Hey @Stan_Halen, Just had a look on the series of tubes about this guy-- how have I not heard of him before, with all the great artists whom I love that he’s worked with! I didn’t realize that was the guy Charlie Sexton partnered with early in his career. He has worked some major greats. Will definitely be checking out his stuff. Thanks for the tip!
Arc Angels?
yeah. Doyle Bramhill II and charlie Sexton with Stevie Ray Vaughan’s rhythm section. Great sounding band. they sort of hit at the wrong time (1992) and word is they partied a bit much lol.
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Nice stuff, this is right up my alley. I’ve been a fan of Charlie Sexton’s solo albums for some time now. Gonna have to dig into this Arcangels stuff!
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Shoot, you want to dig into some unrecognized talent, check THIS dude. great singer and songwriter and IMo his albums always sound great
Dave Osti
nasty stuff
Dudes style is so cool. Its blues…but its rock too. I hear he played every instrument on this. Talented guy
OK I can see it now - had to log out and back in.
Still a huge swell in the 150Hz area Dave, I mean at least 6db I reckon.
If you do take it down by that amount, you’ll then hear the reason why the subs need a lift.
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Glad you can see it now-- I will take another look, I did a ton of scooping there already. I do see the swell on SPAN, but I guess I am in forest-for-the-trees territory now and am just not hearing it well.
As it happens my work week is really busy, and I’ll very likely not be able to get back to the music room until the weekend. A few days away from it is probably a good thing. 
Thanks Adrian!
A lot of improvements in the revisions!
A couple of thoughts I had (just listening on desktop speakers as always…)
I’d love to hear the drums with more room ambiance around them, for my personal taste the presentation is very up front. Maybe even key a compressor to pump room ambiance sidechanced to kick and snare? The groove has space for it.
That semi-distorted midrangey rhythm guitar is very midrangey, and the acoustic guitar is to my ears on these speakers at least the brightest and most forward-est thing in the mix. I understand the role it’s playing in the arrangement and that it needs some percussive snap, but I wonder if the contrast is making the electric guitars seem dull in comparison?
Other than those thoughts, which might change with time I admit, I like it!
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OK well since you’re coming back to it in a few days may I also suggest taking another look at the mid scoops you’ve done? I didn’t want to cave your head in on my last post but, for me there is still too much honk going on. It’s definitely improved but I think it will withstand more surgery in that area.
[quote=“Chordwainer, post:66, topic:655”]
I do see the swell on SPAN, but I guess I am in forest-for-the-trees territory now and am just not hearing it well.
[/quote]If you’re bothering to use SPAN to spot this stuff you’re heading down the right road, you just need to take the final step in the process. It doesn’t matter whether you think you can hear it or not - if you can see it, that’s a sure sign it needs fixing. Try scooping it out, then A/B between the two. You will definitely hear it then.
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SPAN is always on my master-out and I keep an eye on it for every mix. I have learned the hard way that I need the visual input as well as the auditory.
Just to clarify, are you recommending doing the scooping on the master-out, or in the individual tracks, or both? The cuts I’ve done thus far have all been on the individual tracks and the reverb & slapback sends. Just want to make sure I am understanding you properly-- I’m guessing the answer is “both”. Thanks again Adrian!
@Cirrus Josh, thanks for your bash! I’m not a huge fan of the sound of the room that comes with AD2, my drum VST, and I dial it way back on just about everything I do. (That’s the influence of @ptalbot Patrick…!) Perhaps I can find a workaround where I use a separate reverb send for the drums that could have a similar effect-- do you think that would work?
To my ear, the vox is more forward than the acoustic, but my ears are suspect in the higher frequencies owing to my hearing loss. So I’ll take a close look with my spectral analysis tools to augment what I’m hearing. 
In principle I don’t see why that wouldn’t work - use an appropriate room, send elements of the kit there to taste, side-chain compress the reverb return.
Of course, I’m always a bit uncertain about suggesting things - it’s gotta be the way you hear it otherwise you end up with Homer’s car.
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Well, you said you were having problems hearing the 150Hz, so specifically for this purpose, I’m suggesting you load two instances of the master wav into your DAW and eq the unwanted 150Hz out of one of them. Then A/B the two to hear the difference. If you do this ongoing - with any tracks, BTRs, commercial releases etc. - you will learn to recognise frequencies in a recording.
It’s important that you actually A/B i.e., toggle instantaneously between the two. (In Mixcraft, mute one and use its solo button to toggle) in order to compare the two.
N.B. To do this absolutely the right way - especially if you’re going to dig a big 6db lump out of it - you should measure the resultant integrated loudness of the processed track and then match it up to the original, (the easiest way is to drop the fader on the unprocessed track) because there will be a significant drop in level, and we all know that the human hearing system naturally thinks that louder is better.
