MiX iT! 2e - Post It: Mix, File + Description

[Charles Dye]

This thread is ONLY for posting a description of what you did, and attaching your mix + project/session files, or hardware settings jpgs.

Please do not discuss the mixes further here. Please do that in the Discuss It: Part 1 thread.

If you have tech problems posting your files, please post them in the MiX iT! 2 - Q&A thread. Thx!

MiX iT! 2 Update

It is now time for everyone to pick the THREE mixes you would like to discuss in depth.

Please visit the Pick 3 Mixes thread to nominate your mix picks.



MiX iT! 2 - Post It

Sponsored by Kagi Media and Auraleo Advanced Learning

We are almost ready to enter the final phase of MiX iT! 2, the Discuss It phase, but before we do we need your MIXES. In this thread we want you to upload your mixes, as well as your project/session files +/or jpgs of outboard/hardware settings. Please read the notes/instructions below very carefully before posting.


Timeframe

This thread will be open for approx 48 hours, until Monday, January 7, 2008.


What You Should Post

1. Tell us about your mix
   
   Please give us the basics about your mix. Why you made the choices you made + some of the basics of how you did it.
   
   
2. Tell us your Platform
   
   Please let us know the basics of the platform you mixed the song on.
   
   
3. Attach your MIX
   
   You must attach your mix of Señor by Myles Vincentto your post. Please do not imbed it in the post.
   
   Please provide us with a stereo mix in one of the following formats: MP4 or M4A (aka AAC) @ 192 kbps. (See below for more info on AAC files.)
   
   The mix should NOT be mastered (i.e. uncrushed). IOW, please NO heavy brickwall limiting. This is not a mastering event. This is a mixing event. The loudest mix will NOT be considered the best sounding. We are all smarter than that.
   
   
4. Attach your session INFO
   
   Please provide us with a zipped version of your project/session file (if mixed with DAW), or jpgs of hardware settings (if mixed on console + OBG).

File Labeling

It is VERY IMPORTANT that you prepare your attachments before uploading them to this thread. Please make sure you name them correctly. We all know by now that the song you mixed is Señor by Myles Vincent. But what we need to know now is WHO mixed it, so for convenience sake for everybody participating (98 participants possibly submitting a mix !!!!) we want you to name your files by your screen name followed by -MIX or -INFO.

We also want to know which MiX iT! event you did this mix (Like MiX iT! 1, or 2, or etc...) so in the future we can tell them apart.

So, if your name is 'Mixerman' for example we want you to name your attachments like this:

MiXiT2_Mixerman-MIX.m4a for your Mix

and

MiXiT2_Mixerman-INFO.zip for your zipped info files

This way we can all easily find the relevant mixes once the discussions start.


AAC Files (aka MP4 or M4A)

We prefer AAC (aka MP4) files to MP3. They sound better, use more efficient data compression, + are much better @ handling audio frequencies above 16 kHz. If you care about sound, you should be using AAC files instead of MP3. You can read more about them here.

AAC Encoding Applications:

foobar2000 (requires Nero AAC Codec)
Winamp
RealPlayer
iTunes

Attachments

We want ONE post per participant. This post should contain 2 attachments (your mix & your zipped session info).

In the Advanced Text editor in 'reply' mode, you will see a section called Additional Options and within this section you will find a Manage Attachments button. When you push this button a pop up opens in which you can manage your uploads. Please make sure that all uploads are finished before you submit your post to this thread.


Discuss It: Parts 1 + 2

Remember, this time we are doing things somewhat differently. We will have two parts to the Discuss It phase. Initially, we will discuss all the mixes for a few days. But next week we will choose THREE mixes to focus on, dissecting + discussing them in much greater detail.

So, for Discuss It: Part 1, you can discuss anything you would like. But the main purpose is to find out which mixes you would like to discuss more in depth. And when the time comes to pick these three mixes, we would like to encourage you to choose mixes that may be very different from each other in their approach. In their style or platform used.

