Well Kerslake and Daisley obviously didn’t matter much to Ozzy anyway… they got replaced for the remaster of 2002! 
Bad Sharozzy… Not Cool!
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The vocals sound they are super-imposed on top of the backing, like vocals on top of a karaoke track. They need to be EQ’d and mixed in at the right level. They are also pitchy, which doesn’t help.
The drums are not defined. I can hear the snare in the quieter parts but in general the drums turn into a mush in the denser parts. Can’t hear the kick drum anywhere.
The toms have got some kind of crazy halo delay on them. Its not good.
The whole mix is short of mids, (600Hz-ish), has too much honk (320Hz) and the guitars are biting my ears at about 3.2kHz.
The mix is light on subs too but that’s probably the least of your concerns at this point.
Ah, if that’s the mix you are using for a reference, then yes, you’re spot on with the levels.
But… I think standards were a bit more lax back then. Or the production was an afterthought and the songwriting and playing were what they were focusing on. Whatever the case, if you like that sound, then you’re on the right track level wise.
which mix r u commenting on?
mix 3 should be a little better
nah, didnt use a reference track. I sort of doubt im at that point yet. Sort of like a kid with watercolors using Michaelangelo as a reference
u check mix #3? (in OP)
This comment cracked me up. 
I love the first 2 Ozzy solo albums but I’d have to agree with what Boz said about the drums being too quiet. I wouldn’t have thought that way 20 years ago but I feel that way now. The production wasn’t horrible in my opinion but it has some glaring weaknesses. I think they got by on sheer songwriting and some good vocal, guitar and bass sounds, even though Blizzard of Ozz wouldn’t be considered a balanced mix by today’s standards.
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im thinking that crazy loud guitar was some sort of wack remix or youtube thing. I love the overall sound of the first 2 Ozzy albums. Sort of dark and sometimes reverby but everything is nice and clean and clear. Rhythm section sounds amazing
“todays standards”?? wtf is that?? No one even makes this kind of music anymore lol. So what standards we talking about? Panic at the Disco? Bruno Mars?? pffft, whatever lol
Im largely motivated by trying to match up with the sounds I heard as a teen and young adult. So that means rock stuff from like, say, '80 - '92ish and also of course looking back to Led Zep etc.
This is another overall song sound id like to get. again, sort of dark
or even this
and of course, im sure im the ONNNNLLLLYYYYYY guy on this board who cant dial this up in 3 secs flat lol
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Loud , clear cutting drums have been a big part of hard rock, metal recordings for a long time. I used to favour having loud guitars…, probably because I’m a guitarist but I find that when I turn the drums up and relax the guitar levels my mixes tend to sound better. But just like you, I really love those first 2 Ozzy albums. Lee Kerslake played some awesome shit on those albums…they should’ve turned those drums up ! Same with the old 70’s era Black Sabbath albums. The drums sound like cardboard…And so much of that music was awesome. I’m a huge Ozzy era Sabbath fan.
If you ever get that Van Halen guitar sound let me know how you did it. I love his tone !..You can hear his pick attack on both rhythm and lead. I’m listening to these videos that you posted and I’m realizing once again how little distortion he actually used in comparison to most heavy rock guitarists. But his tone is superior …to everyone’s…I’m biased though. 
Listen to Van Halen, Fair Warning if you want to hear a great sounding mix with loud clear drums, awesome guitar playing, great songs and a beautifully balanced mix. You can actually hear the bass clearly on that VH album.
yeah, i was going to post a song from Fw. its similar to 1984 IMo
nice and warm, roomy, punchy. one thing about VH, they didnt really use a ton of tracks.
Im not so much (at all) worried about Eddies actual guitar tone. Im more talking just the overall sound and vibe of the albums. Overall album tone etc.
rare 70s album that still stand up decently mix wise
This pretty much holds up for me as well
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(MIx 4)
The vocals sound they are super-imposed on top of the backing, like vocals on top of a karaoke track. They need to be EQ’d and mixed in at the right level. They are also pitchy, which doesn’t help.
The drums are not defined. I can hear the snare in the quieter parts but in general the drums turn into a mush in the denser parts. Can’t really hear the kick drum anywhere, other than being vaguely aware of a 6db excess in the subs, which needs attention. The cymbals sound like a general wash of white noise rather than anything defined.
The whole mix is evern shorter of mids now, (600Hz-ish), resulting in the guitars being emaciated. They sound like a 0.1 watt amp hooked up to a telphone earpiece speaker.[quote=“Jon-Jon, post:27, topic:1486”]
No one even makes this kind of music anymore
[/quote]You couldn’t be more wrong.
