11-10-2021, 01:57 AM (This post was last modified: 21-11-2021, 10:43 AM by LuciferMabus.)
need feedback please
two workstations tied together on Dante network mixed in the box without any outboard gear.
DAW: Cubase 11 pro
audio interfaces: Audient id44 and UAD apollo x16 used Dante to connect everything on network
monitors: KRK 6, Mackie MR5. Genelecs 8351b
headphones: Audio Technica ATH-M50x, Sennheiser HD280
I did not try to master this version because when I try to master it the songs sound better then after mastered
i didn't use compression on the first track but there are two here with compression labels push it.
mastered in finalizer and Wavelab using Gullfoss and soothe 2
updated Oct 14, 2021
the final mix is the one on the bottom called not so dark at the end of title. i fixed a lot of issues and the drop is really low.
Slate Murda 1 is the last Mix the other two are earlier mixes. I have remixed this song about 10 times. the original mix I loved the vocals better so I may go back and do one more mix to change my vocals back. updated Nov 18, 2021
Never Let You GO Push it even harder (compression).mp3.
Thanks for leaving comment on mine. I really appreciate it. So naturally I listen to yours as a return of a favor and hope that I can help.
The first thing I notice is the good vocal. I like it, nice and sweet. I'd put a little less feedback on the delay to control the last few repeats so that they don't trip the vocal on the faster notes in the verse. The BV (male) is a bit loud relatively to the main vox. Pulling it back a bit will not harm anything. You lose some of the impact that should be there in the hook, the bass is nice but the kick is not helping enough. We need to get that kick slamming. Yep, the chorus is where we pay the bills, so to speak. And it can't do it w/o the kick. I also recommend more delay on the vox in the chorus, just throw the tail end of her voice a bit longer for more impact , but that's just a taste thing. I like the guitar and the piano. They cut thru adequately. There is another guitar part that I have trouble hearing, and yeah, I got a few bruises and a black eye trying to fight it, as always. But that's what we do, right?
This type of production/genre is hard to do. Not bc it's hard to mix (all the songs are hard to mix) but too many little things happening so quickly, not to mention the ginormous track counts. For example, there are "fx" in the tracks that help with some of the impact that if you are not careful you'd miss it. And bc we don't have an army of assistants to help we just have to do it ourselves. Some of the things I do actually help. I'll share it here with you even though I am aware that you already know a lot already so I'll minimize it to a couple that really matter for now.
1. Gain-staging. I hear conflicting argument about this. Some don't care, some swear by it. I am in neither camp, not that extreme, but I do bc what harm can it do? But I can tell you what good it does tho. It'll feed your input equal strength with other instruments, not wimpy and weak leading to more fader flexibility. Those seem to be good reasons for me.
2. Phase coherence. Yeah, I never cared for it either, but I have learned my lesson. The kick (in/out) will be much more powerful, same with the snare/oh and its image, same with the bass (di/amp). I am talking about quality (definition) not quantity (volume) Anything recorded with 2 mics should be investigated. Very hard to hear the differences but with practice one will be able to hear it, headphones helps bigly . Once you hear it, you'll be a believer.
3. Balancing (volume) the song WITHOUT any processing with all faders up to make sure we don't "forget" anything. The time you spend here will help in the next steps.
4. Filtering only. Just HP or LP. The key here is to listen not only to the instruments you apply the filter to, but also the surrounding instruments and how they react to your move. For example, if you LP the bass, listen to the kick, especially the beater part, the attack. You should be able to hear it soon as you move past 8kHz. If you HP on guitar, listen to the vocal/snare/hats/etc at that region (~80Hz-100Hz). The snare will show more body, the kick will show more thump, and the vocal will be thicker more weight, etc. Listen carefully and you'll hear the reaction. Loops and bypass buttons are real friends here (to make sure your ears don't trick you, and they will). Put in enough time, it'll become second nature. I am still practicing listening to that.
From this point onward you should be able to apply whatever you know to the mix.
Well, I hope you'll find something there useful or interesting. I wish I could give you more but that's all I know for now. The main thing is it helps me with my mix, and, who knows, it might help you too.
Thanks for the time you spent on my mixes. It helps. Cheers!
(11-10-2021, 10:33 PM)SonicTramp Wrote: Never Let You GO Push it even harder (compression).mp3.
