Gothic/doom-death mix - not happy with it, would like suggestions

[TheDarkProject]

Old one: http://soundcloud.com/kylotan/the-path-rough-master-march
Latest, as of March 4th: http://soundcloud.com/kylotan/the-path-rough-master-march-1

Pretty much everything here is in-the-box - drums from SD2, guitars from amp sims (Anvil and TSE X50 through Awesometime impulse for rhythm, Poulin HyBrit through Guitarhacks Finalv2 impulse for most lead parts, with Le456 and SoloC for the 2 mini-solos to make them stand out a little), bass via TSE BOD. Master bus has a bit of mild compression and saturation on the way in, then a multiband compressor, hi and low pass, and finally a limiter for an extra 3dB (although that's not producing much gain reduction for most of the song).

I had real trouble with the bass, the bassist's fingerstyle playing resulting in sporadic top-end clanking that was too pronounced and irregular to sit nicely in the mix, so I pretty much EQed out the entire high mids and top end, tried to add some mids back in with the BOD, but mostly just left the bass to fill out the bottom.

I'm also not happy with the SD2 overheads - it seems hard to get a compromise where the hats are loud enough without the crashes being overbearing. Should I just push the hats up in the OH mic and bring the OH down a little overall, or is there something more surgical I should try?

I'd appreciate any general feedback and suggestions; this is nowhere near as punchy as most of the mixes I hear on these forums but I don't know how much of that is the mix and how much is the style of music.

 

[DanLights]

link not working, dude.

 

[TheDarkProject]

Typical - it says that "only people with the link can listen to it", so I give out the link... and no, that's not enough. It's set as public now, so it should be there if anybody wants to take a listen.

 

[DanLights]

Not bad dude, I like it! I think the snare doesn´t fill well though, sounds buried and punchless, at least at first listen. I like the song, and the rest sounds pretty good IMO

 

[Headof75]

Yeah, the material sounds good.
Mixwise I think you've tended to favour the low mids a little too much in each sound, so your snare thumps, but doesn't crack enough, your guitars sound a little bit dull and the bass is a little bit too prevalent. I think that's the key to a more balanced sound.

 

[TheDarkProject]

Interestingly the very last thing I did before bouncing this mix was reduce the snare by about 3dB as I thought it was too loud before. Maybe just reducing the mids would have been enough.

I'll see if I can take a few of the low mids out and restore any missing higher frequencies. Possibly tweak the rhythm guitar tone a little, although I was trying to leave high frequency space for the lead mostly.

 

[TheDarkProject]

Ok, I removed the eq cut I had on the upper mids/low highs for the rhythms, pushed the bass down 1 dB, cut a bit more of the mids from the snare and pushed it up 2dB, and pushed the limiter 3dB harder.

I'm still not happy with the snare though - still doesn't seem punchy enough and I don't know why. Perhaps because I rely too much on the parallel compressed track which has less dynamics?

New version:
http://soundcloud.com/kylotan/the-path-rough-master-march-1

 

[TheDarkProject]

Anybody who's interested in how this turned out can have a listen up on our Bandcamp page: http://twilightsembrace.bandcamp.com/

 

[Terminus]

Is there reverb on the rhythm guitars- imo that needs to go. I think you may have added too much reverb to the individual elements here, which might be contributing to the lack of punch on certain elements. The drums need to be louder in relation to the other instruments. The eq on the individual instruments actually sounds fairly balanced and well done to me.

 

[everybody's x]

I think if you slow the attack on the snare comp you got a pretty good mix. bring out the crack. I like the deep snare tone it just needs to be like 2db over everything

 

[TheDarkProject]

Terminus - nope, have never put reverb on any rhythm guitars. There's reverb on the lead or clean guitar, vocals, and the snare drum. Interesting that you think the drums need to be louder because some feedback I got suggested the drums were too loud.

everybody's x - the snare is parallel compressed so the attack length isn't really affecting the transient. Perhaps I just needed to make the uncompressed track louder relative to the compressed one. I did actually do that, between the 2nd mix in the first post and the final mix on Bandcamp, but maybe it wasn't enough.

 

[everybody's x]

Ah, my mistake I didn't see /hear the bandcamp link.