Johnny Lokke - Whisper To A Scream (edited v2)

[Pashet]

Hi everyone! Nice to be here again! My headache - is mastering. Tried to make a modern sound with an old guts. Any criticism and thoughts are welcome! Can upload a mix without a mastering if you want.

Cheers!

[johnnylokke]

It's certainly loud, I'll give you that.

It's actually quite good as a mix except "mastering" has made the vocals overpowering. When I send my mixes in to the mastering engineer, I'll also include stems in case what he is doing affects different parts of the song (mostly occurs with vocals) and he needs to make adjustments after the fact. Some engineers will simply request 3 versions...standard, and then one with more vox and one with less, for the same reasons. Very common.

Anyhow, I would suggest throwing your mastered and unmastered versions in your DAW where you can volume match them and then play them back and switch back and forth while they are playing. Nothing should really change much when switching back and forth between them if you've done a proper job and they are level matched. If you can hear major differences in instruments or vocals then it's back to work.

All this assumes you didn't have the vocals that loud in your unmastered track. If you did, then my feedback changes to "Vocals are too loud".

Thanks for sharing.

[Pashet]

It's certainly loud, I'll give you that.

It's actually quite good as a mix except "mastering" has made the vocals overpowering. When I send my mixes in to the mastering engineer, I'll also include stems in case what he is doing affects different parts of the song (mostly occurs with vocals) and he needs to make adjustments after the fact. Some engineers will simply request 3 versions...standard, and then one with more vox and one with less, for the same reasons. Very common.

Anyhow, I would suggest throwing your mastered and unmastered versions in your DAW where you can volume match them and then play them back and switch back and forth while they are playing. Nothing should really change much when switching back and forth between them if you've done a proper job and they are level matched. If you can hear major differences in instruments or vocals then it's back to work.

All this assumes you didn't have the vocals that loud in your unmastered track. If you did, then my feedback changes to "Vocals are too loud".

Thanks for sharing.

Thank you for your feedback Mr. Lokke! I guess I chose not neccesary reference examples while mixing it. Is problem only in loudness of vocals? What do you think about instruments? Maybe they suffers lack of low-end? I tried to make screaming "razor" track. Did I get it? Or maybe it should be more woofing and more low-mid loaded and saturated?

[johnnylokke]

I think you are fine with your mix overall. The vocals just stuck out to me.

[Spede]

Regarding the vocal blend: I think you'd need to compress them more in order to get them to blend better. Sometimes these heavier songs over 10 dBs for LV to make them sit properly.

I felt the drums (esp. kick and sd) didn't have enough weight in them. They sound little bit "chopstick"-like to me. I wonder if it's more sustain, low end or simply volume that might help to give them more weight.

More a matter of taste but I felt your guitars were a tad dark. Sometimes the cymbals seem to bury them.

[Pashet]

Thank you for a feedback! Working on a three projects including this, so I'll try to get a final mix of "Whisper..." as soon as possible! Again thanx for the replies!

[gopener]

I wouldnt compress more the vocals, just do some rides!

[Pashet]

Made another one and think it'l final! Cheers and lots of thanks for your feedback and helpful thoughts! Hope you'll like it

[Pedaling Prince]

Made another one and think it'l final! Cheers and lots of thanks for your feedback and helpful thoughts! Hope you'll like it

Your "final" mix is very similar in tone to my own except you managed to get a little more stereo spread out of those guitars. Nice work on that front.

There are two problems here, though. For one, the vocals are at the right level but are a little too soft in tone; I think a small 3-5 db EQ boost at 5 kHz and maybe a 1-2 dB boost at 12 kHz might help them cut through better.

The second problem is somewhat more serious. WAY too much compression; it's causing everything to pump and distort in a very unpleasant way. I know you're trying to get it "loud" but remember that the LISTENER controls the volume knob; if you're recording is "loud" they're just going to turn the volume down to their preferred level, anyway, and then all that distortion is for naught.

One rule of thumb is if the dynamic range of your mix (the difference in dB between the loudest peak and overall average level) is in the single digits you've overcooked your master; other words, the final master should NEVER have a dynamic range narrower than 10. I analyzed your mix; it has a dynamic range of *6*.

Honestly, myself personally I don't think that compression should EVER be used in mastering, only on individual tracks to achieve certain effects; the only loudness treatment that should be done in mastering, IMHO, is to normalize the finished mix so the loudest peak hits 0 dBFS without clipping; that will be as loud as your recording can be without distorting it with compression. If you absolutely MUST use compression, at least back it down so it doesn't pump so much and leaves your mix no narrower than 10 dB in dynamic range. Ratio should be absolutely no higher than 4:1 and I wouldn't set my threshold any lower than -20, and that might be pushing it.

Still, the vocal dullness and compression problem seem to be the only issues you need to address here; otherwise well done!