MiX iT! is 1st + foremost an educational event, + we feel mixes that are done in contrasting styles or using different platforms, will be more educational to compare to each other in Discuss It: Part 2. So, you may want to keep this in mind during your initial discussions.

Since there are potentially 98 different mixes for us to discuss, we believe if we tried to do that in the same thread with the posted mixes that it could become a bit confusing. So, our solution is to create a separate thread for discussion:

Discuss It: Part 1


We look forward to hearing all your mixes, reading about how you mixed them, + the discussion that will follow.

Thanx!
Chris + Charles

[CaptainHook]

I will have to add my session file to this post tomorrow when
i get back to the studio.

I mixed on PTHD with some outboard.

Didn't do anything special except move and copy some gat parts
in verse 2. Will go into more detail later if needed/wanted.

Looking forward to hearing the rest!

I see you've asked for a 192 AAC this time, sorry i did it at
160 like last time although my preference is 192 also.

*File updated to 192 instead of 160

[Evil Jack]

PT 7.4 M-Powered w/Waves Platinum/Massey/Digirack etc

I have a slightly blocked left ear due to a cold - but I did my best!
I normally mix on PT HD, but I decided to try this mix on my little Macbook/M-powered system to see what could be done at home - sitting at the family dining table during the holidays, in-between meals!
Dug out my old Harbeth Xpression monitors and listened to some Killers and Coldplay tracks on them to acclimatise my ears (I'm more used to Genelecs these days)


General
Lots of editing before I even touched any plugins just to get a good arrangement going.
I happen to like the editing process, because it alows me to get famililiar with the individual tracks quickly. It's pretty much the only time I listen to the tracks soloed.

Drums
Drums were fairly well recorded, although I'd have pushed the drummer for a better take - he drags a bit in a couple of places, especially when he gets back on the hihats.
No room mics, so I toyed with the idea of leaving the tom spill and using it as some kind of ambience track, but didn't bother in the end.
I missed my SSL plugins here but things turned out OK really. Big high mid/high lift on the snare!
No sample replacement - just grouped the tracks and tidied up the timing in a couple of places.
Couldn't do much multing on this LE system (no ADC)
I duplicated one side of the OHs and distorted it to get some grunge going especially in those tom parts.

Guitars
I really thought this tune needed more guitars, so I set about creating proper L&R rhythm gitars in the choruses by copying a part from another section and pasting as needed. Added some delay to the lead guitars and Ren EQ to get rid of that horrible honk on the 'Mike' rhythm guitar.
I ran some of the verse/m8 guitars through Guitar Rig just to try and get a bit more personality into them - not sure if I succeeded or not really....

Bass
Should've spent a bit longer on this really - I ditched the 'CON' track and just added some distortion to the mic track, and tried to make the DI track fat and warm. Ren comp on both and eq to taste

Keys
It's unusual to find mono keyboard tracks in this day and age! - I decided to copy and duplicate parts to stereoise them where necessary. Touch of Hall and 1/4 note delay to thicken them. Digi Smack compression and a bit of high lift with Ren EQ.

Vox
Renvox/ Digi de-esser...I felt that the vocal didnt really need doubling in the verses so muted the 2nd track.
Added a slapback/plate and some 1/8 and 1/4 note delay in the busier parts. Duplicated and delayed the 3rd vox track in the last chorus and copied it back to the 2nd chorus too.

Misc
"Cos i'm dead set on this"....I had to edit the ending. It just bugged me so much...In a real mix session I'd discuss this with the band, and if they disagreed with me I'd still do the edit.

[norman_damon]

Here it be. (Charles kindly gave me permission to post even though I missed the sign up cut off date).

Nuendo. Uad plugs + a few outboard pieces.

Had fun. Would mix again. A+++++++

[AngelBomb]

Ok, Here goes.

"Mixed" on ProTools MPowered 7.4, MacPro Quad 2.66.

