KVR MIX CHALLENGE - MC13 August 2015 - Winners announced

[polygonsheep]

Hi,
this is my first contest entry so I hope this is everything needed.
https://soundcloud.com/polygonsheep/aud ... lygonsheep
https://www.dropbox.com/s/w1crkpu0do7lq ... p.wav?dl=0

Overview of my mixing
drums - added some eq & compression (NI Solid Bus Comp, Pro-Q)
piano, synth, violin - just some light eq
bass - eq (logic & Pro-Q), comp (solid dynamics), reamped with EZMix GuitarGods
Guitar 1 (left & right) - eq, comp, noise gate, reamped with BIAS, panned hard left/right
Guitar 2 (left & right) - eq, comp, noise gate, reamped with EZMix
all rhythm guitars sent to a bus with compression, eq, reverb (Uhbik-a)
Wah guitar - reamped with BIAS, eq, crywah from Guitar Rig 5, comp, reverb
Lead guitar - reamped with EZMix, comp, eq, reverb, noise gate

Output bus - basic eq, comp.

I didn't do any mastering as this said is was a mixing contest only and not to pre-master. So my volumes are pretty low, I hope they jive with the contest rules.

As a side note, I found there were more than 2 tracks needing adjustment regarding starting offsets. Using the drums as the baseline, almost all the other tracks where offset, 1 more than the others. I used the source track to place everything. I did do the time/tempo changes as well, but the tempo list provided went off the rails around the 2:39 mark.

Anyway, cool song.

edit: Sorry forgot to say I used Logic Pro X for this.

[audiosupernova]

Hi All.
Here is my effort, i hope you'll enjoy it.

https://soundcloud.com/sworduigi/kvr-mc ... -elsewhere


Flac file here:
http://www71.zippyshare.com/v/wNNNRL6L/file.html

Nice mix Sworduigi, but FYI: the drum track is off beat a bit. Maybe just tweak and rerender, I'd love to hear it again once fixed.

[audiosupernova]

...the tempo list provided went off the rails around the 2:39 mark.

Yeah, that's what I was afraid of. One of those "oh god I hope this is right" when trying to write it all down after the fact. I was wary of providing it just because it changes often, and switches between half time and cut time variants of time signatures. It's one of those things were I just quit trying to keep track during the writing process. Great job on the mix by the way!

[audiosupernova]

Here is my mix from this challanging track.

Sounds great photonic, awesome job.

[Sworduigi]

Nice mix Sworduigi, but FYI: the drum track is off beat a bit. Maybe just tweak and rerender, I'd love to hear it again once fixed.

Shame on me!
I've done this thing a little too much on the fly, i'll fix it asap

[Compyfox]

Yeah, that's what I was afraid of. One of those "oh god I hope this is right" when trying to write it all down after the fact. I was wary of providing it just because it changes often, and switches between half time and cut time variants of time signatures. It's one of those things were I just quit trying to keep track during the writing process.

In my case, I ignored the time signature but only stuck to the BPM changes.

Additional to that, the turned off "Musical Mode" (Time Stretching according to BPM value) in Cubase, and (nearly) all tracks lined up perfectly.



I hope to file my track by Friday night. But no guarantee that I can make it in time.


Oh and... a bit more than 2,5 days left to mix.
Good luck to everyone still.

[Compyfox]

Friendly reminder:
Less than 48 hours left to mix.


Please submit your track on time!

[Kolyev]

Musical mode fixed the timing issues in Cubase (thanks for the hint Compyfox, although I could have thought of that myself ).
Nevertheless, I like prog metal and enjoyed this mix challenge. Great track!

Anyway here is my mix:

mp3:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ripn2ckshsc2r ... v.mp3?dl=0

wave:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/1rwgjtbuvgtx3 ... v.wav?dl=0

EQing was used on all channels, so I won't mention that in the further description.
Drums:
a little compression here and there to shape the sound. Snare and Toms got treated with a plate reverb. A bit of glue compression on the group channel.

