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Well I wanted to see what i could do so here you go. Bash away that is how i learn.
Immediately this is a nice full and warm mix. The vocal verb feels a bit excessive - though, I’m finding I tend to mix them drier these days, so it’s just a taste thing. I’m sure you’re going for the big live room feel. The balances all feel pretty good. The only thing that bothers me in this mix is the distortion/saturation is too “crunchy” and noticeable, especially on the snare. It feels almost like the whole mix is overdriven…
2 Likes
Thanks for that feedback. I will have a listen now with that in mind. I may have been hitting the “mastering” a little too hard. I am also trying some new plugins from plugin alliance.
I like what you did here, Eric.
You did a lot with the room mic, which nicely captured the ambience and the crowd noise which is very cool. Only thing is that it made it pretty muddy. I’m hunching on mine I could have done more with the room mics. I’ll bet if you used a HPF on the room it would have preserved the ambience but without the cost of the excessive low end.
I like your snare, but it’s disproportionately loud relative to the kick.
Disclaimer, I’m out of town and listening on inexpressive Bluetooth cans. Might not be a fair critique. Could be very different on my Sennheisers. I’ll let others weigh in on that.
1 Like
Thanks for the feedback.
Hi Eric, you have a nice big wide stereo spread happening here, which I like. I also like the idea of a more “spongy”-sounding vintage-style mix - quite “tape”-like!
I’m finding the vocal sounds a bit “distant” sounding, which is probably a personal preference thing. I tend to prefer more intimate-sounding vocals.
I just had a thought about using the room mics more prominently in the mix. One of the things I’m noticing about the mixes which have really featured the room mics, is that while they have a really nice natural stereo spread to them, the tradeoff tends to be that the vocals are distanced, and the mix overall tends to get somewhat muddy…
I wonder if a tactic to make more prominent use of the room mics here might be to high pass the room mics pretty aggressively (say around 500hz or so), and maybe low pass them too, and then delay the room mics by around 50-80ms, depending on what suits the tempo best. That might solve the issues of muddiness and distance… just musing… 
it might be worth experimenting with.
…but yeah, I have to back up the other comments about the saturation being pushed a bit too hard here. One thing I’ve learned from some of Eric Valentine’s videos on YT is that saturation can be used really effectively and aggressively to get those softer, vintage-y textures if you are selective about the frequency ranges that you saturate/distort… Midrange/low-mids seem to reward heavy saturation the most, whereas the very high and low extremes of the mix need to be approached much more judiciously in that regard.
Kudos for taking a bold and different approach!
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hmmm… interesting observation CRS,
my rooms (this is the 4 band room eq I used on TBH) tend to look VERY like my reverb EQ’s
…except in this mix Im using no reverb, just rooms.
2 Likes
I like this mix, it’s the most “live” sounding mix I’ve heard so far. Kind of the exact opposite of what I went for on mine, but it sounds good! That’s one of the coolest things about these mix contests, hearing the different ways people go about mixing the same songs.
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yeah i have been watching his videos too so much good information. I need to work on getting that edge without over doing it. Thanks for the feedback.
I love that part of the mix contests too. You learn in so many different ways.
1 Like