Mastering Guys (and Gals): Is this mix ready for mastering or would you send it back?

Hello, everyone. This post is directed mostly at those who do mastering and those who get mixes prepared for mastering. Of course all are welcome to listen, comment and offer suggestions. I will get right to the meat of it though and say this has been my self imposed mixing exercise/exam for the year (based on all the advice I have gotten here) and I would like to know from the mastering guys whether this mix is something they could work with or they would send back to the mix engineer. And if it IS something they could work with would it be one of those situations where they need to really reach to make it happen or if it is something they would accept as a "good" mix.
 
There has been absolutely NOTHING added as far as master bus effects. This is the pure -6db mix (aside from a limiter for clip protection that only triggered once for about half a second at a loud accent so the sound should be completely unaffected by it aside from that one instance). I am unsure how much Soundcloud alters the sound but after adjusting levels it seems kind of sort of true to the original file (I think).
 
Here is the track (let me know if the link doesn't work).
 
https://soundcloud.com/user432042324/kjerlighet-beeps-remix-sept-14-trimmed-premaster
 
I am posting it here in the Techniques tab because this mix is based on all the wonderful advice I've received here from the generous pros and I'm hoping for completely harsh and brutal input. I am not done with this track yet (I have creative type stuff I want to try) but realized this is representative of a basic mix I might send to a mastering house AND that I've reached the threshold of what I can do at this point in time at my current skill/knowledge level for the overall "sound". So I'm reaching out to you, my informal teachers.
 
Be viciously honest... please. I have no ego (at least in my pursuit of quality product) and am only here to learn as some of you may know.
 
I will provide some more details about the song/production in my next post but wanted to get it up for folks to listen to.
 
This is NOT my composition (aside from some of the ornamentation). It was written (and the MIDI programmed by) forum user Jarsve but I did play all the guitars. All sounds, except for the vocals (which were recorded by Jarsve and performed by the lovely NMR vocalist who goes by many names), were drawn from stuff that came with Sonar and was totally mixed by yours truly.
 
Jarsve graciously allowed me to use his source material (original MIDI files and the recorded vocals) to do my own mix. I will post his mix (which is available for download at reverbnation) in a moment.
 
Humbly yours,
 
Beepwad.
 
;-)

Here is a link to the Songs forum thread for the composer's (Jarsve) mix/release...
 
http://forum.cakewalk.com/New-song-quotKj%C3%A6rlighetquot-m3272019.aspx
 
Cheers!!!
 
 

Thanks Beeps.  Yes I am well.  Before I master an album it is the first thing I do.  It tells me a lot.  How much processing if any has been used and how loud the track is as well.
 
I do an accurate VU rms reading against my reference level.  That tells me how far I have to raise the rms level of the mix to match what the client is wanting.  And hopefully that will be a respectable level.  But unfortunately even with the concept that we should be mastering less loud many people are still pushing for very loud masters which I have not being liking so much.  It can still be a battle now.
 
 

well, the vocals are buried.
not everything can occupy the same space at the same time

I was hoping you'd stop by too, bats (howdy). Yeah, I have some extra plans for the vocals too and I was listening back to this today (I exported yesterday) and thought they were a tad too low.
 
Actually the solution I was going to use to remedy that way based on the "delay bus" comment you made a few weeks ago as opposed to just cranking the level.
 
You pretty much nailed one of the things that is unfinished/bugging me. When I bring it up as is it is too much/too dry over top of everything else.
 
Anyway... glad you liked the tune.
 
Bass/drums okay? This was mixed to be a little guitar heavy (it's gonna go in my session portfolio).
 
Thanks for checking it out.
 
Cheers.

+1 to batsbrew. I have only listened on a cell thus far which is a good litmus test, but the vocals are low with competition. Harmonies can be overridden by the main content if space is not made for them (the BGV are very low). Bear in mind this is mono on a crappy speaker.

I will take another listen when at my DAW, but wanted to chime in quick so not to lose the post.

Hi beeps. For matsering it is fine in terms of levels. It seems to be sitting around -16 dB rms and it gets up to -14 dB rms after that loud hit around 2.20  So there is room to get a little louder.
 
I think it is very full on and there is a lot going on. (great though) Vocals are a little buried. The drums sound is a little drum machine or mechanical like so I would be trying hard to still keep that feel but somehow make the drums much more real. The thing with the drums is that feel is so fast and intense it will be harder to manage everything else and fit everything else into the drum feel. But it should not stop you though. It is almsot as if the drums are taking up the whole space. But because you have so much extra rtuff going on, they are being pushed back a little. This type of music and feel is hard to get it all in there. Not easy to mix a track like this.
 
