Rate my metal mix before it gets mastered by Jens Bogren

[AEL89]

Hey dudes.

Just finished a few tracks of a metal album I'm mixing. Its going to be mastered by Jens Bogren later this month (I'm actually pretty nervous about it!) so let me know your thoughts so I don't come across as a rookie to him. Its just going through my simple mastering chain at the moment (compressor, limiter)

There's still a ton of automation needed (tom fills and vocals mainly) and I haven't touched the clean vocals yet... but here it is:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1041607/BL_The Struggle_V1.wav

I'm not too big on metal but the song is pretty cool too so I'd recommend spinning the whole track

EDIT:

V2: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1041607/BL_The Struggle_V2.mp3

 

[AEL89]

Sunday bump

 

[AEL89]

Bump!

V2:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1041607/BL_The Struggle_V2.mp3

 

[Ermz]

That's an awesome improvement, mate. I take it those setting tweaks helped open everything up a bit more? Sounds much more solid on this end.

 

[Fama]

Sounds great in my opinion. I love how big and chunky the guitars feel. Although everything is well balanced, personally I would prefer the drums to be a little bit louder (and guitars a little bit quieter, respectively). However, it's more of an issue of what you want to focus on.

The only thing I don't like is the lead guitar tone, but again I think that's more of a taste thing.

 

[AEL89]

That's an awesome improvement, mate. I take it those setting tweaks helped open everything up a bit more? Sounds much more solid on this end.

Mate - your tweaks helped so much. I also added some 75hz to the guitars and it gives them this really nice chunkiness down low. Thanks mate.

Sounds great in my opinion. I love how big and chunky the guitars feel. Although everything is well balanced, personally I would prefer the drums to be a little bit louder (and guitars a little bit quieter, respectively). However, it's more of an issue of what you want to focus on.

The only thing I don't like is the lead guitar tone, but again I think that's more of a taste thing.

Drums louder?! This is probably the most drum heavy mix I've ever done! Lead tone isn't up to the rhythms, I agree, but I'm going to have to blame the DI tracks I only re-amped. Thank you for listening though dude, appreciated!

 

[mickrich]

Guitars sound a bit mid rangey to me and are clouding the snare.
I would try a couple of eq cuts on the guitar bus to let the snare poke through.
Around 800-1k to get rid of the mid range cloudiness and another little one at the "snap" frequency of the snare (sweep to find).
It sounds really good as is but I would try the above to see if it helps the drums to cut through better.

 

[AEL89]

Guitars sound a bit mid rangey to me and are clouding the snare.
I would try a couple of eq cuts on the guitar bus to let the snare poke through.
Around 800-1k to get rid of the mid range cloudiness and another little one at the "snap" frequency of the snare (sweep to find).
It sounds really good as is but I would try the above to see if it helps the drums to cut through better.

Cool, cheers. I'll try it for sure. I'm boosting some 1.5k for crack on the snare buss already so I'll just try removing a dB or 2 around those frequencies you mentioned.

I'm sure I could put a phaser on the mix buss and hi pass at 200 and Jens would still make it sound awesome

 

[AEL89]

Bump.

Here's the mastered version from Jens:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1041607/01 The_Struggle.mp3