the Brew - What I Want, mixed by Mange

[mange]

Here´s my take of What I Want.


As already mentioned in another thread this is somewhat a test with "parallell" tracks with a couple of mics to choose from. I preferred/used all the Copperhead mic/tracks available.

[asperine]

I definitely liked this song, any input is very welcome.

https://soundcloud.com/asperine/the-brew-what-i-want-ev

@Mange, I did some comparisons (mastering wise) with your version, if you're interested I could share.

I used Mick Jaggers Wired All Night which has such great dynamics I thought it'd be a great reference track. So now I know that David Bianco should be on my list of favorite mixers I guess.

[mange]

Sure, very interested. What I did for mastering wasn´t that much though. Ran it through some preset in a three band compressor. Trimmed the thresholds just so that gain reduction occured. Maked up gain just above clipping and turned on "soft clipping"... done
Other thing ´bout my mix (that I´m not that happy about today) is.. I mostly did it on headphones (Shure SRH840) and while it sounds overall great at home in my monitors (Truth B2031A). At work (regular stereo in cofferoom) it sounds truly terrible with a big bump low mid/high bass.

Great track indeed, there´s an official mix to listen to on Spotify. Found more great music by the band wich I have never heard of before. Wish we could play around with that performance, much better played I think. On the solo part I used the scissors quite heavily and moved the keyboard to be tight with bassplayer.

Listened to your mix and have one thing worth mentioning. The bassplayer. Sound seem soo deep, for my monitors anyway. I bet it comes alive with a nice sub but here it somehow competes with other bass and it gets a bit muddy. It sounds really strange...as it have been accitentely pushed ahead in time??!
Besides of that I like it... not so dripping with reverb like mine

Shall listen to that Jagger track.

[JohnSmith]

@asperine !
I'd be very interested with your mastering comparisons !
I loved mixing this song, even if i did it really quick ...

One of the best bass sound i heard on tracking....

Cheers !

[asperine]

Thanks for your feedback (Mange/xabix), some very interesting remarks there.

I thought I'd finally gotten grip on the bass, but both remarks tell me that I succeeded for systems that can handle it, yet not for less bassfortunate systems, I am going to try and reproduce the muddiness you hear Mange. To answer your question on the Bass, Mange, yes I have done something to it, I synced it on many places with the kick drum (logic's flex), I am curious how you hear that, cause listening back I still don't hear it myselves (the fact you did shows however I am missing the effect).

I worked on the B2031a's until some months ago when I thought I'd deserved an upgrade...not really I found out as most of the things I had issues with were in the room and speaker placement as I now learn.

Now for the comparisons I did, I was really happy with how that worked out.

I basically set up 3 master busses, 1 for my own mix and mastering tools, and 2 for two other mixes (1 Mange's mix and 1 with Mick Jaggers Wired all night). I gave each track a frequency analyzer and put a level meter on the main output. Now if you put on separate tracks in your daw those mixes just NOT at the same points in time (!) you can then quickly flip between different mixes by just moving your playing cursor. Beats flipping switches and volume knobs for me.

Mange, on your mix, the analyzer shows, in comparison, that you have much energy in the subbass below 30 Hz, I was told (by a friend of mine that's a trained audio engineer who's mixes i very much respect) that unless mixing for clubs with corresponding music types it is best to remove that there bevause it takes energy from the rest of the sound spectrum. On the Bass side furthermore the 30-200 is quite flat whereas in commercial recordings I like there is often a little spike in the 50-100 range where the bass is, in this case I put it (admittedly too much) it around 60 Herz. The mix spikes a little between 350-500 which I flattened out and finally starting 3kHz there is not so much high as I have in mixes I like and like how its put in mine.
I don't recognize having too much reverb in your mix.

Finally I am playing with ToneBoosters plugins and used the TB_Barricades limiter quite heavily, I am impressed by how much you can turn it up without changing the character too much (compared to eg L2), perhaps i am biased by it being a Dutch product

Anyway, thanks for your listening! Looking forward to taking on other mixes.

[mange]

Listened to your mix again... mud might not be the correct word. I now think I know what troubled me. When I solo keys and bass during the chorus they play the same figure. I think that gets lost when you "flex" bass to the bass drum. It sounds to me they don´t play the same figure anymore.

Interesting that you had the same monitors as I have. I don´t have that much of possibilites to reaarrange my room. I´ll give it some thought though and see if I can come up with something.

I too now see that low sub spike in my mix. Funny it slipped through, I used lowcut on everything but the kickdrum. Even the bassplayer is lowcutted as high as 50Hz! hmm, shall have a second look at that. Maybe the reason for the 30Hz peak slipping through was that I tried something for me totally new on the kick. Used one mick for lows and another for highs, seperating them with regular high/low pass filters. I totally agree with your friend. I´ll slap a highpass filter on that kick asap I usually do.

Will lookup the ToneBoosters. Your mix doesn´t sound squashed or limited to me at all. Have you compared it to Slate Digitals FG-X? I have that but not at home where I did this.

Listening to that Jagger track was easier said than done. Will have a peek at local library if I can borrow it from there. Not available from any download store I use!

[mange]

Cleaning out the harddrive. Found that I hadn´t uploaded my last version of this track. This was my first attempt with Slate Digitals FG-X mastering plugin.

Suggestions, feedback and questions are always welcome.