I am just wondering if there is a way to edit the kick groove and drop some of them out (creating a little more space) but still create that intense fast driving groove at the same time. Not sure. If I were mixing a track like this I would get the drums and bass and vocals happening right up front and in your face then get the guitars in after. What I notice on the best heavy metal type tracks is despite the guitars being loud and in your face the drums never seem to get lost either.
 
It is 44.1K and 24 bit on my system too. Great track though and it sounds like you have spent a lot of time on it too! Thanks for sending.
 
 
 
 

Jeff, brother... you have made me a happy Beeps. You are describing some issues that I was aware of, made plans for (and learned how to enact them) but have as of yet implemented like the "lazy" dumbleturd I am.
 
Particularly the mechanical drums thing. The drums are of course MIDI generated as is the bass part. Since they are both MIDI and rather mechanical they are likely triggering TOO spot on and thus kind of cancelling each other out a little (despite my efforts to EQ them out of the way of each other). Of course live performances wouldn't suffer as badly from that (I think). I was going to ache over humanizing the drums so they scatter ever so slightly (and the bass too). I wasn't really going to remove too much aside from altering some of the performance (based on my personal drummy dummy experience/taste) but left the original composition intact for this exercise.
 
The other thing I was contemplating was (on top of the humanizing) was maybe adding some very subtle "ducking" between the kick and bass and maybe even rhythm guits... or even going ultra crazy if I could figure it out and applying ducking ONLY to conflicting frequencies (so the kick would only knock down the volume of the most important freqs it resides in of both the bass and maybe guits instead of lowering the whole level of those tracks).
 
Of couse that's some lofty shiz for a n00b to accomplish but it is some stuff I was thinking about.
 
With the vox... yes, I should have done what I set out to do with those so they could stand out proudly without just sticking out oddly (which was the dillemma I was faced with in the mix). Problem is they are too dry as it is I think and I need to get a proper stereo spread on the main harmony so it's not scrapping it out with the main vocal... then they can both come up a bit and then the background accent vox along with them (which sound weird too high in comparison to the main vox obviously).
 
At least that's my muddled thinking on that problem but I think it will require inserting a delay bus (which I should have done already but was hoping my reverb busses were handling it... they aren't). The thing about a delay bus is I think it will be epicly useful for some of the lead guit parts too so I don't know why I've been dragging my feet on that. I got a little obsessed with the "church bell" break down I think (LOTS of problems there and I'm still unhappy with that section) and got a little impatient.
 
Anyway... thank you for the ears and eyes on this, man. Very helpful. I'm gonna see what Danny's up to tomorrow maybe and get him to rip me a new one on this (or maybe wait until I fix a couple things first).
 
If however this is almost reasonably passable as a mix for mastering (despite the low vox) then at least I know I'm going in the right direction in general.
 
My concern was I was fooling myself and that there was no WAY this was close to a useable mix.
 
Cheeers!

Beeps I think it is very passable and very close to a good mix and fine for mastering.  It is full on that is all and with these types of things there are more things to think about.  Danny would be a great person to get feedback from too.  I don't do too many mixes like this. (Just as well! )
 
You have done a lot of work on this and it shows.

Hey Beeps, I sat down an listened to this on a proper system, and the vocals are clearer (go figure) - collapsing that track to mono via the phone had knocked the vocals down considerably. Jeff's points are good, and I agree that the levels seem fine, but it is very busy (dominated by drums/guitar). Overall this is very well done.
 
Regarding the vocals specifically, it seems the lead vocal is spread/"stereoized" which makes its competition with the guitar more difficult. R-Mix may be the best tool to get this across visually - if you look at the lead vocal track and find a shape that encompasses 90% of that vocal with the outside set to -60dB, then copy R-Mix to the master buss, you can hear its competition easily (it seems the drums are competing as well, but hard to tell).
 
This is not my genre, so not sure how the vocals are "expected," but things you may want to try:

1. Remove some stereoization and play with gain on the vocal. This may be enough, but not sure. Width unto itself is not bad, but it is competing with a lot of guitars. Again, R-Mix is a good way to "see" this.
2. For this specific situation, I would not get too heavy with mirror EQ, since it is "always on" unless you have a dynamic EQ available and will cut into the tone. I am more prone to ducking the guitars so that they would dynamically lower/return to make room for the vocals as they went. As you have multiple tracks of guitars at play, you may not need to duck all of them either.

 
 

Beeps, I'm not in the right place to really comment as I'm stuck on a lappy that doesn't paint the right picture. But based on what I heard....here is what I CAN say. Will listen again on better speakers when I can...try to send me an mp3 when you're ready....192kb at the minimum.
 
Female vocals are hard depending on the voice...especially this lady because she almost sings in a falsetto fashion without much "push" to her delivery. Vocals like hers are always going to be a bit of a challenge because they are so thin. When you try to thicken them up, they walk on something. Trust me....I know all too well. LOL! You just have to ride the fader and automate the best you can while compressing to keep her in check.
 