In terms of the project itself, DON’T fix this with EQ on the two-bus, fire up SPAN and solo each track until you find the offending item(s), then sort the problem out at track level. Remember - if you do major eq boosts or cuts you will almost certainly need to adjust the fader aswell to achieve the previous level of the track in the mix. This how cutting a frequency can actually make someting louder and clearer in a mix. Once you have scooped out a prominent frequency, this allows you to boost the whole track up.
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OK, that’s pretty much what I had in mind Adrian-- thanks for the clarification. I was planning this very approach: SPAN each of the tracks one at a time to find out what all is contributing to that region, plus do the experiment with the mixdown just to be sure I can identify the issues with my ears as well as my eyes. This is great stuff-- exactly the sort of skill-leveling I need to advance.
Edit: Just for info, the way I went after the low-mid cuts after your first comments, to get from V3 to V4, was to do EQ sweeps.
I always a/b my revisions in this way as I go along – I keep a “Comparisons” project file in Mixcraft that I use to do that. And I have SPAN on that too. So it’ll just be a matter of applying that SOP with a bit more targeted focus.
Now, measuring the integrated loudness etc-- that’s not a process I am familiar with yet, and I’ve read your posts over the past year discussing the various ways of measuring that, in terms of units (LUFS or RMS or what have you) and I’m not there yet on having a decent understanding of those ramifications. But I absolutely get that significant EQ changes require releveling, pretty much across the board-- figured that one out some time ago.
Thanks again for taking the time to dig in Adrian! I really appreciate the assist.
@Cirrus and hey Josh-- don’t be hesitant to suggest anything! Everyone’s constructive around here and nothing bad can come from throwing in your two cents. 
Keep it coming!
Hey Josh, wanted to focus on this comment. What’s the intent of side-chaining the reverb? I know only the rudiments about side-chaining and have only dabbled in trying it out, so be gentle with me. 
Is the idea to provide the “feeling of space” (for lack of better term) in between drum hits while imposing some room-sound on the hits themselves that is held in check by the side-chain compression, so that it doesn’t boom out with the drum hits? (I realize I am abusing the terminologies here!) Thanks!
Yeah, basically this.
I think of it in terms of serving the groove of the song. When you get the release time right, the reverb pumping actually reinforces the feel of of rhythm - like the space the music’s in is actually reacting back. And yes, there’s also a practical benefit in tucking away the reverb during the loud hits - you can get more reverb in without it muddying up the mix and clouding up the direct sound.
Just as a starting point, try a room reverb of your choosing, send the overheads to it, put the compressor after it, sidechain to the kick+snare tracks, and adjust it to, say, 2:1, attack fast, release around 500ms, and set to get around 3dB gr on the hits. Go for more gain reduction and bring up the makeup gain if you want to over exaggerate the effect the compressor’s having to dial in the release.
I don’t always do this, it’s more for when I want to feature the ambiance around the kit as a part of the mix rather than just as subtle background stuff.
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Great info Josh! Many thanks for the detailed suggestions. More new skills to gain!
The easiest way is just to put a loudness meter plugin on the channel. The LUFS (LKFS in the USA) reading is designed to be exactly equivalent to db. So say the LUFS rating is -9, if you drop the fader by 1db then the LUFS will be -10 (FYI this is how loudness normalization works).
The only problem with this method is that you have to do a real-time run from the start to te finish - OR you can open the LUFS meter and mix the track down, noting the LUFS reading on the meter afterwards. The mixdown file that is created is surplus, you can delete it afterwards.
I just mix everything down and then measure it in Oban’s free standalone software, which only takes about 10 seconds to analyse any track, because I also measure commercial releases and other wavs/mp3s too, so it’s simpler just to have one universal method.
As a guide
-8 LUFS is begining to be on the loud side, -3 LUFS is insane.
-8 LUFS to - 10 LUFS is more or less ok
-10 LUFS to -12 LUFS is about as dynamic as you’ll ever need it.
Your track is -9.1 LUFS
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Excellent-- I get it. I have learned a lot this morning, and I haven’t even left for work yet!
More soon…
Hey CW - jumping in late and straight into V4, not looking at comments.
I like this song! I think your voice, the acoustic and the lead all sound great - well done on that.
The snare to me sounds a little splatty/plasticky. Nothing terrible, I just would have thought that a more live natural sound would suit better. I love the sleazy heavy tone of the rhythm but for me it’s a little too loud and needs EQing. Where, I couldn’t tell you but I’ll take a guess at 200-500.
I’ve never heard your voice sound more at one with the music than on here BTW - great performance!
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Thanks Chris! Much appreciated. Your comments are right in line with the round of adjustments I still need to make. Thanks for the bash!
Further:
If you’re recording tracks for an EP or an album, decide on a target LUFS and make sure all tracks hit it individually.
Even if it’s just a single track, I think it’s still good practice to work to a target LUFS.
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