Today's the day

[SonicTramp]

Thanks for the listen.
*Came back and worked on the bass a bit more, quite a beast to tame. The snare was a little loud so pulled it down.
I just got a pair of Yamaha HS8, yep, finally. Anyway, they are kinda new to me and I wonder if it helps my mix. I know I can hear the bottom end better compared to my Creative PC speakers' whopping 2" "bass" speakers, the Yamaha's is 8" . I tried my mix in the car and it sounds nice on the bottom end, and it seems the mix hold up well enough. But a sampling size of 1 is unreliable to make a meaningful assessment. So if you have time and interested in helping a fellow out, here's what I want to know:

1. How is the frequency balance (bass? mid? top?)
2. How are the instruments' definitions? (does the guitar sound like a guitar but not a...mandolin?)
3. How is the separation? (can you hear ... everything?)
4. How is the volume balance (is anything too loud, too soft)

These info will help me a great deal in figuring out a way to better my skills and to get to know my gears. I appreciate your effort. Thank you in advance.

**Ver 2.0
Worked on the bass a bit more, tightened the timing in the break and the outro. Worked on hi hats and ride, were kinda rashy. Added more delay on the guitars. The new monitors seem to help my hearing, especially on the low end, the rumbling, the mud, etc...

[SonicTramp]

Thanks for the listen.
*Came back and worked on the bass a bit more, quite a beast to tame. The snare was a little loud so pulled it down.
I just got a pair of Yamaha HS8, yep, finally. Anyway, they are kinda new to me and I wonder if it helps my mix. I know I can hear the bottom end better compared to my Creative PC speakers' whopping 2" "bass" speakers, the Yamaha's is 8" . I tried my mix in the car and it sounds nice on the bottom end, and it seems the mix hold up well enough. But a sampling size of 1 is unreliable to make a meaningful assessment. So if you have time and interested in helping a fellow out, here's what I want to know:

1. How is the frequency balance (bass? mid? top?)
2. How are the instruments' definitions? (does the guitar sound like a guitar but not a...mandolin?)
3. How is the separation? (can you hear ... everything?)
4. How is the volume balance (is anything too loud, too soft)

These info will help me a great deal in figuring out a way to better my skills and to get to know my gears. I appreciate your effort. Thank you in advance.

**Ver 2.0
Worked on the bass a bit more, tightened the timing in the break and the outro. Worked on hi hats and ride, were kinda rashy. Added more delay on the guitars. The new monitors seem to help my hearing, especially on the low end, the rumbling, the mud, etc...

[NotJack]

The definition of all the instruments of your track is good. I think the drums sound good and punchy, and I really like the kick sound you have. Although I will say the mix is very bass heavy. The bass guitar is very loud, and making the rest of the mix sound small in comparison. I would recommend turning it down a good bit.

For the vocals, they do sound good and clear, although I think they would benefit from a bit more compression, or possibly some volume automation. Some words/phrases sound like they drop off in volume a bit. They also sound like they could use some de-essing.

Hope this helps

[SonicTramp]

The definition of all the instruments of your track is good. I think the drums sound good and punchy, and I really like the kick sound you have. Although I will say the mix is very bass heavy. The bass guitar is very loud, and making the rest of the mix sound small in comparison. I would recommend turning it down a good bit.

For the vocals, they do sound good and clear, although I think they would benefit from a bit more compression, or possibly some volume automation. Some words/phrases sound like they drop off in volume a bit. They also sound like they could use some de-essing.

Hope this helps

Hi NotJack. Thanks for leaving a comment. I guess the new monitors will take its sweet time torturing me, but I am up to it. Either it will have to do what I want or it will have to kill me . Right now it seems I only solve 1/2 of the problem. The other half is a bit more difficult bc it requires both money and time. I have the latter but not the former. So I treat my room using what I have: a whole lot of blankets stuff in behind my back where I have a small closet. The bass response is a bit better, less build up. Btw, let me tell you a little bit about my room. Yep, 18 feet (L) X 18 feet (W) X 9 (H) feet. Nice and square. The kind of room the likes of CLA will rather just shoot me and go to jail than to sit and mix in. Some of us are just plain unlucky, I suppose. Anyway, thanks for the listen and inputs. I gave it another try and thought I made a small improvement. But that, alas, also has been proven just an illusion more than a few times already. Yeah, man, my ears are like my gf, they lie to me all the time. I include the mix here just in case. Thanks. I appreciate your time.

[mikej]

Hi,

I've listened to mix 5 -

This is a tough one to mix.