Thanks for leaving comment on mine. I really appreciate it. So naturally I listen to yours as a return of a favor and hope that I can help.
The first thing I notice is the good vocal. I like it, nice and sweet. I'd put a little less feedback on the delay to control the last few repeats so that they don't trip the vocal on the faster notes in the verse. The BV (male) is a bit loud relatively to the main vox. Pulling it back a bit will not harm anything. You lose some of the impact that should be there in the hook, the bass is nice but the kick is not helping enough. We need to get that kick slamming. Yep, the chorus is where we pay the bills, so to speak. And it can't do it w/o the kick. I also recommend more delay on the vox in the chorus, just throw the tail end of her voice a bit longer for more impact , but that's just a taste thing. I like the guitar and the piano. They cut thru adequately. There is another guitar part that I have trouble hearing, and yeah, I got a few bruises and a black eye trying to fight it, as always. But that's what we do, right?
This type of production/genre is hard to do. Not bc it's hard to mix (all the songs are hard to mix) but too many little things happening so quickly, not to mention the ginormous track counts. For example, there are "fx" in the tracks that help with some of the impact that if you are not careful you'd miss it. And bc we don't have an army of assistants to help we just have to do it ourselves. Some of the things I do actually help. I'll share it here with you even though I am aware that you already know a lot already so I'll minimize it to a couple that really matter for now.
1. Gain-staging. I hear conflicting argument about this. Some don't care, some swear by it. I am in neither camp, not that extreme, but I do bc what harm can it do? But I can tell you what good it does tho. It'll feed your input equal strength with other instruments, not wimpy and weak leading to more fader flexibility. Those seem to be good reasons for me.
2. Phase coherence. Yeah, I never cared for it either, but I have learned my lesson. The kick (in/out) will be much more powerful, same with the snare/oh and its image, same with the bass (di/amp). I am talking about quality (definition) not quantity (volume) Anything recorded with 2 mics should be investigated. Very hard to hear the differences but with practice one will be able to hear it, headphones helps bigly . Once you hear it, you'll be a believer.
3. Balancing (volume) the song WITHOUT any processing with all faders up to make sure we don't "forget" anything. The time you spend here will help in the next steps.
4. Filtering only. Just HP or LP. The key here is to listen not only to the instruments you apply the filter to, but also the surrounding instruments and how they react to your move. For example, if you LP the bass, listen to the kick, especially the beater part, the attack. You should be able to hear it soon as you move past 8kHz. If you HP on guitar, listen to the vocal/snare/hats/etc at that region (~80Hz-100Hz). The snare will show more body, the kick will show more thump, and the vocal will be thicker more weight, etc. Listen carefully and you'll hear the reaction. Loops and bypass buttons are real friends here (to make sure your ears don't trick you, and they will). Put in enough time, it'll become second nature. I am still practicing listening to that.
From this point onward you should be able to apply whatever you know to the mix.
Well, I hope you'll find something there useful or interesting. I wish I could give you more but that's all I know for now. The main thing is it helps me with my mix, and, who knows, it might help you too.
Thanks for the time you spent on my mixes. It helps. Cheers!
thanks for the feedback, im going to remix this song again. thanks for all the pointers, I'm still learning.
(11-10-2021, 10:33 PM)SonicTramp Wrote: Never Let You GO Push it even harder (compression).mp3.
Thanks for leaving comment on mine. I really appreciate it. So naturally I listen to yours as a return of a favor and hope that I can help.
The first thing I notice is the good vocal. I like it, nice and sweet. I'd put a little less feedback on the delay to control the last few repeats so that they don't trip the vocal on the faster notes in the verse. The BV (male) is a bit loud relatively to the main vox. Pulling it back a bit will not harm anything. You lose some of the impact that should be there in the hook, the bass is nice but the kick is not helping enough. We need to get that kick slamming. Yep, the chorus is where we pay the bills, so to speak. And it can't do it w/o the kick. I also recommend more delay on the vox in the chorus, just throw the tail end of her voice a bit longer for more impact , but that's just a taste thing. I like the guitar and the piano. They cut thru adequately. There is another guitar part that I have trouble hearing, and yeah, I got a few bruises and a black eye trying to fight it, as always. But that's what we do, right?
