Listening to the re-re-re-remastered now and really digging it.  High end nicely in control--and as others have said, a wee bit off the bass would probably be nice.  My little desktop speakers with a sub are booming it out big time.  Great improvement regardless.   

Hey Beeps. I very much like all you have done here. The mix is very crisp and new elements enter the mix cleanly and distinctly. Each passage feels like its own element and transitions smoothly to the next. I like it a lot.
 
As the bass already got mentioned, I scratched my head a bit since I didn't notice this and wanted to share the funny part of 'why' with you. Last week I was messing around with surround sound and somehow grabbed "What's Forever For?" The initial bass in that song is so overwhelming that it was rattling everything in my cockpit, so I max attenuated the bass on my system. After seeing the bass comments I set it back to zero attenuation, and yours is "more apparent" but nothing rattles (key point for me). I actually expect a bigger bass presence in metal, but do not expect (or appreciate it) to be overwhelming in a ballad. I think your bass fits the genre of this piece fine; sure, it is higher but by no means overwhelming.
 
Lastly, I want to thank you again for starting this thread. The details in this thread are invaluable, and I am thankful to everyone who participated (especially Danny). This is a very cool thread for a "here to there" progression.

I like the bass. I am a huge Rush fan however. I like to hear it!

Yes... I did read your original post in the Songs forum, Wookie. I just wasn't sure how I could really reply to it. I know it's not pro level but you have to remember I am still kind of a beginner. Metal also has a tendency to be a little squished and hectic by nature too and admittedly I did really stack up the guit tracks (which I mentioned)... perhaps that's contributing to your impressions. Not making excuses and I thank you for listening. I did most definitely take note of your concerns as they were along the lines of what others have said as well and have done what I could to correct them with my current skillset.
 
I've just finished another version that I think is a little cleaner and not quite as boomy. I'm about to run it through the same mastering settings I used before and tweak it as best I can. Check back a little later and let me know if you think it's a little clearer to your ears if you get a chance.
 
Cheers.

Hey Beeps, good job on controlling things a bit better. Like you thought, the bass is out of control now with low end on my stuff. This is one of those situations where you have to decide whether to drop the low end in the bass or just drop the bass level. In this situation, the bass low end is the problem. Bass guitar doesn't have as much low end as you think it does. When you listen to a mix, you're listening to the sum of everything adding to the over-all low end. I'm still hearing some pumping and the cymbals still sound weird like they are comped to heck. This is probably contributing to what Wookie may be hearing with the "squished" comment.
 
Next, when he mentions "little definition" this is true because there are good mids missing in this as well as good low mids. The guitars are still too stripped making them not have the definition they could or should maybe have. It's like your missing the elemental frequencies that make mixes more defined and big. Sennheisers are famous for this too...meaning they sort of add things that aren't there as the mids are weird on them. The HD 280 pro's I have here wouldn't help *me* mix anything worth a nickel.
 
The guitars are decent, but just seem to have the mids gone and are way too razor sharp. I guess what I'm trying to say is...the mix has no body now. If you take away the low end in the bass, we're left with a mix that sounds like an AM radio for the most part. You did control the hiss of the cymbals and turned them down a bit in level which is super important.
 
The newer mix (I started writing this before I heard the bass fix mix) is the same but with better control over the bass. Everything still sounds way too sharp and abrasive to me bro. There's no body other than the bass like I said. But I like that you controlled the bass rumble better. If I were you, here's what I'd do...
 
Lower the low end on the bass and try to add some good mids and low mids on the other instruments. Bass has less lows in it than you know, so take some more sub low out or high pass a bit more. I can feel your bass more than I can literally hear the distinctiveness in the bass. It's not about just feeling it....it needs to have an identity and needs to be heard a bit more than felt in my opinion.
 
The cymbals are better...still a bit sharp/bitey for me and are a bit loud. Remember, they are percussive accents, they shouldn't be as loud as a snare or kick drum. You want them to be heard but you don't want them dominating like you're getting now. Still some sustaining cymbals that are lasting way too long which sound like excessive compression.
 
