Skelpolu - Human Mistakes (ZX Mix)

[Pedaling Prince]

Ask and ye shall receive! Though there is a limiter on this too, but it is set to -.2dB mainly to make sure I don't clip the digital side of things.

Actually, there's another way to do that that completely dispenses with the use of a limiter. If you mix in 24-bit you have plenty of headroom to kick around in so you can afford to keep your mixing level well below 0 dBFS. Even if your final mix comes out 6 or 7 dB below 0dBFS all you have to do at that point is normalize the whole smash and voila: perfect level! The loudest peak will hit maximum level but not clip. This is the technique I use, though I usually go through my entire mix before I mixdown and push it to the highest level I can without clipping; most of my initial mixes are, on average, -0.25 dB below 0 dBFS, then I normalize to bring them right up to the max.

Most of the power in the mix was achieved through a master buss compressor though. So, I think you'll find that it just opened up a bit more rather than having any kind of crazy revelation in superior sound quality.

Well it was certainly easier on the ears. And it helped me spot a few issues I didn't hear in the compressed mix.

First, the "noise" track is way overbearing IMHO. Myself, I automated the level of that but I always kept it more or less in the background; the noise itself is fairly unpleasant and shouldn't upstage the music IMHO.

Second, the overall balance of the music mix is good but the vocals are getting buried towards the end (I originally thought this was the result of the compression but now I can hear that its endemic to the original mix); I'd bring them up a dB or two, maybe sharpen them up with some EQ.

Speaking of sharpening things up, I felt the mix as a whole was a wee bit muddy sounding. Sounds good in principle but I think some of the synth tracks particularly could benefit from a little 5-6 kHz boost to sharpen the up and bring them out a little.

However, these are minor issues indeed. This is an excellent mix overall. I particularly love what you did with the piano; that echo effect is really cool!

Edit - Prince, if you want to listen to my most dynamic mix I have ever done, listen to my track From Earth to Planet Omega. (SoundCloud compression is terrible and there is a wonderful FLAC available for download) I did not do the mastering myself on it so it lost some there but definitely for the better.

"For the better." Are you sure about that?

I downloaded that FLAC as I avoid lossy compression whenever possible so I had to import it into Audacity to play it. I noticed that the waveform was heavily brickwalled into the maximum level at several points, particularly starting around 11 minutes in when each of those massive bass "thumps" would cause the meters to lock to a fixed level for a full second, something that should never happen with a natural waveform. Looking at the sound wave I could see its origin as dynamic material; Mr. Trewella obviously used some extremely aggressive compression and limiting here, managing to squeeze the dynamic range down to *7 dB* (were you aware of that?). Even so, it wasn't nearly as fatiguing to listen to as material with such narrow dynamic range usually is but I think that's only because the original material was so wide that it was impossible to squeeze all the life out of it. But I must admit I started to get a bit of a headache during that long loud section starting at 11 minutes...

To be honest? I loved this piece. It had a definite "Space Odyssey" feel to it, and it seriously creeped me out at the end (in a good way ). I'd love to try to do a video for this thing, if I could get the necessary funds for the effects, sets etc. that it would necessitate. However, being so familiar with your sound now having mixed three of your works, I could also hear the distortion in the sound caused by the compression. I kept longing to hear the original as it was before Mr. Trewella got ahold of it...

I'd love to hear a FLAC of the original, if you still have it. Better still, if you still have the multitracks, I'd love to take a swing at this one myself, and would jump on it if it was posted to the site. Even in its current form, this is definitely my favorite of your work so far.