KVR Audio

Skala · Post by **Skala** » Tue Sep 09, 2014 8:07 pm

Hi,
A first time participant here. I am not an audio engineer or a professional in the field of music.

The band sounds a little rough, but I have not corrected timing or pitch, as I think the performance suits this musical style.

Bass: ran it through a bass amp sim and a cab.
Drums: mixed the room and OH equally loud, cleared the mids and hi-shelved around 10-12 Khz; added the close mics (snare, kick, toms) for punch without EQ. No compression.
Clean guitar and organ - pushed them to the opposite stereo sides, used a lot of the room sound. A little cut at 1 Khz on the organ to push it further back.
Distorted guitar - low- and hi-passed, used a very short delay for taming the distortion, used a lot of the room mic.
Horns: smoothed out the highs, used a short delay.
Vocals: little compression on the lead vocals, EQ tilt to raise the highs, a short delay to create some space.
I sent different amounts of signal from the individual tracks to a reverb bus (bright ambiance), but still kept the mix pretty dry and raw.
I'll be happy to receive some critique!

https://soundcloud.com/skala2014/knatte ... mc04-skala
https://soundcloud.com/skala2014/knatte ... -skala-mp3

No_Use · Post by **No_Use** » Tue Sep 09, 2014 8:24 pm

photonic wrote:
Claps – Low cut below 250 Hz and 5.5dB boost at 6kHz. A good amount of the drum reverb and some longer reverb, which I made for the pads.

Claps ? Where did you find claps in these stems ?

camsr · Post by **camsr** » Wed Sep 10, 2014 4:24 am

What mics were used for the vocals?

photonic · Post by **photonic** » Wed Sep 10, 2014 5:57 am

No_Use wrote:
photonic wrote:
Claps – Low cut below 250 Hz and 5.5dB boost at 6kHz. A good amount of the drum reverb and some longer reverb, which I made for the pads.
Claps ? Where did you find claps in these stems ?

OOOPS

That happens when you use the old document from MC03 as a template. I removed this leftover.
Thanx for this hint

No_Use · Post by **No_Use** » Wed Sep 10, 2014 12:56 pm

camsr wrote:What mics were used for the vocals?

Studio Projects C1 -> Studio Projects VTB1 -> MOTU 828mk2

Pulse Width Modulation · Wed Sep 10, 2014 11:21 pm

I'm blaming Photonic for this one!

I was minding my business at the One Synth Challenge thread, when he happened to casually mention the Mix Challenge! I've been missing out on this one, and it looks like a blast-and-a-half! I know I may not have that many days to put together a mix, but it's irresistible! I'll see if I can get an entry out, along with my OSC entry this month. Thanks Manfred!

Compyfox · Post by **Compyfox** » Thu Sep 11, 2014 12:14 am

Well, you still got full 11 days to participate.

Actually, I recently saw a jump of followers in my account as well (those that don't know, we have a Twitter trend called #kvrmixchallenge ). So thanks to those people that did word-of-mouth advertising. New participants are always welcome.

Just one request. please read the "Rules and Guidelines" thread first so that there will be no misunderstandings in the end.
http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic ... 2&t=415154

But most importantly:
Have fun.

photonic · Post by **photonic** » Thu Sep 11, 2014 5:58 am

Pulse Width Modulation wrote:I'm blaming Photonic for this one! I was minding my business at the One Synth Challenge thread, when he happened to casually mention the Mix Challenge! I've been missing out on this one, and it looks like a blast-and-a-half! I know I may not have that many days to put together a mix, but it's irresistible! I'll see if I can get an entry out, along with my OSC entry this month. Thanks Manfred!

Hi PWM!
Glad to see your here in this MC.

I am sure that you can do a decent mix till the deadline.

tgraph · Post by **tgraph** » Thu Sep 11, 2014 2:17 pm

Post by camsr ~ 'Your mix is entirely over-limited and heavily compressed. Think of it like flying in the dark, you have some instruments but really can't see where you (the mastered track) are going.'

Since I don't know you and you don't know me, and I can't find any mixes posted by you to put your comment into context, I have a question: Do you consider the track by photonic a properly balanced mix, in the sense that he's possibly not flying blind and the mix has a more clear intention?

