Comfort Lives In Belief

[Pedaling Prince]

Had fun with this Thanks for the listen and any input.

I listened to all the versions of your mix in this thread. Since everyone else seems to have already pointed out the issues in the previous mixes I think I'll focus my comments here on your final mix.

Here's the thing. It sounded almost perfect. Nice balance and tonality, good stereo spread, clean, intelligible vocals yet with body and character. But something about it was bugging me. The whole thing kept giving me a picture in my head of somebody stepping on and squashing a paper bag lunch...

Odd image I know. But I had it because I felt like the SONG had been stepped on and squashed somehow.

Based on that feeling, I suspected that the compression was a wee bit overdone. To test my theory I ran your mix through the TT Offline Dynamic Range Meter; it clocked in at 8 dB of dynamic range.

THAT'S what's wrong here. The song IS squished; it's got no room to breathe.

This is an old, smooth 70s style gospel piece. That sound depends on the expressiveness of the music; expressiveness in turn depends on dynamic range to allow for variations in volume that carry the emotion of the most powerful songs ("Stairway to Heaven," which starts off very quiet, gets very loud then very quiet again, comes to mind).

Further, it's been my experience that even with the loudest, most aggressive types of music like death metal, you're in trouble if your dynamic range clocks in at the single digits; in other words, dynamic range should be at ROCK BOTTOM MINIMUM 10 dB, and that, as I said, is only for the most aggressively loud music.

In short, I suggest you remove the compression entirely or, if you absolutely must use it, dial it back significantly. Personally, if someone told me I HAD to use compression on this piece, I absolutely would NOT use a ratio any more aggressive than 3:1 or a threshold lower than -15 (2:1 and -10 would be better).

I know, you're probably worried that your music won't sound "loud" enough. Well, remember it's your LISTENERS that control the volume knob, not you; if a listener wants it louder they can always turn it up, after all.

When they do, your mix'll sound a lot better with more dynamic range to kick around in. Trust me.