Mike, lovinā what you did here. The balance and tone of the instruments is sweet. Lovinā your eq.
Only comment is that the vocal is too quiet when it comes in at 2:17. Doesnāt stand out as much as it does in the rest of the song. It recovers nicely by 2:44. Just boost it a touch for that 15 seconds or so, and itās perfect. I love how up front the vocals are. Curious what you used for reverb. Itās quite nice.
Nice job.
@takka360 - Thanks Alan!
@Tesgin - Good comment Tesgin. Iām hearing that quieter section too. As for the reverb, typically, I have a 1/4 Note delay on the main vocal mixed way back to add some space in addition to verb. On this one though, I think I didnāt even add reverb on the track itself, but used my āroomā verb to varying (very tiny) degrees on each of āfinalā busses - drums, bass, music and vocals. Iāll let you know exactly what I did when I fire up my DAW to fix the quiet section. thanks for the listen!
I put a revision in the first post. Basically I turned up the vocal section Tesgin mentioned and tried to highlight the piano part a little more.
@Tesgin - My recollection in the previous post was correct, except that the āroom reverbā on this one is Meldaās MTurboReverb.
Thanks for bringing that up. Sounds really good. Makes a big difference.
However when you brought it up I think I noticed something in the vocals: it sounds to me like from that point on his vocals are more bassy/muddy than in the beginning. Thereās more going on with the band and I have a hunch he was kissing the mic more? Maybe lose of a little if the low end on the vocals there?
Maybe Iām wrong but tell me what you think. In any event, nice, nice mix. I really like your eq on the band and on the vox. Very three dimensional. Love how in your face the vocals are. Again, really nice mix, Mike.
I wonder if it was an overdub or something? Because that section was definitely lower than the rest, so he may have sung it slightly different or stood closer to the mic or something. I found a video of a live studio recording of this song, and heās definitely right on top of the mic!
Anyway, thanks for the kind words and the very detailed listen!
Hi Mike,
I took a listen to this last night in my studio. Sounds great!
About the only thing I would suggest is putting some more space behind the vocal. With the vocal so up-front and warm, and with such a tangible roomy sound on the instruments, I keep craving just a hint of room slap from the vocal to really put me in the moment.
Maybe the old 166ms tape delay trick - perhaps even a stereo version of thatā¦ or maybe a real dirty room pre-delayed to the point of āback wallā slap.
Nice work!
Thatās a great idea Andrew. I agree, I think it will fit perfectly. Iāve even got a dedicated āSlapā FX channel in my template. I have no idea why I didnāt try that out on this vocal! Thanks for the listen.
Andrew, could you explain more how youāre doing this? Not that thereās anything wrong with your explanation (made perfect sense to Mike!), but itās just over my head. 
Iād love to know how to do this but donāt follow.
Love it when you talk that way! 
Anything you could do to help an eager student would be thankful appreciated.
When you have someone singing or talking close to you in a room, there is usually a reflection that ābouncesā off the boundaries in the room. Even though their direct sound might be right up close and āin your faceā, there is still a delayed reflection from the walls of the room - how long the interval between the source and the reflected sound is depends on how far the walls are from the sound source. Since sound travels (very roughly) around 1ft per ms, a āslapā type delay of 100-200ms suggests a fairly decent size room. Another factor to keep in mind is that reflected sound tends to lose top end.
These two factors relate to the famed āslapbackā delay sound of early rockānāroll recordings, because IIRC they were achieved by using the space between record and playback heads on early tape machines. Apparently that fixed space equated to 166ms, which rather serendipitously worked to achieve that characteristic āslapā delay, combined with the fact that the regenerated delay sound lost top end due to tape degradation and distortion. The result was a sound that imitated a sizeable room with sound āslapping backā off the walls, creating excitement, movement and space, without āwashing outā the sound in reverb.
To give a real world example of the type of sound Iām describing, take a listen to the following - in particular, the second (higher pitched) vocalist:
Using two panned slap delays of slightly varying times can create a wider image of a similar nature.
A similar, but perhaps more smooth effect can be created by delaying the onset of a fairly short reverb by a similar amount of time.
I hope that explains it.
Bahaha! What a bunch of nerds! 
Andrew, you should be a freakinā professor!
Very helpful. Especially with the YouTube example.
So, let me see if Iām following how you do this.
Iām thinking the key pieces to pulling this off would be, then:
Am I getting it?
Iām thinking ReaEQ and ReaVerb would pull this off nicely.
Iām also seeing this would be a breeze with H-Reverb.
Can you suggest specific or typical settings for the above?
I uploaded another revision with some slapback on the vocal and resisted the urge to start mucking around with other things in the mixā¦
@Tesgin - FWIW, this is whatās on my Slapback FX channel. I pulled up one of the presets then twiddled the knobs until I liked the results. 
Thanks for the suggestion Andrew!
PS. Hey Andrew, Iāve been mixing Bitter and you put together a beautiful package of well-organized and well-done multitracks! Thanks for sharing them with us.
Iām not suggesting you do these all together - try them as alternatives to each other at first, then mix and match them to taste. Ambience is complex, so mixing things up can give you a really individual result.
Here are some screen shots of H-Delay & H-Reverb being used in these roles.
Here is dry vocal from the competition song (itās a live track, so the bleed makes it a bit messy) :
ā¦and the screen shot of the plugin settings:
ā¦and the settingsā¦
and the settingsā¦
Hope that helps!
Thanks for posting those. I didnāt try your reverb trick, but I kind of like that one! I also shortened up my delay time on my slapback thinking I liked it better, but now Iām second guessing that decisionā¦
Iām curious if I did this right?
Yup - love it!.. both cool in their own way! Personally I prefer the echo-boy version, but it might be cool to highlight certain phrases and words by automating the reverb to taste.
Bingo. That was very helpful. Now when I go back and read your initial suggestion for Mike, it makes total sense to me. Very cool and very usable. Whatās especially helpful is now understanding better the āwhyā behind those settings.
Thanks for explaining and for the settings and audio examples.
The āreverb slapbackā is cool! Thanks for suggesting that Andrew. That was a new one for me. It feels āsmootherā than the typical delayed version.
ā¦And thanks for digging in @Tesgin Tesgin. I donāt think Iād have even tried it if you hadnāt asked Andrew for a further explanation.
This forum rocks.
I like the Echo Boy better as well. Only thing is that it really brought out the āesses.ā Easily fixed.
Agreed.
So @Lophophora and I are working on our Time in a Bottle collab. Iām redoing my voc verb to try to implement this slapback verb thing. Hoping to repost shortly. Will be eager for your feedback. 
The āfinalā version has been added to the first post. I switched over the to EchoyBoy slapback, did some de-essing on the vocal and the FX, ādirtiedā up my āroomā verb a little, and highlighted the piano solo with a dB bump. Thanks fellas!