Well, this little exercise has been an....interesting.... one for me. First I turn on the Topaz board......PSU craps out on me. Shit. So i decided to go competely ITB out of necessity. So I start butchering this baby up, basically seeing how far I can push it and call it a night. Next morning I wake up with the worst ear infection that has ever existed. In all time. No shit. Trip to doctors, cancell 2 sessions, give up on doing any more to this.

So here you have my butchered Mix and Session. Hopefully I'll be able to pull this thing up again and finish it up once my ear get back to normal.

Enjoy! (hopefully more than I have )

Josh

[nizzle]

Ptools 7 HD3. ITB

Waves/ URS/ Digi/ Massey/ Phoenix Plugs. Pretty straight forward.

No Arrangement changes.


-t

[tnelson494]

Was fun.....wasn't the best time to do it but still was fun. Mixed at my home studio on Sonar 4,used most the Sonitus plugs and a little psp vintage warmer.Used Lexicon psp42 Delays mostly with a little room from Sir (an eventide impulse firecracker i believe).
I listened to a bit of U2 before i started so thats probly my excuse for all the Delay .My duaghter didn't have school for the whole time so it was 20 min here and there and early morning coffee jitered mixing would liked to have just sat down with it for a bit just couldn't get that tom sitting right but o well here it is.

[chrisj]

Wheee!

Logic 8, ITB with plugins.

Edit- you can't make an AAC file in Amadeus with the suffix '.aac' and have it work in iTunes. Gah! Plus, I too was using the previous mixit's data rate to get my file ready before the thread was made, and I too got caught flatfooted at 160k.

FIXED, with m4a file at 192K. Uploading the fix now.

[annex2]

Done in the box with Nuendo 3.

I liked the Arrangement and did not want to take any liberties with this and also did not use any samples. I did very little EQing except for some drums and normal high pass filtering on the usual suspects. I put a little de-ess on the vox and a slight dip at 8k. Oh, I guess I did a little EQing on the bass too (slight dip at 125 Hz and a low pass filter).

Yep, I went and did it….I added a little phaser on the intro snare fill.

I chose to blend the bass DI and the condenser mic. I muted the 57 throughout.

I was really missing a room mic for the drums so I did something a little neat. I duplicated the tom track and shifted the wave by approximately one 16th note behind. I then squashed it with a comp/lim. This provided a little ambient thing for the whole drum kit and also made the section where drummer was playing 8th notes on the tom come alive a little bit. It is almost like he was now playing subtle 16th notes on the “tom ride” section.

I also duplicated the snare and also “side shifted” the wave a tiny tiny bit. I squashed this one as well and blended with the original dynamic snare wave.

For Vox, I did a subtle doubling thing in the louder sections and found that a long DDL worked well. I used a 520 ms and 416 ms delay at different times.

For the guitars, I panned some a lil left and some a lil right. I inserted a little RoomWorks verb on the stereo guitar group channel.

Mostly, I just tried to capture the vibe of the band and make it rock.

Thanks for taking the time everyone!

[DeMontague]

This was actually a lot of fun.

Platform
My setup was as Moist Pro as they come, partly by choice, but mostly because I am only a spare time doodler.

I often use Cubase SX 2 with a bunch of plugins I really shouldn't have spent money on. Lately though I have been having fun with FL Studio ( ) and my collection of freeware plugins ( ), which is pretty much what I used for this mix.

So, my setup (in the pristine surroundings of... my bedroom) was:

Echo Layla 24/96
Behringer ( ) B2031A Truth Monitors
AMD Athlon64 3500+, 2GB RAM

FL Studio 7 (no, really)
Blockfish compressor (free)
Floorfish gate (free)
GeneComp and GranComp compressors by Buz (free)
FuzzPlus2 by Audiodamage (free)
Rubytube by Silverspike (free)
Fruity Parametric EQ 2 (built in to FL Studio)
Fruity Love Philter (built in to FL Studio)
Amplitube (mostly for the reverb)
T-Racks Compressor (I know, I know, but it was only 1 instance, on the 2-buss)

Approach
I did the mix in an afternoon about 10 days ago, and so far have resisted the temptation to revisit anything.

