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Preach Right Here - HB Mix
#11
Did you side chain the kick into the mix? or just a bit of a stron comp on the master bus? I love those drums!! nice and phat, but I just got distracted a little bit by the ducking of the kick on the rest of the instruments. But Its a nice big mix, also like the positioning of the shaker... hehehe.. And the vocal sounds really nice. Maybe its also because my ears had a bit of a rest the last few weeks. But this mix really feels good.
"Anything too dumb to be spoken should be sung" Know your bones - aKing
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#12
(07-08-2014, 12:23 PM)Nep5 Wrote: Did you side chain the kick into the mix? or just a bit of a stron comp on the master bus? I love those drums!! nice and phat, but I just got distracted a little bit by the ducking of the kick on the rest of the instruments. But Its a nice big mix, also like the positioning of the shaker... hehehe.. And the vocal sounds really nice. Maybe its also because my ears had a bit of a rest the last few weeks. But this mix really feels good.

Hey Nep5 - thanks for the feedback..glad u enjoyed remix.

I used kick and snare to duck bass 2-3 db. There is some very mild buss compression, but the needle is hardly moving, and its 35/65 wet/dry parallel mix.....a little bit of glue...but both these settings haven't really changed from mix 1...the extra effect comes from the EQ mods i think..

having a break...for sure...i couldn't listen to this mix again for weeks

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#13
very nice mix!!! for my personal taste i prefer your first version 'cause in the second i can hear too much compression, the track is jumping up and down like in the luna park Smile i can't understand this bus compression... i use the compressor/limiter in the channel that need it... just this.
have a nice day!!
Sardhouse
Recording engineer David Williams said, “It’s quite ironic: We got rid of our
analog equipment, replaced it with digital, then spent the next couple
of decades trying to get the digital to sound like the analog we
got rid of.”
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#14
Hi sardhouse, thanks for your feedback and commentsBig Grin

(04-10-2014, 05:41 PM)sardhouse Wrote: very nice mix!!! for my personal taste i prefer your first version 'cause in the second i can hear too much compression, the track is jumping up and down like in the luna park Smile

its funny, i mixed both these tracks on headphones with crappy PC speakers as my only reference so I wasn't sure about the bottom end stomp that i was trying to create. I now have some new near field monitors and I think I prefer the overall balance of mix_01 too, but maybe with a couple of tweaks that i made to Vox on mix_02

The heavy bottom end in mix-02 is all EQ, no compression. I dialed it in using my Pultec emu on both kick and bass

(04-10-2014, 05:41 PM)sardhouse Wrote: i can't understand this bus compression... i use the compressor/limiter in the channel that need it... just this.
have a nice day!!
Sardhouse

Obviously a rhetorical question.....but master buss compression can be an amazing tool if treated with respect....its like having an army of people working all the faders at once to maintain a perfect balance...it really helps to bring out of some of the micro details of a mix....but it cant fix a bad mix and shouldn't be used to excess...1-2, maybe 3 db gain reduction at most with just enough make-up gain to maintain an equivalent volume with the uncompressed material...then when you A/B you can tell if it sounds better or not.

Cheers
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#15
These days I like to set the stereo buss compressor after I have the coarse mixing done for the drums and bass, and then I start mixing the rest of the tracks in with the compressor active.

Why do this? The same reason we use global reverb sends... There's a certain sonic consistency you can achieve when compression is applied across the mix that would be impractical on a track by track level... And just as with global reverb sends, it's important to use only what you need.

For my part, I like to mix in to the processor for several reasons, but mainly because any sort of issue you might have with artifacts when compressing the master buss will show up much earlier in the mixing stage and you can adjust course as necessary. I also find that managing the dynamics of the mix solely by compressing individual tracks can force you to completely crush prominent parts like the lead vocal... And especially in the case of a rock song, it makes it all too easy to start strapping compressors on more than half the tracks in the mix. Believe it or not, that can in some styles quickly reduce the dynamic range of the whole mix more than a properly set buss compressor... The ratio of dynamic management to dynamic range is really important to consider. With a buss compressor in place, you'll invariably find yourself needing less compression on individual tracks and the automation process will be much more forgiving... Because the compression will help keep periodic level boosts from unbalancing the mix dynamics elsewhere, thus requiring more envelopes, nodes, and headaches.

Hbguitar's parallel buss compression strategy is really smart, too, if you're aiming to manage mix dynamics without blunting transients. In acoustic music that's a great way to keep dynamic range under control... But if you're applying parallel compression individually in different processors or with different settings based on the instrument in question, that's gonna hurt the mix dynamics in the end, making everything sound lumpy.

At any rate, buss compression shouldn't be about loudness wars or making the track screaming loud, and most self taught engineers don't understand that because they read a book by Bob Katz or a zillion posts on gearslutz about how compression is evil. But when you're considering buss processing, a compressor is no different than buss eq or reverb... You're going for gentle processing that is spread evenly across the mix, much as the analog mastering process compresses dynamics by driving the tape near to the point of clipping, creating a gentle dynamics roll-off toward the peaks. Call it tape saturation and nobody bats an eye, but if you use the dirty C word, folks like Bruce Sweden will start hollering about how they NEVER reduce the dynamic range of their mixes because that's just wrong... But they're not really telling the truth. They're compressing their masters too, just using a different tool with a name that inspires nostalgia rather than one that's become a dirty word, even though the result is often very similar.

Having said that, I LOVE Swediens work with Michael Jackson, and Bob Katz is of course one of the greats... And I'll never tell someone they're wrong not to compress the master if they get a great result. And of course there is a ton of great music out there ruined with over compressed masters... No disagreement there... The trend of remastering classic albums with excessive compression is particularly annoying. But like any other mix tool, proper buss compression applied tastefully and with care can really help a mix fall into place. And it can do it in a way that automation can't without great difficulty, smoothly moving all the faders in response to one another- and then you can apply automation underneath it to refine that mechanism- and THEN you can automate the compressor to accommodate the inevitably differing dynamic needs of each song section!

I'm not lecturing or trying to change your style, but you said you didn't understand master buss compression... So hopefully my explanation helps make sense of it for you Smile
I'm grateful for comments and suggestions. Thank you for listening!
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#16
Hey pauli, thanks for dropping by. You make some great points here and I just hope that they are not wasted this far down in an old thread

Cheers buddyBig Grin
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#17
Oh yeah, I can talk the talk, but can I walk the walk? Sometimes Tongue
I'm grateful for comments and suggestions. Thank you for listening!
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