This type of production/genre is hard to do. Not bc it's hard to mix (all the songs are hard to mix) but too many little things happening so quickly, not to mention the ginormous track counts. For example, there are "fx" in the tracks that help with some of the impact that if you are not careful you'd miss it. And bc we don't have an army of assistants to help we just have to do it ourselves. Some of the things I do actually help. I'll share it here with you even though I am aware that you already know a lot already so I'll minimize it to a couple that really matter for now.
1. Gain-staging. I hear conflicting argument about this. Some don't care, some swear by it. I am in neither camp, not that extreme, but I do bc what harm can it do? But I can tell you what good it does tho. It'll feed your input equal strength with other instruments, not wimpy and weak leading to more fader flexibility. Those seem to be good reasons for me.
2. Phase coherence. Yeah, I never cared for it either, but I have learned my lesson. The kick (in/out) will be much more powerful, same with the snare/oh and its image, same with the bass (di/amp). I am talking about quality (definition) not quantity (volume) Anything recorded with 2 mics should be investigated. Very hard to hear the differences but with practice one will be able to hear it, headphones helps bigly . Once you hear it, you'll be a believer.
3. Balancing (volume) the song WITHOUT any processing with all faders up to make sure we don't "forget" anything. The time you spend here will help in the next steps.
4. Filtering only. Just HP or LP. The key here is to listen not only to the instruments you apply the filter to, but also the surrounding instruments and how they react to your move. For example, if you LP the bass, listen to the kick, especially the beater part, the attack. You should be able to hear it soon as you move past 8kHz. If you HP on guitar, listen to the vocal/snare/hats/etc at that region (~80Hz-100Hz). The snare will show more body, the kick will show more thump, and the vocal will be thicker more weight, etc. Listen carefully and you'll hear the reaction. Loops and bypass buttons are real friends here (to make sure your ears don't trick you, and they will). Put in enough time, it'll become second nature. I am still practicing listening to that.
From this point onward you should be able to apply whatever you know to the mix.
Well, I hope you'll find something there useful or interesting. I wish I could give you more but that's all I know for now. The main thing is it helps me with my mix, and, who knows, it might help you too.
Thanks for the time you spent on my mixes. It helps. Cheers!
Hey, I remixed it last night and took a lot of good advice, Sir. Thanks but still not as good as your mixes.
bass is wide and narrow in different versions plus one version background male is lower than the others.
I like this version best bc I like how you did the bottom end, quite deep and dark. I don't mind it much but think that it should be a bit brighter for this song, but that's just my opinion. I still think that the chorus is still not strong enough. The rest of the song is good. There are a bunch of synths (4/5/6) that would help strengthen that part. I'd hp all the way to 500Hz on all 3 and cut them loose with faders up fairly high and see what happens. If you need to, you can always shave off a bit of top end from them to leave room for the vocal. I think if you do that you'll be able to bring back some hi mid back in the mix and make it less dark. There is also an accent on (voxSFX2 and 3.1) ~0:51, and somewhere else after the v2, that needs to be reigned in a bit more. They draw too much attention, imo.
I had some time to work on my mix a bit more. I was able to bring more bottom end to it, making the whole mix beefier, I think. I also include here a short pass of just the kick and the bass so you have an idea how they sound and sit in the mix. Maybe you'll find it useful, if not, you don't have to listen to it. Cheers!
(13-10-2021, 03:42 AM)SonicTramp Wrote: Never let you go +4.4db.mp3
I like this version best bc I like how you did the bottom end, quite deep and dark. I don't mind it much but think that it should be a bit brighter for this song, but that's just my opinion. I still think that the chorus is still not strong enough. The rest of the song is good. There are a bunch of synths (4/5/6) that would help strengthen that part. I'd hp all the way to 500Hz on all 3 and cut them loose with faders up fairly high and see what happens. If you need to, you can always shave off a bit of top end from them to leave room for the vocal. I think if you do that you'll be able to bring back some hi mid back in the mix and make it less dark. There is also an accent on (voxSFX2 and 3.1) ~0:51, and somewhere else after the v2, that needs to be reigned in a bit more. They draw too much attention, imo.
I had some time to work on my mix a bit more. I was able to bring more bottom end to it, making the whole mix beefier, I think. I also include here a short pass of just the kick and the bass so you have an idea how they sound and sit in the mix. Maybe you'll find it useful, if not, you don't have to listen to it. Cheers!
yeah i like the filter sweep in the bass and all tips are helpful. great stuff you are doing. i probably go back to the mix in few days, my hear are burnt out and i’m hear this song in my dreams right now so going to have play a lot different music now just to get all the looping out my head, lol. i wonder do you hear a song you just mixed looping in your head like i do? crazy.