Being a part time doodler, I took a "minimalist" approach - all I did was try not to screw up the source material. I seldon listen to music in this style, so I didn't have any grand vision of how the song should sound, nor any real inclination to edit the performance. Instead I tried to emphasise what I liked about each part in each section.

I dropped the guitar part in the "growing up" section, but otherwise made no edits or re-arrangements. That said, I did automate things from section to section, rather than "set and forget" for the whole song.

I did nothing to the bass other than pan the three sources hard left, hard right and center respectively. Lazy, maybe, but I really didn't think it needed any compression, and my experiments here with EQ were giving a flat, wimpy sound.

I spent the most time compressing and EQing the drums. Mine are a lot less crushed than those in the original mix, although hopefully not too wimpy (when I tried to emulate the level of drum-crushing found in the original mix it sounded like shite). Also, I'm used to working with sampled drumkits, so the bleed certainly made things interesting.

Finally, I will own up to having an L2 on the 2-buss. But, in my defence, the threshold is at 0dB, the limiting only ever kicks in on snare hits (not every snare hit, more like every third or fourth), and it never takes off more than half a dB. So I hope I am justified in thinking it is not "crushing" anything.

Now, I am really looking forward to seeing what all you guys have come up with, and maybe improving my own meagre skills!

Oh yeah, one more thing - no matter how I tried, I couldn't manage a decent tom sound without killing the rest of the drum sound; the toms were either too loud and cardboard-y or completely buried. I eventually settled on the latter.

[JFranze]

I mixed this one at my home studio:

Pro Tools LE (002)
Mac

Plug-ins used:

Digi Rack
Waves Renaissance Bundle
Waves SSL Bundle
Bomb Factory
Joemeek
Smack
Massy

I had a blast...

Thanks,

~J

[ArgyleSox64]

Delta 10/10, Mackie HR824 monitors
Samplitude 10 w/UAD/Samplitude/Tritonedigital/Line6GearBox plugs

Drums
I actually liked the overall drum sounds/vibe and used no samples or editing to the timing. Basic compression and eq on all drum tracks. Locked the kick and bass tracks together on bus using Samplitude compressor/limiter. New York Compression Aux on main drum bus to add some life. Also created two drum room aux’s. The first using Samplitudes room simulation plug. The second using GearBox guitar amp plug to create a trashing sounding room that I automated to create a sense of energy at strategic parts of the song.
Bass
Used the bass57 track and GearBox plug
Guitars
Tons of effects (delay, chorus, etc) and panning. On the “Seniorguitarmike2” track I used the UAD CS-1 to make it almost sound like a keyboard track. Volume and pan automation to keep things moving.
Keys
Mostly spread the stereo field on each track by panning hard to one side and crossfeeding to the opposite side with 18-28ms delay.
Vox
The main vocal track LA2A compression, Cambridge & pultec eq. I choose to keep the second vocal track going the entire song with some drastic processing on it using 1176LN in all-buttons-in mod(slammed), Gearbox guitar amp for distortion and edge, and thinned out with EQ.
Master Bus
Precision eq high pass at 30HZ & slight boost on highs. Also colortonePRO (fetLimiter preset) to warm it up, bus compression set to 4db reduction fast attack, 300ms Rel. I also choose to put some reverb on the master bus, which I felt worked well for this song.

I also experimented using one of the guitar tracks reversed and some modulation to end the song but I’m not sure if I like it? Thanks everyone for your time and Charles for MLR (it's had a huge impact on my mixing skills)!

[Vonraddatz]

Here's mine!!!

ProTools LE 7.3, Mbox2Pro, KRK RP8.
Plugs: Waves (mostly Ren), Digi, McDsp, SSL, Antares Tube(VSTwrapped).

No samples, some stereo details, buss mixing, no editing except cleaning.

Drums: as usual, with an extra comp, looking for character.
Bass: some Dist in 57, FX in cond.
Guitars: EQ basically, and 1 tone twick.
Keys and string: EQ, comp.
Vocals: Multicomp and EQing.