[quote=“Jon-Jon, post:25, topic:1486”]
didnt use a reference track. I sort of doubt im at that point yet
[/quote]I’d like to bet that virtually everyone on this forum would recommend using reference tracks from day one. It’s not a specialised method, it’s a method that produces the best results in return for the least effort. That’s why everybody uses it, from newbs to pros.
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In this genre, a good reference I sometimes use that bridges the gap between classic hard rock and the modern era is Slash’s Album (from 2010).
Again, this Youtube sound doesn’t do the CD justice, but Eric Valentine’s recordings & mixes are outstanding. Very (appropriately) BIG guitars, perfectly proportioned vocals (ie. not “on top of” the instruments) slightly “tucked in”, naturalistic drum sounds, but a very full-spectrum frequency coverage, lots of nice front-to-back depth, without diminishing any immediacy… and a massively wide and encompassing soundstage… (IMO of course!)
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“super-imposed on top”, “need to be EQ’d and mixed at the RIGHT level”? That’s nice. Now can you translate that into English so I can get some useable info from it? Im assuming you mean the vox seem too loud?
“pitchy”. Again, can u be more specific? The vocal sounds fine to me except for the last maybe 5 secs. I was struggling a bit holding that e vowel and also on the high line “I still feel it shine”
essentially its hard for me to comment since basically you are saying the complete drum kit and sound totally sucks. It strikes me as odd because I was on here before trying to JUST get my drums sounding good and everyone, including you, totally poo-poo’d that approach. To a person it was like “you cant judge the drums without the whole mix in place” etc. But here we are back to that square one again huh?
I have also heard more or less lines like “you dont need to mess with EZ Drummer drums since they are already pro mixed” etc
This particular kit, the ‘Alt Rock’ kit, is very new to me and I actually tried to keep it more or less as it came from the factory, though of course I did tweak some stuff.
Here is the kit alone with only bass guitar. The only thing I changed from mix#4 was to turn down the kick-sub substantially.
So basically you are saying this whole kit sucks and it undefined. The cymbals suck. Snare sucks. Everything sucks?
thats odd because, based on your previous comments, I took a decent amount of the 320 area out, but I boosted 635 hz 2.8db 1.27 oct bdwith. And I did turn the guitars slightly down from mix 3. But you now say there is even LESS 600hz ish? lol
So at first I was being told the guitars were waaaaayyyyy too loud and now am being told they are too tiny. I think thats all in about a 5db range. So I guess somewhere in between must be nirvana huh?
[quote]Again, can u be more specific? The vocal sounds fine to me except for the last maybe 5 secs.
[/quote]If the vocal sounds fine to you then I suggest you start using reference tracks. It doesn’t sound fine to me. What would you like me to be specific about?
Anything in solo will sound competely different when added to a mix. Use solo as much as you need to - I personally use it a lot - but ultimately the sound of each instrument within the mix is the only thing that counts.[quote=“Jon-Jon, post:34, topic:1486”]
I have also heard more or less lines like “you dont need to mess with EZ Drummer drums since they are already pro mixed” etc
[/quote]EZ drummer is basically a drum machine. There is as much work incorporating it into a mix as there is real drums.
To my ears, very little of the kit sounds good in that mix, although I can hear you’ve eased off the wacky effect on the toms.
[quote]thats odd because, based on your previous comments, I took a decent amount of the 320 area out, but I boosted 635 hz 2.8db 1.27 oct bdwith. And I did turn the guitars slightly down from mix 3. But you now say there is even LESS 600hz ish? lol[/quote]Many compensations happen within in a mix when you make an adjustment. All I can tell you is what I hear. Are you using a spectrum analyzer? I use SPAN the most out of all plugins.
[quote]
So at first I was being told the guitars were waaaaayyyyy too loud and now am being told they are too tiny. I think thats all in about a 5db range. So I guess somewhere in between must be nirvana huh?
[/quote]There’s more to adjusting mix elements than taking them up or down in level. I have just spent three hours trying to get the clarity of a kick drum back into a mix after raising the bass guitar by 1db. It was perfect before I took the bass up.
delete
Sometimes it helps to put a mix away for a few days and listen to other stuff so you can get a fresh perspective on it. I find when I’m listening to a mix too much, I start hearing what I want to hear and not hearing what is actually there. Getting a fresh perspective is the biggest advantage to getting feedback, and you can give yourself a fresh perspective by taking a break for a little while.
