KVR Audio

H-man · Post by **H-man** » Tue Aug 12, 2014 4:14 am

photonic wrote:
Uncle E wrote:Sweet delays on the vocals! I'm absolutely loving what you did with the extra vocals at the end!
Thanx, glad you likte it

Hmmmmm ...Bar set pretty-darn-high already

Great work Photonic

(track notes are good too).

Compyfox · Post by **Compyfox** » Tue Aug 12, 2014 4:33 am

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT

We are extending the KVR Mix Challenge 03 by two more days.

The challenge is now running until Sunday, 17.08.2014 (midnight to 18.08.2014), PDT (Pacific Daylight Time).

Eric offered two days extra to work through the weekend, and to give late adopters a chance to work on the content. A couple of changes will happen in the near future as well, so please keep an eye on the Gossip thread.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:
Once the submission period for MC03 is over, we try something new. Instead of creating a new thread for the voting process, we will edit the first post to direct to the start of the voting process within this thread. We want to see if we can keep the discussion and feedback for each KVR Mix Challenge alive.

The voting will still be handled in hidden form (PM to the Mix Challenge Headmaster this time around).

So the current time frames changed to the following:
17 days mixing and submissions, 3-5 days preparations for voting, 7 days for voting.

Please share the mix challenge through social media (through Twitter, we have the trend #kvrmixchallenge ), your personal mailing lists, blogs, PMs or whatever you prefer.

We still wish you the best of luck.

Summed up:
Challenge now ends in 6 days.

Uncle E · Post by **Uncle E** » Tue Aug 12, 2014 7:47 pm

chaosbringer wrote:Kick- I simply Compressed & EQ'd the low end, bringing out the punch and bass.

Very warm and deep. It definitely suits the genre better than the dry kick. I love this!

The percussion was more or less the same for each - some EQing based on which it was, and a camel crusher on top. I love camel crusher on percussion because the compressor + built in limiter do wonders. They were all passed to the same reverb.

That's interesting. Was that the drum buss? Also, is that what made the snare as aggressive as it is? btw, I noticed some faint delays on the drum buss.

The vocals are where I did the most work

I can tell! Every word is intelligible and I noticed the delays come out more in some sections than others. Am I imagining that?

When the levels were all similar, I ran them through an EQ, pulling up the top end.

That's interesting because I think the vocals sound warmed up in your mix, not brighter. In fact, aside from the snare, the entire mix is very warm. Is there anything on the main buss doing that?

H-man · Post by **H-man** » Wed Aug 13, 2014 1:32 am

Okay, first question (I did warn you

)

Generally, as I suspect that there is no golden rule, is it standard practice to normalize the stems first? I should point out that I don't need them to be loud, it's just that the wave forms are tiny in Stuido One V2 and I find that I have to put markers everywhere so that I know where things come in and drop out etc.

And no, I'm not blind, it's just a workflow thing

EDIT: I might suggest the track with the Claps as an example here as they are come in-and-out throughout the track.

Uncle E · Post by **Uncle E** » Wed Aug 13, 2014 5:22 am

Some people believe there are issues with gain staging and there are some plugins (well, the UAD 33609 is the only one I can think of) that respond differently depending on how hard they are hit. At the same time, I know a lot of people who do it and make great mixes.

Compyfox · Post by **Compyfox** » Wed Aug 13, 2014 12:18 pm

Challenge ends in less than 5 days (4 and 3/4 days to be precise).

H-man · Post by **H-man** » Thu Aug 14, 2014 3:14 am

Uncle E wrote:Some people believe there are issues with gain staging and there are some plugins (well, the UAD 33609 is the only one I can think of) that respond differently depending on how hard they are hit. At the same time, I know a lot of people who do it and make great mixes.

Seems it can be done as long as one is aware of possible consequences. I guess a lot of the better plugins have an input trim (but not necessarily) that can be used to adjust the incoming signal to the preferred range for the plugin.

Studio One V2 has a MixTool and Meter that can be inserted anywhere in the FX chain (and moved by drag-and-drop easily) which solves any problems but also makes the integrated track meter kind of redundant which is not great.

I think I will try it this way and see how it goes

Compyfox · Post by **Compyfox** » Thu Aug 14, 2014 12:24 pm

Since KVR seemed to be down for several hours (SQL database error), I have to do the bump now:
Challenge ends in less than 4 days.