Room, Gated, Hall, Plate, Dlys, and 1 delay with phaser.


Thanks: The Womb, Kagi Media, Auraleo and the rest of you!!!

[MicTayler]

Ok had good fun here's the play by play.

-Mixed on PT le with all stock digi plugs.
-Parallel comp on the drums.
-Sample enhanced all drums, including room samples.
-Edited the outro in half.

Thats it really, a pretty stock standard mix. Found the lack of balance a bit tricky and the bass was hard to get right in my bedroom but pretty happy with the result.

[danbee]

Here's my mix.

Mixed in Reaper again with my usual compliment of plugins, plus a couple I was trying out.

I did a few things different in this mix. Firstly I mixed into a compressor, which is a first for me. And I liked the result

I probably put more work into the bass than anything else. I muted both the DI and the 57 tracks as I felt the condensor track had the sound I was looking for already. I bussed it to two other tracks, one was hipassed and fed into a guitar amp simulator to give it some subtle crunch and the other was pitch shifted up an octave. These were then automated under the main bass track to lift in up and give it some definition in places.

The rest was fairly standard fair really. No arrangement changes, except some cleanup of parts.

[maartenl945]

Here's mine.

Platform
Cubase 4.1 on PC, using mostly Liquidmix, UAD and Powercore plugins. External bus compressor used.

Mix - Basic Idea
I tried not to go too much for the tempting 80's new wave sound but tried to give it more of contemporary sound instead, although given the arrangement and parts, it will still have some of the characteristics of that era.
Another attempts in my mix is to give it a bit of a raw live vibe, as opposed to smoothing out everything.

Mix - Technical
I tried to implement this basic idea by:

• Adding sparkle/sizzle to some of the parts via EQ
• Avoiding too much of a low-mid (dark) build up via EQ
• Going very easy with reverb on the vox (although some of the other parts contain plenty)
• Volume automating section transitions to enhance the dynamics of the song
• Roughing up the bass part with an extra layer of distortion in high energy parts of the song
• Mixing in some snare and kick samples with the original sounds

I'm curious to find what the rest of you did to this song.

[Bonnybilly]

Hey,

Mixed on PTLE 7.1 (music production toolkit), Tannoy Reveals.
Main Plugs - Focusrite Liquid Mix (various emulations), Massey, TL Space etc. SSL buss comp (emu).

I used the national, interpol and the killers as a starting point.

I'm ok with my results. The bass had some crazy reso about 125khz so I got rid of the two mic tracks and I would've liked the drums to be recorded in a good room but I thought it was a good arrangment and a good vocal performance.

I really killed that violin and made it sound like a distant guitar, much better! I added a few bits of ear candy here and there and got a good lock with the bass and drums. I added a big kick out sample and a little extra snare.

all the best.

[24bit441]

Initially mixed in PTLE. Later, I took stems out and re-mixed some junk I didn't like in Digital Performer.

Stuff I still like about my mix: adding reverse verb to "1,2,3,4" and ping pong delay on the guitars.

Enjoy.

[Baeli]

Hey All,

Here's my mix and a zip containing my Protools 7.x session file.
I had a great time playing around with this track. Thanks to all for allowing me to participate.

DAW - Protools 7.x, used Mbox Mini and 002 console.

Plugins - Waves, Oxford, Digidesign, CSR, McDsp, IkMultimedia.

I heard this tune as a Drums and Bass crasher, I tried for this feel. I worked to pull some of the cymbal feel from the overheads to try and get a crashing feel. I used different sounds on all three bass tracks to get a blend that changes a little from time to time. I took some liberties on moving parts around to help fill the track a little. I went through three diffenent Vox setups and would still be tweaking if I had more time.

Baeli

[meLoCo_go]

Here's my mix, it's aac 160 kbps, 'cause my connection is not so perfect...
Mixed in reaper with stock plugins and some free stuff.
Used Andy Sneap samples for snare, other than that no samples.
Biggest fun was sorting out arrangement. Song kinda revealed itself as I mixed it, nice.