Straight off - I the delay and reverb on the guitar are making the mix less focussed than it could be, and are really muddying up the mix and masking the ambience and power of the drums. I do like the fact you can hear the bass in the intro. I like the drum hits in the intro too, they have about the right power and presence. Less reverb and delay on the guitars will enhance the effect of the reverb on the drums.

You might be able to high pass the kick a little more, as there may be just a touch too much sub there - it feels that it is overpowering the mix as the track continues on. The sub on the bass is quite heavy too.

(You can surely cut the word 'always' at the 24 second mark? I feel that's just where the singer came in too early by mistake?)

The snare is ok during the intro, for me I do find the tone a little wearing and obnoxious throughout the song. I am not sure that it is possible to get a better tone out of that snare than you have already. Blending in a sample would really make a positive difference here.

Might want to revisit the drum/guitar/vocal balance. The vocals feel a little too forward, because the guitar delay/reverb pushes them back. The drums feel a little far back because I suspect the low end is stopping you from bringing them more forward in the mix balance wise. The low end of the bass is also having the effect of making the other elements feeling smaller than they might?

For me it would be worth trying removing all the reverb and delay effects from the guitars. Cut some low end from the bass and kick. I would still have the real low end of the track coming from the kick rather than the bass, just needs to be a little more controlled. Blend in a kick and snare sample, tweak the balance to try and get the vocals to sit a little better with the bass and drums. Should hopefully be on the way to a winner then.


Regarding the monitors:

The following is based on my own experiments, struggles, frustration and observations. Of course we are all different and what I feel works for me, might not work for you. It hopefully might give you some ideas though.

You'll have to be prepared to give it some time and also really work at learning your new monitors. Spend a week or so listening to your favourite music on them. Spend a day cross referencing your mixes with pro mixes, and also with other speakers and headphones too if you can, to really learn how they translate. You don't always have to be mixing to work on things that will really help improve your mixes.

Personally I find it best to make the monitors the definitive reference - if you hear something you don't like on a mix on other speakers, try and work out how to both hear and correct the same issue on your monitors. Also helpful is to set a fixed 'reference' listening level - this will help with judging frequency balance. A lot of guides seem to recommend 80db to best compensate for the Fletcher-Munson curves. This is far far to loud for me, so I monitor quite quiet really. You still need to test mixes at louder volumes though to catch everything frequency wise, which is something I often forget to do. Not cranking the volume should also reduce the effect of the room a little.

I also stopped using 2 of the 3 pairs of 'studio' type headphones I had too because I found they really didn't translate at all well for me and I found were problematic for me for mixing - causing more issues than they were solving. The best pair I found out of the few I own were by far the cheapest too.

I think it is important to try and reduce variables as much as possible and pick a few tools that work for you (or those that you feel could work and are worthy of learning).

Regarding room treatment - putting some sort of treatment at the first reflection points (side walls) for me was the most noticeable change. I assume you have the speakers at proper ear height, and the 60 degree triangle thing, etc. Although I do have a GIK room kit - making up your own panels would be quite do-able and effective also, if you use the right materials.

Getting the monitoring sorted is only fixing a quarter of the battle too, once you feel you can rely on the monitoring it is one less thing to worry about. It is really a case of learning the monitoring and also having confidence. There are some members on here that use headphones and earbuds and get good mixes because they have really learned them.

We are all different - it's just a case of finding what works best for you - out of the tools you have available.

Also regarding referencing - it really helps to spend time with the library reference mixes - and also to spend time playing your own mixes and the ref mix in a playlist along side other pro mixes. This can be quite brutal! For me the challenge is to try and at least beat the library mix, and to get in the ballpark of the pro mixes (am still trying!). It also might help to have break of a day or so before reviewing and evaluating a mix. Finding suitable reference mixes can be quite a challenge in itself.

Cheers!

[SonicTramp]

Hi,
Thank you MikeJ for such a comprehensive critique. I appreciate your time. Your post taught me a few things.

Well, back to grind. So I moved my monitors about 3 feet away from the wall. They were about 1 1/2 feet, too close, the pros say. I moved my R one to about the same distance from the side wall (3 ft). The L one is in the middle, so I let it be. Built the stands for the monitors (2 4X4 cut to height and a couple of screws) nice and solid now. They were sitting on top of the boxes they came in with. What a great way for a monitor to sit on, a hollow closed ends paper box that would resonate with any sound. But in my defense, I did have a thin sheet of scratch-resistant packing material for it to sit on for sound treatment purposes. No wonder why I hear the low end coming from the Heaven, Hell, and somewhere in between. Sometimes I even thought I heard my gf's voice in the mix. With the new stands my monitors sit perfectly to my ear level with the tweeters right at the entrance of my ear canals. They were about 4 inches lower than my ears previously. I can hear the hi mid and the top end much better now, almost as clear as my gf when she is yelling at me for leaving tools "all over" the places. I argued that only a person with a heart of stone can say that, for I was doing it in the name of... music. Didn't quite shut her up, but the volume seemed to quiet down a few decibels. But I digress.

