V.M.GY: 'Aureus Necrosis'

[Killtime Records]

Mix engineer out of Minneapolis MN. feel free to critique the F out of this. I welcome it.

[axxessdenied]

You should upload a higher bitrate mp3.

[Killtime Records]

I will do that. Thanks for the tip!

[dcp10200]

The first thing I noticed about your mix is that the drums are awfully dead sounding, like the room mics weren't even mixed in and not a drop of verb on the drums. The panning my be "correct" but without a room for the drums they sound lifeless, far greater of a concern than panning perspective. In fact, judging by the ride in the overheads of the original drums, drummer's perspective panning was used (by default in EZDrummer/Superior Drummer Drummer's perspective panning is used).

Notice I'm using "Drummer's Perspective", because the panning of overheads and toms from audience perspective where the tom fills start from right to left would indicate that the drummer is right handed. Yes, left handed drummers are less common (I work in Pro A/V and Live Sound, let me tell you it's a huge pain in the ass when you have a band with a left handed drummer on the set sharing a kit with 3 bands with right handed drummers), they do still exist, so the notion of "wrong panning" here is a mute point. As long as you follow the panning of toms, rides, and hats as presented in the overheads, you have correct panning. The only real way panning perspective matters is if we're going to be doing a drum playthrough/tutorial shot from in front of the kit, since we're dealing with fully programmed/E Kit performance drums this doesn't matter, just follow the panning of the overheads provided and worry about the million other more important aspects of a mix like this.

Alright rant over, the rest of your mix seems fine, again the mix is super dry and sounds really small, especially when those lead guitars and the synths come in, but overall the mix is balanced. To me the cymbals sound really compressed, it could be the Drumkit From Hell cymbals themselves (I rarely use that particular kit for cymbals for that reason and much prefer the Metal Machine cymbals) or it maybe something you missed when mixing, this isn't a problem unique to your mix however.

So in closing, the drums and mix as a whole is dry as a desert, the panning is technically reversed because you've changed the perspective of the original drums to be "correct", but overall you have a decent balance going on.

Hope this helps,
Doug

[LightYearRecords11]

Initially noticing how harsh the guitars and how much body they lack. The Drum mix is somewhat alright in the kick and snare balance, but the Overheads are unbalanced and washy. The lead guitars need to come up since they hold all the melodic interest in this instrumental. Overall decent job, but more attention needs to go into the details and also attention to creating a cohesive sound stage.