Half way through the latest Salem UK album and I’ve started having ear trouble. Can you hear anything wrong with this?
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Adrian,
Overall the mix is well balanced and the production is very smooth, but the guitar leads seem a little too bright for my “personal” taste.
Good work as usual.
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Really sorry that you’re having ear troubles, Adrian… I went through a bout of it recently - very frustrating!
I had a listen on both my studio monitors and my 2.1 work speakers. The mix translates well on my little work speakers, but not as well on my studio monitors.
Here are some points I noticed:
- the bass seemed a little loud overall
- the rhythm guitars seem to be mixed pretty low for this type of music. In the spaces between the vocal phrases, this is especially noticeable. If the guitars can’t be increased in volume overall, I feel like they need to be automated up between the vocal phrases to maintain a sense of continuous power that seems to be missing at the moment.
- the toms sound quite boxy to me - like they need some cutting in the low mids around the 400-500hz mark.
- the vocals feel a little loud overall for this style.
- the kick drum feels like it needs just a touch more “point” on it to hold its own with the bass
- the lead guitar is a little bright and “crispy” in the top end for me.
I hope you get some improvement with your ears soon, and I hope that helps!
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Killer chorus works for me. Verse at 37 ish doesn’t work as well for me and I don’t even know why. Great production and guitar work.
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Thank you, the lead guitars certainly need a revisit.
Thank you Andrew. I’ll be taking a look at all of these points. It’s the crispy guitars that worry me - an indication that my top end might be going. I’m booked in to see a specialist next week so I hope he can get my ears back.
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Please keep us posted! I sure hope that goes well.
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Ears totally blocked. The guy sucked it all out with a vacuum cleaner on steroids and I’m back to 14kHz in both ears!
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Great news ! Simple, safe fix.
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Fantastic news - very happy for you! The brain is absolutely amazing at compensating for hearing loss, but there is obviously a limit to how much it can do.
It’s a new lease of life for your auditory system!
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Indeed. My son has lost a lot of high frequency in one ear. He’s down to 5kHz, but you wouldn’t think so from the quality of his recordings.
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glad that your gear is still functional!
I lost my hearing by 5k once and it was terrrifying. I was told to chew gum all day everyday. No issues since. My jaw locks but i can still hear 17.5k both ears 
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Glad it worked out. It’s scary when one of your ears starts deceiving you. You can’t help but compensate, and even where the sound appears to be coming from goes crazy. We won’t talk about the beehive I’m constantly dealing with.
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I might have posted this link before, but in view of the topic of this thread, I think it bears posting again. Hearing problems with audio people is often a taboo subject that no one wants to talk about, because it plays to our worst fears and deep insecurities. This is a really wonderful (but very loooong) discussion that goes deep - If hearing is your job, I highly recommend making the time to check it out:
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That is fantastic news! I am SO happy for you. That had to be a massive relief. Made my day to read this. Thank you for the update 
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I’ve never tested my hearing range, at least not in decades, @AJ113 , but I know I have had some tinnitus for quite a while. My wife thinks I can’t hear as well anymore (dog farts in particular), but somehow I feel I still fully enjoy hearing music especially. But I have had sinus issues that are much worse than tinnitus, so happy to hear you are better!
So far as the song, my hearing is not so good as to provide better precise advice than Andrew, but I can tell you I thought it already sounds damn good!
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Thank you - I haven’t made any changes yet but I listened a couple days ago with my ‘new’ ears and I heard all sorts of dodgy stuff that needs fixing! As promised I will post the updated mix here when it is done.
Here’s the update:
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Definite improvement!..
To my ear the low end still feels “oversized”, and while the high end of the mix balances it out quite well, the area in between (the low mids and mids) feels “scooped out” a little too much.
I was curious to see what I could do, so I pulled the mix into Reaper and played around with it using Slate’s Infinite EQ - I did a 3dB dip at around 80hz (just in the mid channel) with a not too narrow Q I high passed the whole mix around 30hz . I felt that tightened up the low end a lot.
To balance out less low end I did a gentle scoop around 3k with a reasonably wide Q. That sounded pretty balanced, but I lost some width and bite from the guitars, so I changed the 3k dip to effect the mids only, and then did a very gentle high shelf starting around 2k of less than a dB, but only on the sides of the mix.
That seemed to do the trick. The vocals were still nice and clear, the low end was tight, and guitars gave the impression of more power and width.
One thing I couldn’t really do anything about was the toms - to me they still sound like they need the low mids really being scooped out of them to clean them up.
Then again, this is my personal taste, so what I would do is probably not what you are going for. For example, I referenced some 80s hard rock like Dokken, and it veers much more toward how you’ve balanced the track, particularly in the low end. It all depends what you’re going for, I guess.
Just thought I’d put my $0.02 in anyhow!
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Thank you Andrew, can you post the mix with your changes please?