Well, the way I see it is like a right of passage. I mean, what will become of us if we don't have mud everywhere in our mixes? Need I mention there are mixes that I rather tiptoe softly to the backyard, across a barn with rusty hooks and hoes to bury them, in the dark moonless night, when no one is around, instead of 6, 12 feet under. What about no bottom end at all? What about muted tracks? Man, I don't wear them proudly, can you blame me?, but I am not shamed having them either. And yeah, you name it, man. I have much experience wallowing in that awesome pool of sonic miseries . Almost drown quite a few times (throw in the towel), but, luckily, I have big lungs. I can hold my breath down there...forever. It takes a bit of work to make me cry, you know.
Yeah, take a rest. No need to torture yourself mixing with ear fatigue. It'll come to you as it comes to me. Eventually you'll hear what's wrong in your mix by yourself. The learning curve in this business is quite gentle. It takes a long time just to get a bit better. Here patience and perseverance are great virtues to possess. I encourage you to read more about sounds, the science part of it, and keep playing with your toys (compressor, EQ, etc) to get to know them better. I have only a few plugins, mostly stock, but I know them well enough to know what they can do and how they can help me pin the mix down. I am in no way know everything about my plugins but knowing enough is enough to get me thru and, yeah, read the user manuals . The main thing is to be able to hear it. That's the key, my friend. We are in the business of listening. Let's not forget that, right?
Let me know your next mix when it's done. I'll give you my 2 cents then. Thanks.
I had some time to listen to never let you go +4.4db
I really enjoy it a few things, The timing on the background vocal is a little bit ahead. Possibly you moved the file by accident? I think the balance of everything for the most part is very good. I think the problem with the mix feeling dark somewhat, is all of the tracks are mixed together very close in the treble. something you could try, a sidechained track from the vocal, add a sharp High Pass filter from 3k to 5k, you can also add some saturation to make it thicker to fill in any gaps in the spectrum that you cannot hear, and you can also gate it so it only plays when the vocal plays, so no noise in between the silence. With this track anytime you feel things get dark, just bring the fader up and the vocal will balance out the darkness. You could also try this on some other tracks like on one of the synths during the chorus. I ended up adding a delay of about 15ms to the right side of the Hi Hats to make them sound wider. Just a little more DB from the hihat in your mix would make the drums much bigger and melody carry a little more. The Snare and Kick sounds GREAT along with the cymbals. Same with the lead Vocal in the Chorus, Its at a nice level and presence.
(13-10-2021, 08:47 AM)401kBC Wrote: I had some time to listen to never let you go +4.4db
I really enjoy it a few things, The timing on the background vocal is a little bit ahead. Possibly you moved the file by accident? I think the balance of everything for the most part is very good. I think the problem with the mix feeling dark somewhat, is all of the tracks are mixed together very close in the treble. something you could try, a sidechained track from the vocal, add a sharp High Pass filter from 3k to 5k, you can also add some saturation to make it thicker to fill in any gaps in the spectrum that you cannot hear, and you can also gate it so it only plays when the vocal plays, so no noise in between the silence. With this track anytime you feel things get dark, just bring the fader up and the vocal will balance out the darkness. You could also try this on some other tracks like on one of the synths during the chorus. I ended up adding a delay of about 15ms to the right side of the Hi Hats to make them sound wider. Just a little more DB from the hihat in your mix would make the drums much bigger and melody carry a little more. The Snare and Kick sounds GREAT along with the cymbals. Same with the lead Vocal in the Chorus, Its at a nice level and presence.
Hey thanks about the background vocals, lol they are off because when I remixed my old mix I put VCA fader on the background vocals and didn't bus them correctly, they are bus straight to master bus, just crazy, long story short is the Multiband compression in the vocal chain will change latency in Cubase and the background vocal bypassed the whole chain which means they are really ahead. well, I guess I really have to Mixdown these again once I bus them to the vocal chain they will be back aligned. Hey, you were the only one who noticed it, I was rushing this plus to fix my old version, I added a lot of different buses for another delay and probably forgot to route it, Cubase will route all-new tracks to the master bus by default.
. Once you hear it, you'll be a believer.