KVR Audio

photonic · Post by **photonic** » Wed Jun 03, 2015 6:00 am

Hi Ben,

Excellent review! It is very helpfull and I am glad that my mix meeds your taste in general.
Looking forward to your decision!

Kolyev · Post by **Kolyev** » Wed Jun 03, 2015 7:20 am

Hi Ben,
Thank you for the detailled comments! Really appreciate the feedback. You are absolutely right, I put a lot of time into the drums mix and then unfortunately ran out of time a bit on the guitars.

H-man · Post by **H-man** » Wed Jun 03, 2015 7:43 am

Hmmm, I have given this a lot of thought and have come up with the following:

Round two consisting of Mix Gurus versus Guitar Gods versus Creative trail-blazers.

These are:

Jim Kennedy
Photonic
Davias
MixedMind
Prianha81
DimVas

My idea is that the winner will be the one who can combine the best elements from each of these six tracks. Please refer to my mini-reviews or even PM with any questions you might have. Compy are we good to go?

Compyfox · Post by **Compyfox** » Wed Jun 03, 2015 2:46 pm

Sure we are.

The rules are known and simple. The upper mentioned candidates now have time until Sunday, 07-JUN-2015 11:59pm PDT (5 days from now) to overhaul their mixes and file their second mix round submissions in here.

After that, we go into another short evaluation period and wait for the winners podium announcement.

Congrats to all participants so far.
And once more a "good luck everyone".

piranha81 · Post by **piranha81** » Fri Jun 05, 2015 10:13 am

Yeah, I really enjoy an expressive, vocal use of the wah, in the classic Michael Schenker flavour.
Thanks for the in depht feedback H-man, I'll do my best to enhance the mix

mixedmind · Post by **mixedmind** » Sat Jun 06, 2015 10:06 am

Hello second round ... here I come:

https://soundcloud.com/dilutedmind/h-ma ... nd/s-ZICcw

I re-worked the snare sound where I cut the lows too careless. Now it should sit lower and better in the mix. I polished a little bit the overall sound but still kept it as a dense mix.
And some subtle automation and some not so subtle FX were added.

cheers,
mixed.mind

photonic · Post by **photonic** » Sun Jun 07, 2015 1:56 pm

Hi, here is my mix for the second round.

WAV: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/717 ... %20rd2.wav
MP3: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/717 ... %20rd2.mp3

Changes to the first round to get a more realistic guitar sound:
For the ROCK AXE I used the Emissary amp simulation and NadIR for speaker simulation.
For the TREMOLO I used Boogex from Voxengo.
For the CHUGGA I used TSE808.

The rest got some minor tweaks in EQ and volume automation. Volume of Tremolo is now increased.

jhkennedy5 · Post by **jhkennedy5** » Sun Jun 07, 2015 3:29 pm

Here is my second round mix:

WAV: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/896 ... ennedy.wav
MP3: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/896 ... ennedy.mp3

Just tried to delicately reduce some of the crispy highs.

vasdim · Post by **vasdim** » Sun Jun 07, 2015 3:51 pm

Hi, this is my re-worked track:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/700 ... nd%202.mp3
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/700 ... nd%202.wav

Good luck
VasDim

Compyfox · Post by **Compyfox** » Sun Jun 07, 2015 5:32 pm

A bit more than 12 hours remaining for Mix Round 2.
Please get your entries sorted.

piranha81 · Post by **piranha81** » Sun Jun 07, 2015 10:35 pm

For round two I tried to implemente the unhancements suggested by H-man, like avoiding kick and bass to fight for space, some variety to tremelo guitar sounds (no wah on the whole track), etc. and some other I've found like enhancing snare and hi-hat, some eq's, levels and automation.
Some other players guitar sounds where nice, but I should have done a completely new mix, and mine are good too

Wav:
https://soundcloud.com/roberto-ortenzi/ ... iranha81-1
Mp3:
https://soundcloud.com/roberto-ortenzi/ ... iranha81-2

Davias · Post by **Davias** » Mon Jun 08, 2015 3:07 am

Here is my attempt for the 2nd round :

FLAC - https://www.dropbox.com/s/w5xmfnml07elz ... .flac?dl=0
MP3 - https://www.dropbox.com/s/qirmm7b9f09ke ... 9.mp3?dl=0

Thanks to H-Man for the detailed review and to select me for the 2nd round ! I feel very honored. I tried to follow his recommendations for improving the mix by bringing back some lost elements that were buried in the front, and to overall more balance and soften the mix to be less brittle (and I hope more clear) like the other mixes. I got a plethora of bugs and other problems so I couldn't go into details as much as I wanted for some parts like the main distorded guitar that I wanted to improve or the some parts of the bass...

