First Event ASP8 mix - gimme your input!

Ermz

Ermz

¯\(°_o)/¯
Apr 5, 2002
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Melbourne, Australia
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Hey guys,

Long time since I put anything up here, so here goes.

I just got my new monitors and have started touching up a mix in progress with them. It's an absolutely HELLISH mix, which has been giving me trouble at every stage of the process. What you're about to hear is still somewhat rough, with mis-triggering, non-final levels, generally shit sound & rough mastering, but it's all I can get out of the mix for the time being!

Gimme a heads up on what you think:

http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/285689/failure-12.mp3

Cheers.
 
I'm sort of liking the rawness of it. The only thing that really sticks out for me is the level/ panning of the high hats. Either turn them down or pan them further in, if possible.
Not sure what exactly you're looking for from this mix that makes you so unhappy with it, sounds like it's well on it's way. Everything is pretty clear. Maybe some drums down, leads up action will sort out some balance, but that's about it.
 
Sounds really good. As nebulos says, a nice and clear mix. I might want to add a little more definition to the bassguitar. Right now it's just so muffled out.
I like the song over all, would be nice to hear it with vocals!
 
There is something nasty in the bass's mids that can be heard during picking. The snare might be a bit too loud or too low/lowmid heavy. Otherwise, it sounds pretty nice.

How does working with the new speakers feel? Do you check the mixes on your previous ones?
 
Thanks guys. Totally agreed about the bass! I absolutely cannot get that sucker sitting right... the mids and lows are all over the place. He is a finger player and was playing along to the guitars in most cases, so there's no solid low-end in there! Dynamics all over the place.... I'll try remix it from scratch again.

The current speakers are quite different to my old set. The mids are a lot more prominent and that makes it a bit harder at the start, because I'm so used to mixing scooped. Hard to know what amount of mids go where, but I'm learning! Only had 2 days with em so far...
 
the mix sounds pretty decent here, although i 'm not a huge fan of the guitar sound. I agree about the bass, i also think the low end could come up a bit. Also the overall compression could be dialed back a smidge.
 
Hey Ermz, I really dig the guitars, great mids to 'em (though too little gain IMO) - what amp is this? I agree completely about the bass, btw; sounds like it just needs to be slammed with a comp even more and then just brought down in volume, honestly. The snare has too much snap/air IMO, which makes it sound HIDEOUSLY sampled on any of those fast 16th note runs (I won't say rolls, cuz technically, well, they're not), and I'm not a fan of the attack of the kick; too much thin click and not enough full-bodied smack (and also not much in the low end from what I can tell, though I'm sure it sounds like it on the Events, cuz my experience is they are SERIOUSLY bassy speakers). So yeah, the hi-end on the kick and snare REALLY aren't doing it for me, the bass I feel should be more compressed and then brought down, but I like the guitar tones!
 
Cheers.

The bass actually already has 2 compressors and a limiter on it... Each comp taking off about 10 to 12dB and the limiter doing about 6... It's doing my head in a bit.

I had a feeling you wouldn't dig the drums, Marcus! I don't either TBH, but I sort of locked myself into those sounds with the way the mix shaped up, and since the deadline is approaching I have to stick with em. I suppose when I think about it, there isn't a single element of the raw tracks that I actually do like, so it would figure that I don't like the overall mix much.

But thanks for your impressions. I might see if a more full bodied slate kick works in there. I was sort of trying to get the snare to 'pop' out like it does on Holographic Universe, but may have gone overboard. Bass will get even more crunching... and the guitars... lord knows. The raw sound really wasn't great, and I'm running about 5 EQ plug-ins on it, so it's about at the end of the line!
 
Metaltastic said:
Hey Ermz, I really dig the guitars, great mids to 'em (though too little gain IMO) - what amp is this?
Click to expand...

Don't mention the guitars. Ermz was struck down with "piss-poor DI" syndrome again. :zombie:

They didn't turn out so bad given the quality of the DI's and you using a DI in reverse as a reamp box.
 
Moonlapse said:
Cheers.

The bass actually already has 2 compressors and a limiter on it... Each comp taking off about 10 to 12dB and the limiter doing about 6... It's doing my head in a bit.