I proceed to mix as I usually do, and, yeah, I don't mix loud either, around 60-65 dBs, sometimes to 70 but never 80. No need to wake up the dragon. And yeah, I read about the monitors positions and understand the concept. The position now is adequate. No, I don't use a lot of plug ins. I have enough problems with just an EQ and a compressor, none of which I am good at. So yeah, just EQ, compressor, and saturation/distortion/amp and mostly stock plug ins. The only fancy ones I got is the Waves Renaissance bundle and out of those I only use the compressor and reverb. I don't pay attention to plug ins that much for now. I work on my hearing first. I work on balancing. And I work on my confidence. Plug ins are icing on the cake, but first we have to bake a cake, right?

Sometimes not too long ago, in the quest to enhance my knowledge and techniques in mixing music I ran into an article titled "Aggregation of marginal improvement" from some manager for a racing bicycle team in England. You can google it to find out more. Very interesting technique. The gist of it is: you make a minute improvement in EVERY (key word) aspect of your work, even just 1%/day, and in a short amount of time the total improvement will be significant. This idea can be applied to almost anything. I thought I share it with you as a return of a favor .

What I am doing now is to put the theory to the test. I hope it will work. Thanks for reaching out.

This is the very first mix after. Let me know what you think if you have time. Thanks

[SonicTramp]

After about a week of listening and mixing with the new speakers, I notice a couple things while making transition from headphones to monitors mixing. Right off the bat, I'd say it should have been a lot sooner.
I can hear the bass more clearly, and I can hear frequencies being cut or boosted in much higher Q factor. The smaller speakers, headphones included, just can't reproduce barely anything under 90Hz. The bottom end lives much under that. I also notice that with smaller speakers my cut were much broader, almost shelf-like in order to hear the changes. When tightened the Q, man, I couldn't even hear what's being cut. I could do 8dBs cut and nothing changes, and when it did, it sounded kinda weird. Not entirely weird, that's easy decision, just get rid of it, no, man, the day must get longer and more pain so it's only just kinda weird. You know, like you know there's something wrong with it but you couldn't tell what.
With bigger speakers, I am able to somewhat hone in where I want to cut or boost. Bigger speakers also make it easier to use filters, a big plus to me, that is how I handle the mud-range. I also notice that the new monitors help with hearing the compressor. I was never able to hear the release, always kinda iffy. Attack is much easier to hear. Not so with the release. If attack is to control the transient then the release, to me, is to control the thickness of the instrument. I am sure it can do more than that, but right now that's all I can hear. Tone-shaping. And that helps a great deal too. 
The days that I am sitting here mixing with headphones are over. I use them for other purposes, not for mixing anymore. Maybe some day I will come back to them, but right now the road of reconciliation is rough and winding. I am sticking with the monitors. I find kinder treatment there.
As of right now, I am still new to them, so that's all I notice. I am not sure how it translates to any of you. I know that I still have a hard time balancing volume with them. It seems, maybe bc it can actually handle the bass with some abuse without falling apart, I tend to push the bottom end a bit too much or it could be my room too. This time I use my trusty iphone headphones to do final balancing along with the monitors and reign in the bass a lot more. The new mix is cleaner and tighter on my end than the last. I think it is an improvement, but who knows, the mix might fall apart on yours.

[mikej]

Hi!

Yes - much better balance wise (newsetup_8). The low end was a bit boomy for me on the previous mix (_newsetup). I certainly feel you are heading in the right direction. Remember this does all take time and effort. I think you are the sort of person to stick at it though.

I would also recommend keeping an eye out for a bargain on the sub too if you can, as you will probaby be surprised at how much low end you are probably missing still. Certainly worth a demo if you are able.

I have the (now vintage) MSP5 which are maybe similar in size, and was lucky enough to find the matching sub ex demo many years back. It was the only one I could find in stock anywhere in the UK as it was pretty much EOL I think back then by the time I was looking. It really does make a difference. You can have too much real low end in the mix and be really not be able to hear it at all without it.

Best of luck going forward.

Cheers!

