Pedaling Prince Mix: Voelund - Comfort Lives in Belief

[Pedaling Prince]

I am self-taught both in video/film editing and audio engineering, having been experimenting with audio and video since my teen years back in the 1980s.

My guiding principle in mixing I call the "principle of least treatment."

Having heard the crystal clean sound of CDs from the earliest days of consumer digital sound in the 80s, comparing it to the overprocessed, overcompressed mess many commercial mixes are today, I have come to believe that current mixing techniques rely too heavily on processing, particularly in the use/abuse of compression in mastering.

In general, I go as gently as possible on all processing, using only the minimum EQ, automation and compression necessary to get everything to blend smoothly, and under no circumstances do I EVER apply processing or compression of ANY kind at the mastering stage; my goal is to preserve 100% of the dynamics of the original recording.

I joined this forum in order to get all of YOUR thoughts on what I've done with these multitracks.

This is my mix of Voelund's "Comfort Lives in Belief." I originally posted this in a reply to Voelund commenting on my mix of Uncle Dad's "Who I Am" but Ollie H. requested I post it here for more detailed discussion.

Criticism is welcome so long as its polite and constructive.

[Olli H]

Works fine to me the way it is.

Some personal prerences:

Fills: With this bluesy song I think it's more interesting if there's only one solo guitar player. Even better would be if the fills sounded like played by singer by himself. It would make nice blues style focus to one person.

Vocals: Dry vocals sounds a little bit too dry. I can almost hear and see that Voelund is wearing headphones. Maybe some kind of tiny space could add a nice spice to it and blend it to live performance feeling.

In general, I go as gently as possible on all processing, using only the minimum EQ, automation and compression necessary to get everything to blend smoothly, and under no circumstances do I EVER apply processing or compression of ANY kind at the mastering stage; my goal is to preserve 100% of the dynamics of the original recording.

I understand the logic if the mixer and mastering guy are the same. If as a mixer you think something should be changed, then it should be done during mixing phase.

Do you have some kind of mastering stage? I don't. When I'm happy with mixing I just put a limiter to remove the headroom adn to bring up the volume level a little bit. I check that some random peaks here and there are cut 2-3 dB. But that's not mastering.

[Pedaling Prince]

In general, I go as gently as possible on all processing, using only the minimum EQ, automation and compression necessary to get everything to blend smoothly, and under no circumstances do I EVER apply processing or compression of ANY kind at the mastering stage; my goal is to preserve 100% of the dynamics of the original recording.

Do you have some kind of mastering stage? I don't. When I'm happy with mixing I just put a limiter to remove the headroom adn to bring up the volume level a little bit. I check that some random peaks here and there are cut 2-3 dB. But that's not mastering.

Well, if you don't define that as "mastering" then I guess you could say I don't. However, myself I consider "mastering" to be ANY polishing, no matter how subtle, done to the finished mixdown; your process above, therefore, would fit MY definition of "mastering."

That being said, before I describe my process, it may surprise you that, in keeping with my "principle of least treatment," I keep my software fairly simple as well; my only mixing tools are GrarageBand and Audacity.

So. My mastering process. Once I complete the mixdown from GarageBand I import it into Audacity, normalize it to 0 dBFS then trim the excess off the beginning and end. Also, if the song requires a fadeout and/or fadein and I'm having trouble getting it to sound right in GarageBand I will also do this at the mastering stage as well.

But that's it. Aside from pushing the volume to the maximum it'll go without ANY clipping I do no compression, EQ or any other kind of processing whatsoever to get it "louder" the way many engineers do; I consider those tools to be something that should only be used on individual tracks in a mix, not to master a completed mixdown.

[Aris]

Hello, i like your balance generally. In this song the bass track is difficult to mix somehow. You give it a nice low-end but i miss the rest of the bass pattern at the mid-high frequencies. Also i think that you must re-compress (or automate it) the bass because i am "losing" it at some places in this song.

[pauli]

hey john, nice work. the guitars are a bit busy for me, but that's a personal taste thing. great work on the organ and backing vocals, they compliment the track as a whole quite nicely.

there's a highish hissing frequency throughout the track... is that an intentional tape simulation or did your file get mangled during the compression or uploading process? not a criticism at all, I like a bit of tape noise for a classic sound, especially given your classic mixing style and the nods to the 70s in the song itself, but depending on your intentions it might be a bit too loud/airy at higher listening volumes.

[Pedaling Prince]

there's a highish hissing frequency throughout the track... is that an intentional tape simulation or did your file get mangled during the compression or uploading process?

Well I know it's not tape simulation; I don't do that. What I like is the classic digital sound of CDs from the 80s and early 90s, when done well; I personally could do without the tape noise. That's actually why I worked so hard to scrub it away in my mix of Street Noise's "Revelations."

That being said, whatever noise you're hearing could have been endemic to the original tracks and I didn't think it bothersome enough to scrub it (I prefer not to scrub tracks if I can avoid it; the process can distort the sound a little, so I'm generally willing to tolerate noise up to a certain limit). Either that or, as you suggest, it was a side effect of the conversion to AAC.