Criticize my MIX: ML Soundlab CP19 + all the tones are from Axe FX II

DTS

Experienced


Hi!

I'm going to record an EP soon, that will include five songs and i'm making a lot mix tests at the moment to achieve a good starting point for the rest of my project. So every feedback is important to me and highly appreciated.

UPDATE 10.1.2016
New MIX

UPDATE 12.1 2016
NEW MIX

UPDATE 15.1 2016
MASTER MIX
 
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that bass tone is extremely overpowering and sucking up all over your headroom and low end. I can only tell there's a kick because of its top end is baaaaaaaaaarely poking through. if youre boosting any of the kicks low end (which you should be doing to some degree), cut that same frequency out of the bass, i would also high pass the bass up to at least 40 hz and give everything else in the mix some breathing room
 
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that bass tone is extremely overpowering and sucking up all over your headroom and low end. I can only tell there's a kick because of its top end is baaaaaaaaaarely poking through. if youre boosting any of the kicks low end (which you should be doing to some degree), cut that same frequency out of the bass, i would also high pass the bass up to at least 40 hz and give everything else in the mix some breathing room


Good advice and I agree, BUT a even better thing to do is get a plug in called track spacer, which you side chain to the bass drum. What it does is when both the bass and kick play at the same time, it lets the kick through instead of the bass and kick fighting each other.
 
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Dig the track. Very Perfectcircleish. Congrats!!! Rhythm guitars sound great. Any info on the patch- signal chain? Clean guitars also great. The overall feel is there in my opinion. The kick-bass thing is a problem but I m guessing you ll fix it. Technical issues I think can always be fixed in a mix. The aesthetic approach is a bigger problem when it's not there but here, I think you get your message through really well. Keep up the good work man.

Cheers Rav.
 
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Yeah Perfect Circle in the house! ;)

Guitars sound great! The bass is overpowering them though like someone mentioned. The clean guitars sounded like Pain of Salvation meets Periphery to me. :) The bass issue is just a volume thing. The octave guitar leads are perfect. The rhythm guitars are buried a bit.

The real weak link might be the drums. They sound programmed and not very forceful. Which program are you using? Make sure the snare hits are the full 127 midi value to get that "pop" attack. :)

Feel free to ask for more feedback!
 
Thanks a lot guys for your input. I did the mix using headphones and now i noticed how the bass is overpowering. Note to myself: use reference track if mixing with headphones and check it with monitors later. I feel dumb. :)

Ravaya:
Thanks! My Rhythm Preset has Gate - OD808 - Engl Savage Sim - ML Bulb Citrus Butter IR if that is what you asked? :)

Anand Mahangoe:
You're hearing right. There are some tuning issues with the clean guitar parts. I'll fix that later, when i do the final recording. Thanks!

Mikko:
The drums are Superior Drummer 2.4 Avatar kit and i know, that i need help with them as with other mixing things too. I might PM you later if it's ok?

Here are two different mixes i made today.

Bass track tweaked, Chorus rtm guitars are louder:

Bass track tweaked, Re Amped guitars with different tones:

Drums are still the same.
 
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It's a lot better now! The kick has this flappy attack going on and the snare has this smacky thing going on. I think they work pretty well in the song context. Many things got better after the bass problem got taken care of. The reamped cleans have an almost acoustic character to them. I'm not sure which I like better. The original was really good also. :)

You can always fine tune things further. You could have some more "room" in the drums so they don't sound programmed. I would maybe use a multiband EQ on the bass low end so it stays in it's place. Or instead separate the low and high end compress the shit out of the low end. :) It's sounding good man!
 
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It's a lot better now! The kick has this flappy attack going on and the snare has this smacky thing going on. I think they work pretty well in the song context. Many things got better after the bass problem got taken care of. The reamped cleans have an almost acoustic character to them. I'm not sure which I like better. The original was really good also. :)

You can always fine tune things further. You could have some more "room" in the drums so they don't sound programmed. I would maybe use a multiband EQ on the bass low end so it stays in it's place. Or instead separate the low and high end compress the shit out of the low end. :) It's sounding good man!

Thanks Mikko!
Yeah, the overpowering bass track crushed everything underneath it. The new clean sound is a bit too acoustic sounding, i had to admit. I will tweak that. I liked the "shimmer ambience" of the new clean tone though.

I have the bass track grouped as low and distorded tracks, where the DI track should take care the low end and the distorted tone is from Axe FX and i've highpassed it from 500hz and lowpassed from 4000hz. The distorded tone glues nicely with the low end, but i need some practice with the compressor in the low end.

The drums are the most hardest part for me to deal with. Do you mean, that i should think the programmed hits again and maybe change lets say: dominating crash hits from the chorus to open hi-hat hits to make some room that way for example? To me the drums also need more fullness/punch. When i compare them to other bands tracks there is something missing...

Oh well. No one has said, that mixing would be easy. :)

Thanks again Mikko for your input.
 
Thanks Mikko!
Yeah, the overpowering bass track crushed everything underneath it. The new clean sound is a bit too acoustic sounding, i had to admit. I will tweak that. I liked the "shimmer ambience" of the new clean tone though.

I have the bass track grouped as low and distorded tracks, where the DI track should take care the low end and the distorted tone is from Axe FX and i've highpassed it from 500hz and lowpassed from 4000hz. The distorded tone glues nicely with the low end, but i need some practice with the compressor in the low end.

