Cog In The Machine mix by Artbass

[Artbass]

Hi all,

I've finished another mix. Feel free to comment.

Cheers
Harry

[JohnSmith]

Hi there !

I finally had time enough to listen to your mix !
Shame it's mp3 ... i wish i could have listend to it wave or aiff... cause i don't know if what bothers me is really your fault.
It's very well balanced, reverb is quite hard to choose on Will Knox songs, i tried to mix another one myself, and i always feel like it should be dry, but here i must admit it sounds nice and fit the song.
What i don't like is the voice character, but i think it's mp3's fault, in the high frequencies i got a lot of "sssss" and '"shhhh"... which is also a caracteristic of Will's voice

I really like the LCR panning choice, it suits this music very well and give a sort of "post retro style" !

Another thing i felt strange about is the rise of noise when bass track starts. but it's really nothing to fix...

Could you send me an uncompressed version ? i send you my mail in MP.

Gonna listen to the others !

[Artbass]

Thank you. I just uploaded an uncompressed 44.1/24-version to dropbox. You can download it here: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/4086470/CogInTh...441-24.wav (I might remove it some time in the future, should I run out of space, but for now it will do). Make sure to use rightclick and "save file as", as you otherwise might just open a player (Quicktime I guess).

Anyway, I relistened to my mix and I have to agree with the s-problem on the vocals. It did not seem that much a problem to me while mixing, but listening to it with some distance makes me more aware of it. During some lines the brushed drum and the s-es are at the same place, which makes it even more of a problem.

[JohnSmith]

Thanks for the uncompressed version ! Will listen to it again today.
I'll also listen to your other mixes, and try to read (and understand, with my poor english) the 3 pages of comments on your 3 versions' mix !

Nice sharing with you "sir" !

[Olli H]

You've nicely fixed the rhythmic problems that were evident in the start.

I liked the way you've given the drums a big role. (Opposite of mine) Some of the crash hits sound a little bit weird (for example at 1:52)

I like the vocal sound, but is the tail of the reverb too long? Now the band is in smaller room than vocalist.

Cheers Olli

[takka360]

Nice mix,i think the rim is a fair bit too loud and a bit too cutting

[Artbass]

Oh, I almost forgot about this mix...

You've nicely fixed the rhythmic problems that were evident in the start.

This was something that seemed so evident in all the other mixes that I wondered that most did not fix it. Thank you for noticing (or should I not thank you for noticing my edits? ).

I liked the way you've given the drums a big role. (Opposite of mine) Some of the crash hits sound a little bit weird (for example at 1:52)

I can't recall what I've done here, but I doubt that I did something special to it. I guess the crash was hit with a brush. That has a certain sound to it, why would I change that?

I like the vocal sound, but is the tail of the reverb too long? Now the band is in smaller room than vocalist.

To me that is not necesseraly a problem and listening to it again after more than half a year it still does not bother me. Quite the opposite. It seems to work pretty well in my ears.

@takka: Well, this song is called "Cog in the Machine" and it is an all acoustic song. This seems to be the only part that puts the title into the music, you know

[stoman]

I like this mix in terms of frequency/volume balance. What I do not like is the vocal compression, and the instruments seem to be in different rooms.

Regards,
Steffen

[Artbass]

I like this mix in terms of frequency/volume balance. What I do not like is the vocal compression, and the instruments seem to be in different rooms.

Regards,
Steffen

Hi Steffen,

thanks for the feedback. This mix is quite old, I can not recall, what I did there in detail.

What is it you do not like about the compression? I wonder, if I used much compression at all, actually.

Strange, that you get the idea of the instruments beeing in different rooms, as I most certainly only used one reverb for all the instruments and combined that with a room mic (I guess, but I'm pretty sure about that - one reverb for everything is the way I choose most often). Having spoken about the reverb before, though, I get the nagging feeling, that I should spend a bit more on optimising my room...

Cheers
Artbass

[stoman]

Using the same reverb on all tracks may be the exact reason as different distances need different pre-delays (and more). The room on the vocal is very obvious as opposed to the instruments. That makes it sound strange to my ears.

I think the compression is no problem though. My ears were overstrained yesterday. It sounds ok to me now.

Regards,
Steffen