Bass:
I ran the bass through Cubase' VST Bass amp, compressed with T-Racks vintage compressor. Additionally the bass was distorted in parallel on the mids and highs to make it cut through the mix better using Plug & Mix British Tone. BAss was also sidechained to the kick slightly.

Guitars:
All guitars were Reamped using amplitube (except for wah pedal guitar which was treated with guitar rig 5).

Rhythm guitars were compressed on the low end/low mids (80 - 250 Hz) using a multiband compressor with similar settings to the Andy Sneap C4 preset.

I went for a cleaner tone for the wah pedal guitar as I thought it would further enhance the contrast between the light and heavy parts.

Piano:
also treatment with multiband compression to tame the low end/low mids. Also a bit of saturation was applied.

Synth:
Just EQed and a sidechain compressed to the kick a little.

Violin:
a touch of saturation added

Steinberg Revelation was used as reverb.

A lot of small volume automation was applied to different channels for emphasis of the arrangement.

[Davias]

I can't help you with Sonar, and to be honest... I've gotten a lot(!) of WAV files in recent months with tempo information (which is no issue to turn off in Cubase, mind you).

But a quick Google search hinted at a feature called "AudioSnap" in Sonar X?

In Ableton Live it's called "Warp", in Logic it goes via Options > Tempo > Remove Tempo (at least Logic 9), in Reaper it's "set track timebase", for Studio One I can recommend to read the manual on TimeStretching.

I do see a problem with this - but I can't offer you folks an immediate fix as I am not using these hosts. And I'm sure this will come up in the future again - tracks with bpm values in the WAV file, but fluctuating in speed throughout the track. Hosts these days should be able to handle that (turn it off globally that is)!

Look at the spectrum, noise floor is appearant at around 20khz on the Impact Soundworks samples. It's like violet color noise too, not good. I used lowpass on every track to bandlimit. The Slate samples were bandlimited already, very well also.

I did take a closer look yesterday just to be sure. I used MBandpass with up to 96dB/Oct and to be honest... cutting away the "high frequencies" down to 12kHz did not solve the noise issues by itself. If you raise the input gain of each channel, you still have the 16bit noise floor (there goes another hint!).




EDIT:
4 days left to mix.

Thanks for trying anyway ^^ Finally I loaded the tracks into another DAW that handles well (and easily) tempo embedded, and I render them to new wav files without tempo. After that I used these new files to put inside Sonar, just had to find the good starting position (seems that the drums wavs starts a bit earlier than the rest. I'm still not sure with the Guitar 2 (#1 & #2) position but the rest seems in sync now...

Now I amped (not always very good, I'm more electro than rock guy, but like that I learn my free amps, will be useful to make dnb and dubstep), I synchronized, I did the drums, the bass, I just have to mix what's left and be careful of automation (2 days left !! I have to suspend every other tasks I'm doing if I want to release my mix on time)

[Compyfox]

I don't think that the drums need a shift.
But please double check with the demo mix in MP3 form, just to be sure..


1,5 days left to mix, people!

[Davias]

I don't think that the drums need a shift.
But please double check with the demo mix in MP3 form, just to be sure..


1,5 days left to mix, people!

I meant that I let the drums at their original position, and shifted everything else forward (Instruments waves starting after the drums waves files start), except rhythm guitars 1 and 2 that I let in place with the drums. Sorry for the bad english

comparing with the demo mp3 I have this order : drums and rhythm guitars 2 > demo mp3 (with a short silence before music begins) > all the others tracks, in order to have everything in sync.

[Compyfox]

That's it folks, we're within the final 24 hours.


Please submit your mix today. The submission period ends with my next announcement post.
(pst - this is an announcement post!)

[vasdim]

Hi all,
this is my attempt to mix:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/700 ... VasDim.mp3
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/700 ... VasDim.wav

Good luck to all.
VasDim

[Compyfox]

12 hours left and merely 6 participants.

The challenge isn't that hard now, is it? Can we exceed 10 participants at bar minimum?

[audiosupernova]

Hi all,
this is my attempt to mix:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/700 ... VasDim.mp3
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/700 ... VasDim.wav

Good luck to all.
VasDim

FYI vasdim: the tracks are misaligned in your mix.