Loud and Clear - mixed & mastered

[Stickman]

Hey Guys,

this is my Version of "Loud and Clear". I was a little bit to late to hand it in to the audio technica mixing contest, but i want to share it here.

Let my know what you think about my mix.

Cheers, Eric

[Voelund]

You ceartainly made a loud mix. Too loud if you ask me. Verse and prechorus are kinda ok, but chorus are so squashed its not perceived louder, as I think it should be.
You have a cool bright sound on all, are the acoustics a bit too loud in verses ?
My advice is: back off the limiter a lot - only take 1 or 2 dB in mastering.
You have close to no dynamics in this.
Sound of your mix I think is very good.

[Stickman]

Hey, thanks for your comment.

I know what you mean, the refrain is really squashing. I haven't recognized that before. What i try to do in the mastering process is to bring up the song to a common level of volume, some EQ changes and dynamic editing. I compare the level of the mastering output to a reference song i choose, and try get nearly to the same volume level.

Attached you will find the mixdown of the song. As you can hear, the volume is far a way from the common level of commerce songs.

[Voelund]

And the sound is SO much better !
The most important volume boost in in the listeners power, the one he reach out for when a good song is on the playlist.
Listenin now the kick is bigger than rest o the kit, includin the snare, maybe the overheads should be little louder.
Or instrument bus could come down a dB ?
The brass is a bit loud too I think.
Vocal lvl could come up a tad in chorus.

Thx for postin this much clearer mix

[Voelund]

Not that Im any kind of expert in mastering, but I know what I dont like and used to do: squash the mix.
My new approach is some kind o saturation, Often its some UAD plugins not doin anythin but havin the music go through them, the Pultec, the LA2A, the Fairchild.
Then a compressor to event things out before limiter, compressin most o the time with fairly long attck and release, 90ish atck and 1500 release, set to rms mode.
Then an eq and limiter last, takin some 2 dB at most from loudest part of song.
It works for me but I know not evrybody would agree with this

[Mike Senior]

Had a listen to the mixdown version here, and it feels rather bottom-heavy. I wonder whether you can hear what's going on down there. It feels like it's pumping some kind of buss compression slightly unnaturally too, but maybe that's my imagination... Cymbals feel a bit overwhelming too in the balance too, and the piano and acoustic guitar could do with sustaining more, I think.