port.....as do most speakers/monitors, simply because the woofer is incapable of delivering it on it's own. this is why sub-woofers exist (but note they should be non-resonant also....). the reason is complex and best left to your own researching, if interested. put simplistically, the cut-off frequency is too sharp. to assess bass with reasonable accuracy, the speaker should be biased in the time domain. most boxes are biased in the frequency domain, because people like to hear bass and the marketing department/design departments pander to their want and desires. it's another reason why anyone serious about their work shouldn't master it themselves unless suitably tooled and experienced enough to interpret it's output. i will also add, that most rooms aren't adequately acoustically treated nor are monitors ideally suited nor positioned for the room they are employed in (owing to practicalities....and ignorance, i hasten to add). it's all too easy to sit in a -30 null at 53Hz say, and be utterly oblivious to it!

and this is also why "referencing" under these conditions is a waste of time.

however, putting aside the question of boxes, we can call up the spectral analyser and visually see the over-abundance and unnecessary voltage this mix is producing. and this abundance has issues throughout the mix - all the way through. one area is perhaps surfacing in the treble range herein? it's highly fatiguing (yet nobody has commented?). once again a cursory glance at the spectral analyser reveals why. incidentally, tweeters are another science which is fraught with complexity....but most budget 2-way monitors lack sufficient headroom or competent design specifications owing to budgetary targets and the intended market. and once again the room's interference needs to be taken into account.......

.........it is said that somewhere between 60 and 80 percent of what you hear is being influenced/shaped by the room i.e. we are hearing the room and the consequences it has on our interpretation of what is coming out of the speakers and therefore skewing our perception /belief of what is happening in the DAW/playback system. so, it goes without saying therefore, that speakers are only part of a complex scenario in the control room...which is often a bedroom these days - massively absorbent in the treble range, highly reflective at the first reflection points and with utterly poor bass management (because it takes money and/or a lot of effort and know-how to fix it up!).

it also goes without saying, but i'm digressing marginally perhaps for the benefit of those who record in the forum, that if your monitoring "system" is compromised, your recordings will be too. and if you mix your own recordings....your mixes will be compromised, etc etc.

@Callum1145, may i courteously point you to the Commandments section in the front of the discussion page, especially the paragraph regarding "giving and taking"? by reciprocating, you will learn far more than you probably anticipate. this is a two-way street, yeah? please don't forget to give others feedback during your enthusiasm to post your own mixes.

Cheeeers,,
Beware...........Cognitive Dissonance!
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#16
Not directed at anyone in particular, just my thoughts on the topic:

Given that consumers who aren't listening to music primarily on earbuds are most commonly listening to music on a cheap 2.1 computer speaker systems, usually with a ported, resonant speaker pointed at the floor, keeping the low mids clean is paramount to mixes that will translate. Manufacturing tolerances on cheap PC 2.1s are also really loose, and as The_Metallurgist has noted, the lower frequency response in untreated listening environments is usually problematic at best.

It's a little depressing, but there are monitoring workarounds and fixes that offer quick improvements while working toward a more complete solution.

1. If your loudspeakers are rear ported like most, get them further from the wall. Your monitoring position should also not be anywhere near a corner.

2. If they're sitting on your desk, you can avoid the desk from resonating in sympathy by placing them on thick acoustic foam. This is one of the only useful purposes I've ever found for the stuff. I don't recommend the monitor pads that angle the speakers, though, because you'd be angling them at the ceiling, which makes the first reflections problem harder to solve. Most monitors are designed to disperse sound from the tweeters horizontally specifically to decrease the role of the ceiling in what you're hearing, so it makes no sense to defeat the design.

3. Most acousticians advise bass management systems in the room corners made out of duct board. Duct board can be hard to find and lots of building supply places only want to sell it in huge quantities. Anything that absorbs low frequencies will improve the bass reverb in a small room if you stack it in the corners. Solid core mattresses, couch cushions, anything will help enough to make a difference, but building insulation is really your best bet. Those big chunks of blown-in fiberglass compressed in the packages are cheap, readily available, and effectively absorb bass to reduce comb filtering. If you can stack those floor to ceiling in the room corner closest to your monitoring position, you will notice a significant improvement in bass intelligibility. Stack them in all four corners and the improvement will be unbelievable.

4. Gently roll off the low end from your monitors. This obviously won't work when mixing music driven by the bass, dance, rap, etc, but a gentle roll off starting around 80 hz will at least make it easier to hear what's going on in the low mids. When you're dealing with layered distorted guitars like this, a temporary high pass filter on the mix bus wouldn't be a bad referencing decision even in a well treated room.

Anyway, those don't comprise a complete solution, but any one of them and especially all four will make mixing a lot easier. Fixing the bass in a bedroom also makes listening to music a hell of a lot more enjoyable.
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#17
And of course a lot can be done by simply monitoring really quietly, not giving the room a chance to resonate.
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#18
(22-10-2015, 03:06 PM)Spede Wrote: And of course a lot can be done by simply monitoring really quietly, not giving the room a chance to resonate.

I've heard of some guys using their nearfields super close for that purpose, but then I don't understand the advantage over headphones in that situation. Lots of great mixes out there were monitored mainly through phones... it doesn't seem to work for me, though Tongue
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#19
Hey dude,

I'm Going to have to agree with grizwalter also. Sounds really Bassy. I also shut off my sub and seems like thats all I'm hearing in the intro and verses. I feel like it does open up around the chorus.
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