[SonicTramp]

Thank you Mikej for your encouragement and the time (of course!). Yeah, I was thinking about getting a sub but, sigh. I think my monitors give me enough juice for now while I am honing my skill to the point I think I'll need one. I think it'd work out better on your set up since your woofer is only 5". The 8" woofer would work perfectly for you, I think. Besides, my room sucks. If I bring in more of those bottom, I am afraid that it would do more harm than good. I am being punished by the god already as it is . I resist the idea of participating and assisting in my own torture. That and so few digits in the bank acct can only hinder the decision much longer. But with what I have right now it's a huge step up.Thanks for bringing it up.

If anything, I think I should try harder in listening skill. I wish I can just turn on a track and can tell immediately what's wrong with it. But, no, man, it's like catching an electric eel with bare hand standing in the water while holding a gasoline can and trying to light a bowl of sweet herb at the same time. Well, the last don't sound too bad but the first two seem like a world of hurt. And drowning in it is me. But I enjoy mixing. I don't mind the pain. I think it's necessary. No good things ever come easily. I get that. I get such a high when I, accidentally most of the time, happen to have a "serviceable" mix for a long period of time of about 2 seconds. And, true to goodness, it would just propel me all the way to the very gate where St. Peter stands guard. No chance for me to get in, but that's close enough . That, my friend, is very addictive, even just for only a briefest of moments.

Anyway, I went back and tightened the mix more as I get a better sense of what's coming out of the monitors and how to deal with them. Thanks for the listen. Let me know your thoughts on it if you have time. Thanks.

I noticed that I need more bass, not necessarily louder just more of that oomph. So I worked on the EQ/comp to get that happen, and, of course a ton more distortion for good measure. The new monitors help my hearing a lot, especially in the low end, where 99% of my mixes fell apart. The guitars were too crunchy and didn't have enough weight. Turned out the filter was a bit high, pulled it back a bit and they got thicker, cut a bit on the 2k range. That helped the vocal and the snare poke out better. Cut some of the mud-range and that helped the kick and the bass too. It seemed the guitars' full spectrum (freq) masked almost everything. Did not hear that when first got the speakers, but it's roughly a month in, and I start to hear...things. The snare wasn't controlled enough and too woody. Worked on that too. I also cut out some of the delay on the guitars. Nothing but trouble, cluttering everything. So yeah, out it went.

What I notice after all that cutting is the mix gain more headroom. I was able to get the mix louder. It also makes the mix cleaner, better separation, and, in turn, enhance intelligibility of all instruments. I didn't have to push the vocal up to compete with the rest, in fact, it was too loud that resulted in a whopping -3dBs down. Right now, I think it cuts thru better in the mix without being loud.

[mikej]

Hi!

First off, apologies for the delay in getting back to you here.

Latest mix is a lot cleaner, but to me is lacking in weight and perhaps width too. It needs a touch more in that 200-400 area and also quite a bit more in that sub 150 area to me, to me it is a bit light down there. I feel it's something to look at in the mix, as opposed to just a mix bus eq thing - although I find mixbus eq can make the difference. I think this is quite a tough mix anyway though even without the extra dimension of having to learn new speakers too. I feel you might be able to look into getting a bit of extra width in the mix also perhaps.

I fully understand what you mean regarding the sub, especially the money side of things. The point I was trying to get across is that you might be surprised at what you might be 'missing' bass wise still - hence suggesting getting a demo if you can. I'm certainly not trying to take the shine off what I think is a good investment you have made there. I feel it might help your mixes to hear one, even if you don't end up getting a sub, if you can get the chance to demo or hear one these days. Some cheap earbuds with hyped sub type bass might do the trick as a mix check tool too of course.

I'm no expert at these heavier genres. I've been working hard at it though, and I feel I am just starting to get the hang of it so I felt able to pass on some small advice at least.

I'll add a couple of threads below that you might find interesting that document my own struggle mixing this heavier stuff. Mostly the bad and the ugly, but perhaps some small amount of good in the end. Unfortunately one thread where someone pointed out to me (in the nicest possible way) that one of my mixes really sucked badly - and that they were disappointed and expected better from me - has been deleted (the track had to be removed from the library at the bands request). I do feel in general people sometimes take criticism the wrong way - for me that comment was actually quite encouraging. I guess my point is that it is possible to stick at it and perhaps get somewhere with it.

Warts and all -

- I hope you'll find something of use amongst this lot anyway.

https://discussion.cambridge-mt.com/show...?tid=30984
https://discussion.cambridge-mt.com/show...?tid=38863
https://discussion.cambridge-mt.com/show...?tid=39926

Edit: Forgot to add - it's well worth checking out aftercutrecords youtube mix videos, and recent mixes too. https://discussion.cambridge-mt.com/show...?tid=39047


Cheers!