gmann's mix

[gmann]

Sometimes it's more difficult the less tracks you have...

Effects from fabfilter and Sonalksis.
Hall is done by SIR2.

[Mike Senior]

Hi gmann, and welcome to the Discussion Zone! Nice to hear a new version of this mix, especially as you've gone for a distinctly different approach than I used for the preview mix -- where I went for a chamber sound fairly close to the original room, you've headed more towards transporting the players into a more spaciousness venue. You've also clearly made greater efforts to bring out the strings, which come through more strongly on your version.

The question with any mix decision, though, is whether its side-effects are palatable, and I think your approach has brought with it a few problems too. The large hall sound has distanced the players from the listener in a way that seems out of character with the chamber-music sound. Even if you decide to shift venue using reverbs, you still have a choice about where to seat your players and listeners within the new space, and I'd prefer them to be closer together than you've managed so far. Wet/Dry levels, pre-delay, and maybe return-channel EQ could all play a part in this, and might also help reduce a certain smearing of the faster details of the musical lines that's occurring at the moment.

I'm guessing that you've achieved the better oboe balance partially by MS processing the ORTF pair, and while this has paid off in balance terms, the oboe timbre seems to have rather suffered, and the mix as a whole has widened such that (given the audience-to-stage distance implied by the reverbs) the players seem to be too widely separated spatially. The harpsichord also feels a touch too prominent as well, which may mean that you've been using the front MS pair to fill out the strings too. (However, I've never liked harpsichord very much, so that might just be me...)

Thanks for posting!

[gmann]

Mike,

thanks you very much for your detailed feedback. Actually, when I did the mixing, I was not aware of your article "About This Multitrack", so I mad up my mind what to do with the tracks without knowing the scene and the specific issues. The MS is relatively strong in the mix because it brings some body to the vocals, but indeed that makes the electric haprsichord too strong.

I will try your suggestions to make the mix more natural and see where I get.
Switching off/on the reverb unveils that it damages a lot, so I will have a deeper look into this, too.