House Of Bedlam: 'Eventide' (Mixed by Prosperity Sound)

[Prosperity Sound]

Another variation of this track, any feedback is appreciated.
Thanks!

[mikej]

Hi!

I've given the tracks you posted a listen. I'll post this general comment on this track, rather than commenting on each one individually for now. To me they all seem to have a slightly strange frequency balance. For me most have too much bass and top end, and really scooped low mids (100-1KHz approx). Kind of an extreme 'V' shape profile. In addition to the aforementioned issues, the Girls Under Glass track also seems to be lacking low end too. You can clearly see the issues on a spectrum analyzer. Possibly a room or monitoring issue?

I'd suggest to maybe pick out one of the tracks you've posted so far and work on getting that right, balance wise, perhaps?

Maybe others will be able to comment on this too?

Cheers!

[Prosperity Sound]

Thanks a lot for your thoughts about this mix, it's always important to get a view from the side.

In my opinion, the lack in low mids is not always means something bad, because there are a lot of crucial frequencies of any instrument in this area, apart from that, any instrument have a boxy or muddy region there, and it's a good way to obtain the clarity of the mix - to protect only necessary frequencies in every track, that's why I often work in this area very carefully in order to escape the troubles of muddy zone in a whole mix, cut heavily on prepairing the mix and decrease a lot on master section. But the problems were both in dynamic and frequency processing and I heard it, when I had rised this zone.

I've redone the mixing and mastering a bit, pressed the bulging lows and highs, cleaned the low mids, make some changes in the balance of vocal tracks, discharged the compression in the mix. Now you can check the results of this work, it will be great to get a response.

[mikej]

Thanks a lot for your thoughts about this mix, it's always important to get a view from the side.

In my opinion, the lack in low mids is not always means something bad, because there are a lot of crucial frequencies of any instrument in this area, apart from that, any instrument have a boxy or muddy region there, and it's a good way to obtain the clarity of the mix - to protect only necessary frequencies in every track, that's why I often work in this area very carefully in order to escape the troubles of muddy zone in a whole mix, cut heavily on prepairing the mix and decrease a lot on master section. But the problems were both in dynamic and frequency processing and I heard it, when I had rised this zone.

A4 is 440Hz, so the whole octave C4 to B4 spans around 260-490Hz (approx).  If you overly aggressively cut this area you are going to end up with quite a thin mix I think. I feel you just need to address any issues in this area, not just cut everything as a matter of course.

I've redone the mixing and mastering a bit, pressed the bulging lows and highs, cleaned the low mids, make some changes in the balance of vocal tracks, discharged the compression in the mix. Now you can check the results of this work, it will be great to get a response.

Whilst the overall freq balance is improved, the internal balances of this mix feel a bit off to me - going low to high frequency.  I think the dynamics were perhaps better in the first mix.  I suspect a lot of the problem might be down to the basic mix balance and the bus compression.  I notice the vocals are quite loud in some places, and when they are, they seem to be really pushing the rest of the instruments down in level quite hard, so we lose the bass, etc. This also might not be the best track to practice balancing in, as these heavier tracks are quite tricky to mix anyway.

Cheers!

[Prosperity Sound]

It is a great pleasure to receive feedback from a professional who clearly sees exactly what you did in the mix and notice exactly those points that were not reproduced incorrectly not due to misunderstanding, but due to own delusions. The bulging vocals from the mix were obtained due to concerns about its lack of clarity, as well as the previous fall in the low mids. At one point, I decided that the clarity of mixes was the main aim, and I built the whole concept around it, I felt that there was a lack of supervision. It would be inaccurate to say that my mixes were muddy - every instrument sounds clean and clear, but there was a lesion in another component - the resulting product sounded noncommercial and I could not understand why. Thank you, now the puzzle  in my head has taken shape. I put the original dynamics back into the mix, removed the unnecessary hard side-chain of vocals to other tracks, and mix has become more balanced, worked with the area that you noticed. The vocals neverthenless don't lost in other instruments, sounding clear enough.

[mikej]

Hi!

First off I must point out that I'm no professional mixer - just sharing my thoughts.  Your latest mix is heading in the right direction, I feel there are still some issues though.  The thing with heavy rock and metal is that there are seemingly few elements - Usually just drums, bass, guitars, vocals.  It would seem simple to mix, however it is actually incredibly difficult to get right.  There's really no where to hide, and you have to get the balance and everything in the mix pretty much spot on to get that rock mix feel.  Not easy at all.

For rock and metal the vocals don't have to be so up front as for pop, and are usually kind of just poking above the guitars. You can compress/limit the guitars so they are not quite so dynamic with respect to masking the vocal.  You can also lightly automate the vocal to keep it just poking above everything else. LCR mixing can also work very well for these heavier styles.  It's really the relative balances of each part that is the key to creating a powerful sounding mix. 

Rather than talk about mix balance, etc - there's some really good resources here on the forum that might be helpful with regard to mixing rock and metal for the Darkride track 'Hammer Down'.  It might be worth checking them out, then coming back to mix this track again?

I posted a rough mix of the Darkride track Hammer Down just using faders and panning (no effects or automation), so you can download the tracks and try to recreate it for yourself and possibly get a feel for the balances I used.
https://discussion.cambridge-mt.com/show...#pid121789

Here's the finished mix:
https://discussion.cambridge-mt.com/show...?tid=45478

Blitzzz - Hammer Down mixed by world class mixer:
https://discussion.cambridge-mt.com/show...?tid=23427

Blitzzz - Hammer Down Official production and mix info:
https://discussion.cambridge-mt.com/show...?tid=18653

Blitzzz - more mix tips for Hammer Down:
https://discussion.cambridge-mt.com/show...#pid123581

Mix stems from Blitzzz, album mix:
https://discussion.cambridge-mt.com/show...#pid122229

These are mixed stems - load them up in the daw, press play and you should have
something close to his final album mix.

Blitzzz's posts in general are worth checking out as they usually contain good usable info.

Cheers!