The 'Mix Rescue' mix

[Mike Senior]

Here's the mix I did of this track for Sound On Sound magazine's May 2011 'Mix Rescue' column, using only Cockos Reaper and a variety of third-party plug-ins. If you like the sound of this mix, then you can download my full Reaper project here.

[Tmny]

This is absolutly incedible, wow!

[takka360]

Incedible ballance and i think that is the most important thing over anything.Real good sound,cooking but nothing over done.
Locked solid.Them vox sound something else WOW loud but smooth t,there big time but not too in your face.
Real nice Mike p.s the guitars sound fantastic

[bmullen]

Sounds great!

[takka360]

As i said about this mix,what sets mixers apart is ballance.
We can all use comp to good use etc but no ballance no mix.
You could have a perfect ballance mix with bad sounding instruments
and it would still sound good,its not the same the other way round

[takka360]

Will i be the first to question one of Mikes mixes?
Listening to this again Mike i think the toms could have more definition

[Dags]

Question for everyone, in the sections around 1:55 and again around 2:49 there's mix buss compression happening that is causing the cymbals (and guitars) to duck and draw attention to the use of compression in the track. (Not having a go at Mike, this is just a stylistic question)
Is this a 'normal' thing to expect with mastering compression for pounding hard rock/metal or is there a way to make it more transparent? The reason I'm asking is that a single for a local band has this 'cymbal ducked by the kick drum' effect prominently throughout the song and I was taught that compression should be as transparent as possible unless used as a deliberate enhancement effect. To my ears, obvious mix buss compression such as this doesn't fall into the 'transparent' category.
I can't recall hearing it in early hard rock or even early metal songs.
Is this a new style that's crept into the hard rock genre?

Dags

[takka360]

used as a deliberate enhancement effect?of course Dags

[Dags]

So this is a fairly new 'style' which has come in then for indi hard rock? Much like pumping compression in dance music?
(As I mentioned in one of my first posts I have been living in a bit of a cave for the last 10 years or so)

I was just thinking that Logic has a sidechain on its stock stereo compressor which allows you to play with the signal the compressor 'sees' and this ducking could possibly be avoided by using a HPF on the sidechain.
Analogue compressors in the days of yore would, I guess, be able to get fed an EQ'd sidechain signal of a copy of the whole track with the bass rolled off to avoid this effect.

Hmm.....I guess I'll have to deliberately set up a compressor setting to respond to the kick across a mix and see if I can get it to first duck the cymbals and then play with the sidechain to see if I can reduce this effect and see what it does to the stereo image.

....am I actually crossing into the misty realms of "MASTERING" here? lol!

Dags

[Mike Senior]

Will i be the first to question one of Mikes mixes?

I'm afraid someone already beat you to it! Always happy to have someone criticise a mix of mine. No mix is perfect, and I'm learning just the same way everyone else is.

Listening to this again Mike i think the toms could have more definition

I confess that I do sometimes lose the will to live before I get around to giving tom tracks due attention, so I won't dispute it! I can't listen again to it where I am at the moment, but I seem to remember that I also felt with hindsight that this mix needed a bit more weight to the kick too.

A mix is never finished, only the mix engineer!