The snare is inconsistent. I can hear it pretty good in a few spots, then it totally blends in with the hats from 1:20 to 1:37 and barely sounds like a snare. So that section definitely needs some work.
 
The guitars are razor sharp and biting too. I know you like that sound, but like I said, if you removed the bass in this, you have no body anywhere else and you could deal with some more body on the guitars as well as the drum kit. They just sound like nothing but high end. Almost on the border of a guitar into an amp sim without speaker emulation. They have no thrust...no punch, just high end sizzle.
 
So those are the things I'd work on...but only if you yourself can hear them. This is definitely good enough for a bedroom studio demo but there's definitely room for improvement all across the board. You're sort of going in the right direction but need to find out why you're not hearing that the other instruments sound super thin and are lacking body/definition in the low mids and mids. I hope some of this helps.....keep at it man! :)
-Danny

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Problem there ston?

WARNING: The following post is mostly just blathering and personal thoughts about... uh... life, stuff, things, poop. Nothing particularly technical or interesting. ;-)
 
Hi, Danny. Sorry I didn't get the finished version up before you stumbled upon the the bass heavy mix. I was hoping to avoid wasting your time with that but I guess in a way it's good because you heard the boominess/excessive low end too which means I'm not crazy.
 
With the stripped out mids I'm not quite sure what the issue is. It could be one of many things or a combination of things. My first thought is maybe it's the master EQ again. To me the premaster sounded a little hairy and kind of harsh throughout the mid range but after running it through the BT Pultec plug and fiddling with it I found it to be more under control and smooth. I a/b it a LOT with the unfiltered version and two other eq'd versions I came up with and the original settings I had from last time (the ultra bassy one) seemed to be the right one. So much so that one of the alternate eq settings I dialed in blind ended up almost exactly the same as the original settings when I compared the two.
 
However I suspect there may be some darker and more complicated demons at work here. One being the absolute lack of equipment used while recording this. I know a good tech with a good sim and a good toolset should be able to work with almost any signal but I don't think I'm that good yet and the only high quality tools I have came with Sonar. Everything else is kind of middle of the road or crap. The guitars and bass were all direct line in to the interface and while the Scarlett does have a nice input signal it's still just line in. Next go around I'm going to try some different setups involving the  XLR outputs on my Line 6 head (which is still pretty crummy but it gives a much better clean tone base signal compared to straight line in), my old US Mackie mixer (nice pres and I can give the signal some body with the eq section and perhaps some bite with the trim) and trying out micing some of my actual amps which unfortunately are all transister but should give some more throw. Speaking of throw I've already started learning a lot more about TH2 and traditional guitar mic setups which translate VERY well to the cab section of the sim. With this tone I just kind of left the cab alone because... well I was quite sure what the heck it all meant, lol. I also have the full version now with some much nicer models and and better FX. I could have swapped all that out while remixing this but I wanted to treat it as though someone had sent me printed material to work with (which is why I bounced the drums to audio too). I basically tied my own hands for the sake of FORCING myself to take something crummy and making it acceptable because with the types of artists I'll probably end up working with that's exactly how things will go down. Dudes with some kind of multitracker in their basement sending me their stuff because they can't afford anyone else... lol. Basically demos and sh*t to start with. I actually have a huge backlog of that kind of stuff of my own bands here too that I have to put together eventually... but I'm getting a little off track there. Point is I really need to work on getting my input signals sounding better so I'm not straining to just get things sounding acceptable. It's definitely going to be an uphill battle because my mics are low grade/wrong kind, I don't have proper splitters for stuff, I don't have any fancy tube preamps or rack gear to condition my input signals, my one good guitar amp is an ancient transistor amp that is indeed quite nice but it's certainly not very versatile and there's just something... I don't know, kind of flat/weird about it... it's really hard to dial in to EXACTLY what I want. I have a couple little practice amps I might play around with but again transistor stuff and they're kind of cheapos with limited outputs. Even my guitars are kind of hard to work with for my style and they have some mechanical issues as well.
 