According to internal statistics, the song was requested over 20 times.
So far we only saw 2 submissions.

A couple of shout outs go to
- the JRR shop for also mentioning the challenge in their Newsletter
and
- Bedroom Producer Blog - who also tweeted about it.

wesleyt · Post by **wesleyt** » Thu Aug 14, 2014 6:36 pm

I started my mix last night. It's been crazy at work, and is going to be more so until the end of next week. I will try to have something presentable by Sunday, but I'm not sure I will make it.

Doc Jon · Post by **Doc Jon** » Thu Aug 14, 2014 10:10 pm

Pretty much finished mine, will upload at the weekend

chaosbringer · Post by **chaosbringer** » Fri Aug 15, 2014 2:32 am

Uncle E wrote:*words*

Thanks for the feedback [= I got the extended version uploaded as you messaged me about. Left the original up too.

I'll answer these questions asap, been rather occupied.

nineofkings · Post by **nineofkings** » Fri Aug 15, 2014 2:57 am

Really, really wish I had attempted to get on this earlier. Good luck to the entrants; maybe I'll be on board for next month.

jimmydeer · Post by **jimmydeer** » Fri Aug 15, 2014 10:28 am

My submission:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/5dzijefy2aro5 ... 20Deer.wav

I have a general fx chain I use mostly to different degrees on tracks and busses, and this mix was no exception. It consists of Scheps/Slate VCC, VTM/Satin or Reelbuss, NI Solid EQ/DYN, and NI VC 2a/76. On several tracks I used reverb sends to NI RC24 large hall setting to glue it together a bit and a pod farm delay on lead vocal.

Compyfox · Post by **Compyfox** » Fri Aug 15, 2014 12:19 pm

Challenge ends in less than 3 days.

JimmyDeer:
Could you maybe add some small documentation according to the rules? Thanks.

ChaosBringer:
Sorry - but only your FIRST entry will be judged. See the "rules" and it's consequences. If you messed up (cut too short), you messed up.

chaosbringer · Post by **chaosbringer** » Fri Aug 15, 2014 4:39 pm

Compyfox wrote:ChaosBringer:
Sorry - but only your FIRST entry will be judged. See the "rules" and it's consequences. If you messed up (cut too short), you messed up.

That's fine. It was just a bit of delay I cut off that I didn't notice because I was rushing.

Uncle E wrote: That's interesting. Was that the drum buss? Also, is that what made the snare as aggressive as it is? btw, I noticed some faint delays on the drum buss.

Camel crusher definitely adds to the aggression. I'm sure you can achieve the same thing with a regular compressor, but I absolutely love the simplicity of CC for snares. It seems to bring out exactly what I like in a snare, and yeah, I love absolutely aggressive snares [= I make hardcore/gabber & hard snares are absolutely amazing in the genre (you should hear the snare in the track im working on right now

). As far as the "drum buss" I'm not sure if this is answering correctly, I believe I eq'd & compressed everything individually - the toms, hats, etc. which all shared the same reverb buss. The bass drum was completely separate and I *think* the snare was too (will have to double check). I kind of treat snares like kick drums for aforementioned reasons.

I can tell! Every word is intelligible and I noticed the delays come out more in some sections than others. Am I imagining that?

Well, since there were two separate vocal sections, I put delay on the 'backing' one (the if I get lost & ooh's) after reverb & the main vocals I did the same but drastically less delay. On the reverb though, I believe I did around a 70+ ms pre-delay, so that's likely why the parts that have higher peaks sound like they delay more.

That's interesting because I think the vocals sound warmed up in your mix, not brighter. In fact, aside from the snare, the entire mix is very warm. Is there anything on the main buss doing that?

Ya it does actually sound warm, you're right. Originally what I did was bring up the highs quite a bit, but I ultimately dropped the highs a tad because I felt they were a bit too thin. There is still a high shelf on them however.

The master buss only has an eq & limiter. The EQ is literally just a high cut & low cut, just to cut off any potential "extra" frequencies, below 20hz @48db & above 22khz @48db before going into the limiter, which I just used to bring up the max volume a tad because I gain stage really really low (like -20db on the slider in cubase). I normally dont do this in "mixdown" stage but since i master my own tracks (via software, because I dont make any money off of music haha) I do the mix & master in the same project & its just what I'm used to.

KVR MIX CHALLENGE - MC03 August 2014 - Voting period has ended, Winners announced (pg 17)