I had a feeling you wouldn't dig the drums, Marcus! I don't either TBH, but I sort of locked myself into those sounds with the way the mix shaped up, and since the deadline is approaching I have to stick with em. I suppose when I think about it, there isn't a single element of the raw tracks that I actually do like, so it would figure that I don't like the overall mix much.

But thanks for your impressions. I might see if a more full bodied slate kick works in there. I was sort of trying to get the snare to 'pop' out like it does on Holographic Universe, but may have gone overboard. Bass will get even more crunching... and the guitars... lord knows. The raw sound really wasn't great, and I'm running about 5 EQ plug-ins on it, so it's about at the end of the line!
Click to expand...

Haha, no prob. man - honestly, something about the Holographic Universe snare has always driven me crazy, but more because I feel it has a really annoying "GONG" from too much mids, so I wouldn't say this one is particularly similar to it (I find this too snappy). One of my favorite snares is on "The Great Cold Distance," personally, just for reference of what I like. Do you really think the mix would fall apart that much if you just switched samples? Or at least the kick sample? And yeah, the ends justified the means with the guitars, cuz I dig 'em!

And yeah, I figured you already had the bass pretty smashed - honestly, I'd just drop the volume and be done with it!
 
It is indeed Envenomed, Dan.

@Marcus: Yeah I recall you mentioning TGCD as one of your top reference mixes a while back. I was listening to it today in the car on the way to work and I don't think it's possible to get a snare that natural from this mix. Due to the quality of drums and the methods used to track them, I essentially had to sample replace every drum 80 to 100%... so any dynamics that are going to exist will need to be automated! All the Slate snares are way too scooped and snappy to get the TGCD sound, and I don't have many others on hand to try. Unfortunately the band have set a deadline and I'm rapidly running out of time. Need to find the time to tune up all the vox by hand, as well as trigger all the tom fills artificially. Needless to say, this hasn't been one of my favourite mixes. One thing you realize when you work with enough bands is that you simply can't add the magic... the mix is either gonna happen or it's not. Otherwise you'll be pushing shit up a hill for months to get something remotely presentable.

In other news, I spent the day recording bass through an API 512c, into a Urei 1176 (yes, Urei, not UA) into an Apogee Rosetta. I'll be curious to hear how that compares to what I've been dealing with here. On top of that, I spent 2 weekends tracking rhythm guitar DIs into the Red Eye (passive PUs), into an Amek 9098, into aforementioned Rosetta. I'd be curious to hear how the quality of the guitar DIs holds up. Worth noting that pickups in both cases were shitty passives (sigh... there's always something). But will be nice to hear how much preamp and converter quality affects the whole deal.
 
Yeah man, keep us posted without a doubt! And I was talking more about the general sound (technically eq curve, I guess, or timbre) of the TGCD snare, but I'm not surprised the Slate stuff doesn't have anything that can hack it. Oh well, still sounding bitchin' dude, and I can totally believe there are times where there's just nothing you can do to get it perfect in the mix, so my sympathies!

And to revise onomatopoeia about the "Holographic Universe" snare, I would say it has a really annoying middy "dunk" (rather than the "gong" I mentioned above :D)
 
Hehe. I actually loved aforementioned 'dunk'. The snare sounded 'bouncy' for lack of better description. When they have that sort of mid-bass element and a nice crack to them they tend to sound really great in a mix, IMO. The Clayman snare is sort of along the same track.

I'll try to get some of those DIs up here for a few people to play with. The songs aren't what anybody is going to go crazy over (can you say Man'o'War fandom?) but they should at the very least be relatively high quality.
 
Given that this will be for Envenomed, I don't think you should be too worried about the timbre of things, just get the balance. Not meaning that in a negative way, just that they seem to be a band who would prefer the raw side of production anyway, from what I've gathered.
 
Well whatever it is that they'd prefer, I'm still gonna give it my best effort. I'm constantly amazed at how different guitar tones sound on these monitors... so hard to get used to!

Anyway, here's the most recent revision of the mix: http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/285689/failure-17.mp3

Close to finished. Just needs all the automation and shit done and maybe one last hack away at the bass.. though I'd really rather leave that to a mastering engineer at this stage!
 
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