Now these aren't excuses and it certainly doesn't deter me like... at ALL because I am OBSESSED with this stuff now. It just means I'm going to have to get super creative for a while with what I've got until some cash starts flowing in again from somewhere. Sure it's a pain but I don't think I'd learn as much as a guy who starts out with all sorts of fancy gear at his disposal. I've seen dudes like that flat out refuse to even make an attempt saying it's "impossible!"... but nothing in this realm, IMO, is impossible. There may be compromises here or there and maybe certain stuff won't win any engineering awards but as I mentioned earlier some of my favorite recordings are crummy old demos and live stuff.
 
I aspire to be the ultimate turd polisher. Right now I'm more of a turd buffer or perhaps more aptly, assistant to the turd buffer's secretary. ;-p
 
Despite all that you know I aspire to great things and certainly don't accept "good enough" as something to aspire to and I think maybe that's why you and so many others here have taken so much time out for me and put up with my severe lack of education and plethora of eccentricities. In this case though I think just hearing you say that even for a "bedroom demo" that this is "good enough" is an achievement. It's time to move on, put some of those other plans I mentioned into practice and move forward. This turd is as polished as it's going to get for now without somehow pooping it out from scratch again (sorry... guess that's gross but the analogy was already in play.... lol).
 
Now it's about minimizing compromises. I know the program, I know the tools, I have a rough idea of the techniques so now it's a matter of using all that to get what's in my head out and on to tape. A good example of a compromise in this sense is that area you mentioned from 1:20-1:37. What I was hearing in my head was the solo being all ethereal with a phaser/chorus with the backing tracks remaining relatively untouched. Like the guitar was floating around disparate and scattered through space and then when the fast solos kick in it all comes slamming together into an ultra fine point like BAM! What ended up happening is I put the bloody phaser on and for some reason it completely washed out all the backing tracks and it sounded like ass... but I HAD to get that phaser part out of my head. So I dicked around and dicked around until I had that solo cloned and panned left/right slightly and at one point had a send going to a center panned bus (not sure if I took that out, put the phaser on one side and set it extremely low. It sucked. You can barely hear the phaser effect but it still kind of screws up the backing tracks. If I tried to push the phaser any farther it just turned into a mess. So, yeah... a severe compromise from what I was envisioning and what I could do in the real world.
 
And that's actually a theme throughout this and pretty much anything I've ever recorded. I've got all these great ideas in my head but I just don't have the experience or know how to do it so I try to find an acceptable middle ground. If I were sitting in your studio I could probably tell you what I'm hearing and you'd probably have it pumping out of the speakers within a few minutes. THAT is what I want to be able to do and although there were still a lot of compromises made here there were far less and when I wanted to try to get something out of my head I was just sitting there scratching my head. I knew what tool to use and where to start fiddling which is an ENORMOUS improvement than the old "twist things until it makes the noise gooderer" days.
 
Anyway, that's a whole lot of hot air to just say "I'm just gonna keep trying". Guess I'm just getting my own thoughts focused on what's next because there is going to be a LOT of trial and error in the coming months especially now that there is a whole new set of tools with X3 and the fact I actually have enough room to start using some of my hardware.
 
Also now that this is done I should start reintroducing some daily theory studies again so I should be able to get some more of that other stuff off to you.
 
Thanks again, Danny. I owe ya.
 
And again thanks to everyone else. No more re re re re re re mixes on this (lol). This one's going in the vault.
 
Cheers.

It sounded pretty good to me...and then Danny shows up with his pro ears. I'll have to listen to these again through my studios monitors.

I was thinking, beepster, that you could try using a Carnegie chart. It's a chart that tells you what notes are what frequency. It's not something to totally rely on but it can help in isolating certain things. One thing I've noticed is that you can't just use one size fits all EQ settings. Each key will have it's own set of frequencies than any other. The chart can help. Ultimately, it's up to your ears though.