Here we go for the long details about my mix (sorry for not posting it before) :
- On each track : tube console emulation
-Kick : Multiband gating > EQ > Tube >1176 >Another tube > EQ > Clipper
- Snare Lo : Lo pass
- Snare Mid : Hi pass
- Each Snare Track : dynamic hi - mid - lo EQs
- Snares Buss : Monoizer > dynamic QS > Multiband gating > EQ > EQ > EQ > Multiband dynamics > Transient shaper > saturation + dynamics > EQ > Transient shaper > Reverb > Multiband limiter > Clipper > Limiter
- Hi Hats tight : EQ
- Hi Hat close : EQ > Limiter
- Crash ride : Comb filter > Ring Modulator > Plate reverb > EQ > Mid side > Harmonic enhancer > Pitch Shifter > Tilt EQ > Limiter
- Deep Cymbal : EQ
- Deep Bass 1 : EQ
- Deep Bass 2 : EQ > Tube EQ > EQ
- Bass Real : EQ > Saturation
- Dirty Bass Synth : Monoizer > EQ > EQ > Tilt EQ > Harmonic enhancer > EQ
- Chugga : Multiband distortion > Steroizer > Monoizer > EQ > Tilt EQ > Reverb > EQ > Clipper
- Lead wChorus : Harmonic enhancer
- Rock guit 1 : EQ
- Rock guit 2 : Guitar Amp Sim > EQ > Dynamic EQ > Clipper
- Tremolo Pick Click : Monoizer > EQ
- Tremolo Pick Loose : Stereoizer > Monoizer > Tape > EQ > Limiter
- Tremolo Pick Tight : EQ
- Mo Chung : Distortion > EQ
and a EQ somewhere on the intro sounds...

On each buss a Neve console bus emulation.
- Drum Buss : FET compressor > Tape > Limiter
- Bass Buss : Multiband compression and sidechained by the kick
- Guitar Buss : Hi pass > Rectifier > softener > limiter
- Synth buss : Hi pass > Limiter
- All music buss : Softener > Saturator and sidechained by the snare and the kick
- Mix buss : EQ room correction > TDR Kotelnikok > Amp emulation > Freq cleaning.

Again a good luck to everybody !

Now I will go sleep and gather forces for the next challenge

Cheers.

Compyfox · Post by **Compyfox** » Mon Jun 08, 2015 3:44 am

Looks like all entries for Mix Round 2 are in, let's switch to "evaluation mode" again.

Good luck to all participants.
And if you want to get your mind off of things, MC11 is still in full swing.

H-man · Post by **H-man** » Mon Jun 08, 2015 9:50 pm

Hi all,

Just saw this. Will start evaluating now

. Stay tuned...

H-man · Post by **H-man** » Wed Jun 10, 2015 1:13 am

Oh man ....sucks to be me

I had not anticipated that this judging process would keep me awake in the middle of the night but it did

This was difficult.

First, let me say that I thought all entrants responded well to the mini-reviews and that the second round tracks were all improvements on the first round so a big thanks to everyone for diving back in there and working things out.

Second, I thought all tracks were very good and speak honestly when I say that I was getting chills yesterday when listening ...I had everything cranked up to the point where I wore out my ears and I had to take a few hours break

It seems that of all the six tracks, each one had an element or section that was the best of the bunch for that part.

So how to decide? In the end I went for consistency. This is a mix challenge so the three that I have chosen are the three that I think could be sent off to mastering without any further work. These are:

1. Jim Kennedy - Just nailed the "punch" all the way through.

2. Photonic - Great mix and really "brought it" with the guitars in round two.

3. Pirahna81 - My favourite of the guitar/creative entries. It's a bit wild in a couple of places which prevented me from scoring it higher but the combination of guitar tones/fx, mix and kick-ass drums won through.

Thanks heaps to VasDim, Davias and MixedMind as well. Any of these tracks could have taken spots in the top three based on tones, drive and character and I would quite happily work with any of the entrants from the top 6 based on the submissions from this competition.

Thanks again and see you around,

BH

KVR MIX CHALLENGE - MC10 May 2015 - Winners announced