SpedeMix of Too Bright is not too bright IMO :)

[Spede]

Finally had some time to write. Thanks for all the comments so far.

the sub element of your mix is muddying up the low end somewhat. there's not sufficient clarity between the kick's sub here and the bass line. something that does stick out is the extended decay on the kick's sub which won't help things. perhaps a gate might help tame the wash, but the EQ strategy in the 40Hz to 160Hz two octaves needs re-evaluating; the outcome might give you more headroom too. it's easy to get carried away by the kick's abundant harmonics higher up the spectrum and lose sight of the mischief down in the fundamental zone.....i often beat myself with a big stick to try and keep focus on it - that's not a recommendation by the way! by clearing this up, it would offer some scope for exploting the improved spectral space by offering it to other instruments which would otherwise risk muddying the mix; just a thought. drop a low pass filter with 36dB/octave gradient or more, and sweep it around the 200Hz zone and lower, especially if one's ear doesn't tune into this range easily without being force-fed. referencing decent CD's while doing likewise can help the ear focus on the appropriate detail and offer a benchmark. which reminds me.....i should/must practice what i preach with far greater regularity than i do. lol

Thanks Dave for all of your thoughts in your previous post.

Regarding the low end and kick drum. The main issue with the kick is it's a kind of kick whose low end starts higher and then sweeps lower, like a divebomb. So essentially if you accentuate the attack of this kind of kick drum, you accentuate the higher end end of the kick bottom end. And because of the divebomb effect there'll always be some sustain in it which incidentally happens lower in the spectrum than the attack. I was contemplating the idea of completely replacing the kick drum with something snappier but decided to roll with this one for sake of experimentation. It seems it's impossible (or at least ridiculously hard) to get this kind of kick both big and clear.

I did a listen with the hipass thing you mentioned. I do notice there's quite a lot of bottom end on the sides coming from the extra synths. I guess it was partly intentional in order to get more bigness, but I guess I'll have to do some more referencing with commercial stuff this way to see just how wide the low-mid/upper bass can be in these kind of songs. Couple of years ago I was doing quite a lot of this hipass monitoring in order to see just how much of my bottom end stems come through (via upper harmonics) and how they do in other's mixes.

Thanks pauli for the Mind Bokeh recommendation. I don't listen enough of this kind of music, which shows in my mixes.

[pauli]

Regarding the low end and kick drum. The main issue with the kick is it's a kind of kick whose low end starts higher and then sweeps lower, like a divebomb.

IMO the sweeping kick is perfect for the choruses, which genre-hop pretty boldly into dubstep. I'd sacrifice clarity for power in this case, but also don't think a little EQ bump where the attack happens would hurt. It would make it more actively heard, though, especially on lower end systems. Although listening to dub on a lower end system is a sad prospect...

I did a listen with the hipass thing you mentioned. I do notice there's quite a lot of bottom end on the sides coming from the extra synths. I guess it was partly intentional in order to get more bigness..

There's a hell of a lot of bass in the sides and IMO that's completely self defeating both in terms of wideness-big and power/loudness-big. From about 125 down, the human ear design can't discern directionality, so our brains automatically assume it's centered. Why not open things up by highpassing from 125 down from the sides of the stereo buss? I think that'd focus the bass and kick a good deal more, and it'd still probably make the mix feel wider since the side channels won't be clogged up with stuff the sounds like it's in the center anyway. My experience is that when there's excessive content in the stereo spread it makes compressing the mix a lot harder to do smoothly, too.

Thanks pauli for the Mind Bokeh recommendation. I don't listen enough of this kind of music, which shows in my mixes.

Thing I love about mix, I now listen to so much music I'd have never thought I could love so much before. My whole life I've been a musician and lover of music, but never realized how much I was missing. Mind Bokeh unfortunately got frigged up a bit in the mastering phase (I'm assuming) but it's still a great listen... I hope you like it. You could do a lot worse than check out Bibio's other records, too.