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yeah, im going to post mix #5 and im pretty much thru with this one for a while. I mean, we r talking only 6 elements here: kick, snare, cymbals, bass, guitar, vocals. (no lead guitar, no vocal harmonies) It cant be this freaking hard…yet everything I post is 100% wrong
on this mix I hear all of those elements playing a part without anything being too overbearing. But what do I know? obviously not too much
About a week ago you all were talking about “is the forum dead?”, “why is there no traffic”? etc. for one thing, not many people are going to sign up to get their souls repeatedly crushed
Me, I can only take so much of it myself. This is why I personally only post something to be bashed maybe once every few months, just like back on RR.
So of course I admit im only in the first early learning curve of doing mixes and as everyone is quick to point out, evidently my ears suck. This sux, that sux. It all sux. Obviously my mix #5 is better than my mix #1 So of course I can see that my ears ARENT attuned to critical listening.
That being said, I take tremendous pride in the fact that what I post is MINE. There is no John Lennon at my side or George Martin and Alan Parsons holding my hand and working on my mixes while I sleep. I dont have 57 people working on my song like Beyonce does,
So when it is said that the whole thing sucks, I tend to take it on a very personal level and I know I am not alone in that regard lol. I have store bought stuff that sounds worse than what I have posted here.
If people get beat down when they post stuff…they aint gonna post stuff lol. I understand that the critical feedback is the whole point of the “bash” forum but maybe there are good ways and bad ways to give that feedback. I feel that sometimes it gets to be something like “you suck and us jaded pros are going to tell you that you suck but we arent going to really tell you any specific way to get better”
So a guy like me who continually works on some aspect of his music: playing, writing, singing, mixing etc…brings a certain amount of energy and vitality to a forum. How many posts and replies have I generated in the last 5 days? For that guy to be essentially beat down (run in circles?) makes no sense. Dude goes away and pouts and those posts that would be generated go away too lol
so all I am saying is maybe there is some way to balance off the harsh blows. Maybe have people post stems on box.com or wherever so others can do a quicky mix. I mean, if my mixes suck as bad as I am being told, then it shouldnt take more than 5 minutes for some old pro to make an improvement.
Anyway, just thinking out loud.
mix #5, more suckage for all to enjoy
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first off, there is no pro reference track out there with me singing. An adjective like “pitchy” doesnt really help much. Im assuming “pitchy” means “out of tune”. If you think the whole vocal line is out of tune, then id say u been drinking too much. The last 5 seconds? yeah, I can hear where it can be improved. Thats why I say be more specific. On singing forums we discuss specific syllables and vowels. Like I said, I definitely struggled with the high “ee” vowels and the high pitched closed “ih” and “still” etc. But if u think the whole vocal line is pitchy" then I simply have no reply.
hard to reply to this and it puts in doubt everything else you have said. I have no idea what “halo delay” is. The preset from EZ Drummer is called “Rock Tape” which I assume means it uses some sort of tape delay somewhere on the kit or the overall mix. Its certainly nothing I have added and its certainly nothign I have “eased off” of. How can I ease off of something I never used in the first place.
How were you even hearing some effect on toms in the first place when there are only like 3 tom hits and the whole kit was buried anyway?
Im thinking maybe u hear voices in your head when things get quiet??
Whoa, pardner, it doesn’t all suck. It’s played well, and there is nothing wrong with the recording that some tweaking won’t fix. Coming from experience, problem number one is mixing on headphones. I can’t tell you how many times I posted stuff I thought sounded great that got obliterated (albeit a touch more gently) that I mixed on a good set of phones. The problem is, when someone made an eq suggestion, I couldn’t hear it doing anything when I tried it, so I typically overdid it, which caused a different buildup elsewhere. I also have no treatment in my room, so it takes a lot to make anything, even reference material, sound good in there. I’m thinking about room correction software and treatment in the future when I have more time to use the room, but until then I have to trust other opinions. I’m fortunate enough to have had Andrew do some stuff for me, and everything I’ve heard from AJ has been very good, so I have something to shoot for when I decide to do it myself. I can actually use some of my own music as reference to get rid of the really rough edges I tend to overlook, and I can.use the freebie spectrum analyzer for a cheap visual reference point to see if anything obvious is popping out.
In any event, don’t worry about whether it all sucks, it doesn’t. It could sound better, but crikey, it’s only 45 seconds of an idea for what could be a great song and recording. I think the hardest thing for everyone to grasp is that the interaction between all the elements in a recording changes with minor tweaks to any single element, and it’s hit or miss to fix it even with a great monitoring system, much less headphones. It also requires a lot of ear training, which you have for guitar tones, and the voice aspect is good also.
The last thing to keep in mind is that when it sounds good to you, it’s done.
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