I posted another take on the mix on my soundcloud site if anyone has an interest in the changes I've made to my original.

camsr · Post by **camsr** » Thu Sep 11, 2014 11:05 pm

Okay maybe I was wrong, listening to it the first time sounded limited. I think whatever is happening on the hihat makes it sound like a limiter pumping. The idea is to mix like the track will be mastered, but it's not mastered yet! I know this a vague, but the less processes happening on the master bus would allow a mastering to do the same, or more.

erikmichael · Post by **erikmichael** » Sat Sep 13, 2014 3:18 pm

Hey guys! Here is my submission! Below is a little explanation of how I mixed it in Ableton Live.

WAV: https://soundcloud.com/wavvepilot/thekn ... el/s-vbbH3

MP3 Version. https://soundcloud.com/wavvepilot/thekn ... p3/s-K8rOv

My overall approach was to keep things simple and give the song a real sense of space and performance. I started with the drums and bass, mostly applying subtractive eq to open up the lows and the highs. I used Waves GTR on the bass to give it a bit more body. I side chain compressed the bass to the kick and then sent the drums and bass to a bus where I applied some slight multi band compression using Wave's C4.

On the vocals, I kept the processing to a minimum. I used Rcompressor to give them more presence, and used Ableton's built in EQ to shelve off some of the highs and lows. I had the vocals going to a few sends which really brought them to life. A room reverb, mostly consisting of early reflections to gel them and a longer convolution reverb by Waves, the IR-L. I chose a 'cafe' space which I felt was really well suited for this type of music, and placed the whole mix inside this performance space.

For the horns and guitar, again I did subtractive eqing and panning to give them some space. I used the PS-22 on the guitar to give it some more width. I sent these as well to the reverbs mentioned above, which really helped blend them in.

I applied some tape saturation and harmonic excitation via a bus, which added some top end excitement to the mix.

Lastly, I used volume automation on to bring out the vocals when necessary, and also on the horn sections to bring them to the foreground when they soloed!

Cheers!

Erik

satYatunes · Post by **satYatunes** » Sat Sep 13, 2014 10:26 pm

tgraph wrote:nevermind to all of the above.. best of luck to you all in your endeavours. I seem to be in the wrong place.

Hey tgraph, don't give up. The main purpose of this contest is to learn from each other. The simple rule in layman's term is "Individual channels should be under -6 dBFS and sum/group channels -3 dBFS". There is no limit on which plugins you can use. Do note that all entries will be volume normalized before the voting phase. The tracks with pre-master thrown in will be impacted adversely in normalization process, hence it is up to you to ensure that your track meets all the requirements. If I remember correctly you mentioned in your post that you don't look at numbers. Well, it's good to use your ears but statistics do help. Consider it another step to ensure things are right

. If you have any question please ask. We are here to help. Please take a look at your mix again. We don't encourage entrants to resubmit but as it's your first time we can give you another chance.

satYatunes · Post by **satYatunes** » Sat Sep 13, 2014 10:37 pm

@erikmichael - Welcome to Mixing Challenge. Just listened to your entry. Crisp, clear and well balanced. Horns sound little harsh to me though. Male vocal is very clear in the second part than the first (starts around 1:00ish). Could be volume automation thing. 1:00 to 1:32 is busy section of the song so I guess would be tricky to tame. Reverb level is perfect. I am always curious as to which plugin people use and how they use it. Which saturation plugin did you use?

satYatunes · Post by **satYatunes** » Sat Sep 13, 2014 10:56 pm

@skala - Welcome to mixing challenge. Smart decision on panning. However, it would have been better if the horns remain at center when soloed. Kick drum and Guitar could have used a bit more eqing. In fact whole Rhythm and Guitar part could use a bit more energy. Vocal parts could use a bit more volume during chorus. I noticed you specifically kept the mix raw and dry. Any particular reason? A tiny bit of reverb wouldn't harm. That's all my opinion. Like you, neither am an audio engineer nor a professional so feel free to disagree

. I hope you had fun. Good luck.

Skala · Post by **Skala** » Sun Sep 14, 2014 8:25 am

@satYatunes

Thank you for your critique! Of course, I do not disagree and will try to do better the next time, if I participate.

I noticed you specifically kept the mix raw and dry. Any particular reason?

I did not feel the need for more reverb. When I heard the song, I felt it had to be mixed raw and somewhat lo-fi. My logic is that during mastering the engineer would definitely bring up the highs according to modern standards - this should improve the presence of the vocals - and work with some mastering compression and limiting to add a little more energy for radio play.

Thanks

KVR MIX CHALLENGE - MC04 September 2014 - Winners announced.