Mixing Challenge No'5

PolarityMan

would def interest me, i did some with both drumagog and reagate for this mix  but I think my process was...sub optimal...to say the least

poopot

WiresDreamDisasters said:

paulmapp8306 said:

Ive never in my life augmented mixes with samples - to be honest I wouldnt have a clue how   I guess learning these tricks will help my mixes when I cant bring something through naturally (the bass in my mix in particular). 

Slightly off-topic, but would a video on this topic interest you and others?

Yep

Branshen

Stuckfast said:

So... having heard all the entries, I got quite interested in the challenge of mixing this track, and I had a long flight with nothing to read, so I thought I'd have a stab at it. If anyone can face listening to yet another mix, mine's here:

https://soundcloud.com/the_unequal_struggle/disconnect-the-dots-stuckfasts-mix 

Mainly I was curious to see whether I could get a good drum sound without using replacement samples. The raw drum tracks have a few issues that make them hard to mix, but sample replacement always feels like a bit of a crutch to me, though I guess it is part of the sound of modern metal in some ways.

There's more limiting on this than I would normally use but I thought it'd be a better comparison if it matched the release version in level.

superb clarity on the track overall and yet, it still sounds huge. 

Great work on the cymbals and making the snare really pokey. How did you manage to clean up the drums so well?

By the way, did you low pass the vocals to get rid of extraneous high end? I'm currently focusing on vocal processing and am thinking that this is the best way to tame harsh vocals and get rid of unnecessary breathiness, i.e. low pass everything below 10k. 

Stuckfast

Thanks Branshen,

Here's one of the issues with the drums that I noticed. If you look at this screen grab:

https://ibb.co/5kx12zV

You can see that there's something a bit odd about the top snare track. It looks as though it's been either accidentally shifted to the right, recorded through something that introduces delay, or somehow had the front of each hit cut off. The waveforms in the top and bottom snare mics should line up fairly closely, and be slightly ahead of the snare hits in the overheads. Instead the top snare waveform actually arrives later than it does in the overheads and way after it appears in the bottom snare track.

So it's actually possible to make quite a difference to the sound of the drum tracks just by paying attention to time alignment and polarity.

You're dead right that the original vocal is harsh (and over compressed at source) and I did do a bunch of stuff to mitigate that. I think low-passing is a bit drastic, though -- I think I used a combination of multi-band compression, tape sim and the whizzy Oeksound Spiff plug-in.

Branshen

Stuckfast said:

Thanks Branshen,

Here's one of the issues with the drums that I noticed. If you look at this screen grab:

https://ibb.co/5kx12zV

You can see that there's something a bit odd about the top snare track. It looks as though it's been either accidentally shifted to the right, recorded through something that introduces delay, or somehow had the front of each hit cut off. The waveforms in the top and bottom snare mics should line up fairly closely, and be slightly ahead of the snare hits in the overheads. Instead the top snare waveform actually arrives later than it does in the overheads and way after it appears in the bottom snare track.

So it's actually possible to make quite a difference to the sound of the drum tracks just by paying attention to time alignment and polarity.

You're dead right that the original vocal is harsh (and over compressed at source) and I did do a bunch of stuff to mitigate that. I think low-passing is a bit drastic, though -- I think I used a combination of multi-band compression, tape sim and the whizzy Oeksound Spiff plug-in.

Right! That's some in depth analysis of the stems. I'm amazed that anyone could notice that. I guess that's the difference between a normal and a trained ear.

And nice one with the tape sim.. I only think of using a tape plugin when wanting to use it for noticeable tape effects but that does sound like a great use.

PolarityMan

Hmmm I might have fucked that up when I did the editing.......oops