The drums are the most hardest part for me to deal with. Do you mean, that i should think the programmed hits again and maybe change lets say: dominating crash hits from the chorus to open hi-hat hits to make some room that way for example? To me the drums also need more fullness/punch. When i compare them to other bands tracks there is something missing...

Oh well. No one has said, that mixing would be easy. :)

Thanks again Mikko for your input.
what are you using for the drums?.
Edit: just saw your other post, whoops lol. hmm i find that if a mix isnt punching or sitting the way i like, ill go back to square one and take all my proccessing off and just listen to what that sounds like/what the mix might need from that point. ill then do some basic filtering on the drums with everything else going to see how the changes are affecting everything else, what frequencies need to be addressed, what needs to come up in level (or down). once i have that basic drum setup ill isolate the bass and the drums and get that to gel, from there everything is added in one at a time. get used to the idea of taking away rather than boosting or adding, less is more!
Edit 2: one more thing i forgot, its a good idea to listen to the whole kit and flip the polarity on every track to see which sounds more full! i cant tell you how much time ive wasted trying to get something to punch and sit right when all i had to do was get on top of my phase issues (this is especially true if youre using something like SD2 and mixing different shells and kits/multiple shells)
 
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Musically that's just awesome. You need to glue the mix together more and the weakest point unbalancing that is the snare that breaks the bubble by poking out of the mix too much. You can hear that when you turn the volume up and the Fletcher-Munson curve kicks in, it balances out your snare and all the elements in the mix (you don't mix too loud don't you?) Anyway, you're there, you just need a few tricks here and there, nothing ground breaking. You can get the picture together by fixing stuff one by one and it'll come together itself then :)

EDIT: lack of "kick" is because you have very little info on high mids and too scoop combinded to a bit sub-drived bass. Once again easily fixed and once you do that, you'll notice the bass "drowns in the mix" and you need to bring dem mids up to that bitch.

IDK what you have on that snare, and where you route it, but if you look at snare, it usually goes through quite a few compressors, that usually takes care of that. When you take the snare buss and the compressor there, sent to a drumbuss that usually has a slight overall comp, then there can be a parallel comp track that helps with that and at the master end there's one taking the last transients out that fuck with you. Im being a blabbermouth again, i'll just take more wine. Anyway it'll be good :D Säätänä.
 
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Apescaleconflict:
Oh you wonderful blabbermouth! Thanks a lot for your help and the kind words. I actually mix in "normal" volume and with headphones 90% of the time, so that i don't drive my family crazy. Fletcher-Munson: I hate that guy! I'll take another tip of advice there and turn up the volume when i need to during the mixing process. I hope, that my next mix will have these problems solved out. I'll let you guys know.
 
Okay guys! Here you have it. I made many tweaks to the mix and couple of tones as well. This is once again a headphone mix, so let me know if the bass track is too loud and of course let me know how this mix sounds to you:


I also updated the OP.
 
It's a lot better now for sure, but the balance is a bit off. Snare isn't popping out but instead it's a loooooooot of quieter now, you gotta figure out to kill the transients that POP out too much so you can get the snare body and the attack to sound like it's in front with kick :)
 
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Referring to the New MIx 10.1.2016 in post #1
For me the only thing that struck me was the bass in those quiet sections, it was fine in the louder parts.
This was for one or more of the following reasons;
1. Too low
2. Too quite
3. Too distorted

In the quieter sections I think the bass would be much getter if the tone was cleaner, slightly louder, maybe even an octave higher ?
 
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No Man... it's muddy... needs air... mid-high and highs needs more power. All the energy is jailed in the 50/500~600Hz area
drums is too much back and needs more presence...
the clean and quiet part is more clear... but the distorted part (think must "exlpode") don't explode at all!
Wait a day that your parents are not at home... and DON'T mix with headphones!
 
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Thanks guys again for your help.

GuttaLaser:
By family i mean my wife and son. The younger years are gone for me. :)

I really appreciate all the help from you all. I'll go and try to find those problem parts once again. If anything, i might learn something about mixing in the end. :D
 
Okay guys! Here you have it. I made many tweaks to the mix and couple of tones as well. This is once again a headphone mix, so let me know if the bass track is too loud and of course let me know how this mix sounds to you:


I also updated the OP.
much better, youre definitely getting there. the bass i think is fine sitting right where it is, the only thing id do is toss a compressor on it to contain the warbly low end going on when you go from the opens to the 10th fret (set the attack to something like 50 ms so the attack of the note comes through and the release to something like 75 ms so it doesnt overstay its welcome, ratio is subjective. i like 4, but you might want more squish...or less, who knows play with it). if you find the bass is getting lost after this, boost a midrange frequency youre cutting from the guitars, its usually either 1500 hz or 3k hz for me (sometimes both!). now that snare...are you compressing/limiting? limiters on a bus track strictly for the snare with have the effect of smoothing out that transients attack without killing the volume on it. the kick also sounds noticeably more phasey, did you flip the polarity on it? some have mentioned the mix is kind of dark as well but most source tones are gonna be on the darker side so ill usually throw a parametric EQ on the master with a low pass at 20 hz (the limit of human hearing) and a very VERY gradual high shelf, starting at 3/4k and bringing it up til the mix sounds balanced to my ear. which brings me to the next point, please mix on something that pushes air! be it computer speakers or monitors or what have you, the speakers pushing air contributes a lot to the perceived low and high end and is only gonna benefit you :)
 
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