Robotic drums: This is one of the downfalls of programming or using loops that are created from being programmed as opposed to when someone on a V-Drums kit creates the midi loops. Huge difference. That said, anytime you get a kick drum going nuts like that, unless you use a major drum module like BFD, Superior or EZD2, you are going to have to really tweak the drums. The reason for the robotics.....well, there are a few. I'll list some.
 
1. Like I said above, programmed vs. played for real.
 
The fix: You can hi-lite the kick drum track via piano roll and run a "vary velocity" CAL file. This will allow you to set a starting point (lowest velocity hit) midi velocity as well as an ending (highest allowed) velocity note. This will make things more realistic. But you have to be careful or you can mess things up. So clone the midi track and experiment this way you don't lose the original. What I like to do after cloning is, I select the kick drum and then "process' then "scale velocity" set 127 and 127. This jacks the kicks all the way up through the entire song. From there, keep the kick notes hi-lited, select process, run CAL and look for the vary velocity CAL file. Load it up and it will ask you questions. Set the lowest at something like 100 for starters, the highest at 127 and execute it. See how things sound there...it may help quite a bit. If it doesn't, undo and try again. OR....you manually experiment with each kick drum note and set them until they sound right.
 
2. The drum module selected: This really makes a difference. Though drum modules like Session Drummer and even EZD 1 and Addictive Drums are good....they lack the samples needed to sound realistic. When someone uses BFD 2 or 3, they are drawing from an insane sample pool to where you will NEVER get a robotic hit because you have like too many possibilities within the sample pool to get the same hit twice. The same hits repeating is what causes roboticism (as I like to call it) as well as same note velocities. If you saw a midi of a real drummer actually playing, you would understand things way better. Everything from ghost notes to human error make a midi drum sound more realistic. But the drum module REALLY makes the difference too. EZD 1 failed at this even with their expansion packs. But EZD2 is much better. So far I've not encountered any robotic stuff with EZD2. BFD 2 and 3 as well as Superior 2 are all perfect and will not robotisize when playing them live and are easier to make sound good when programming or using loops.
 
3. The speed of the piece: If you listen to break beat stuff done by drummers on a real kit, even real drums can sound fake when something is so fast. Certain double kick passages will just always have that sense of "fake" no matter what you do if the part is fast enough. Add in the 2 things I mentioned above and you can really have disadvantages in how real your drums sound.
 
4. Samples selected: Some drum modules do have a nice array of samples to draw from within their sample pools.....however, the sample you like may particularly be a bad one for faster material. Some toms sound great with single hits....throw in a fast fill and they sound like Simmons drums. Some snares are insane....until you do a snare roll. So you have to take all this stuff into consideration. You're always going to have limits and disadvantages until you can really understand what happens with instruments for real. Like I say....if you saw what a real drum midi looked like from someone that played say, a part of your song vs. what you have programmed....you'd probably scratch your head and say "huh?!?!" It looks much different than what gets programmed. That said, I don't expect you or anyone else to go out and buy a real kit or a V-Drums kit. My reason for bringing up the above is to explain what makes something real and what makes something more fake than it could or should be.
 
Next, and this is just a personal observation......to me, the lead guitar passages could be a little warmer. I come from the camp of having my rhythm guitars have a bit more cut and presence in the mix so they cut through. But I always low pass the high end out of my solos because excessive treble in a solo makes the solo (to me) a deterrent from the song due to harsher tones. Again, this is subjective and is just me and my personal take....but 'd warm up the solo sections. You want them to lash out, but they don't have to be so crispy in my opinion. That's one thing my lappy is good for....identifying high end. :)
 
Rhythms sound good....I like those tones. I can't hear any bass for obvious reasons....and I wasn't hearing anything too drastic with the widening you used on the vocals. That said, you do not want to put all vocals on the same vocal bus. Lead vocals and backing vocals should be processed differently. From the effects used to the eq/compression and everything else. I could have sworn you mentioned one vocal bus with the widening on there for all vox. If that is the case, change this.
 
Keep in mind, widening will only make a difference when you are using stereo effects and the widening should be used AFTER the special effects like verb, chorus, flange, phaser or anything special like that. Putting a widener on a track that just has compression or eq will do nothing and could even phase the vocals making them sound like @ss and you don't want that.
 
I like to process my vocals in the manner in which you did yours, but I do mine right on the track. Instead of creating buses for effects to my vocals, I literally process right on the track except for reverb in some cases. Why do I do this? So I can put a light widener at the end of my vocal chain. This allows my vocal to maybe spread from down the center to 25L/25R roughly. This gives the vocal a little more size....but is driven by the effects that are on the track. Instead of a widener, I may use a HAAS delay and eq it.....so many things you can do here. I just did a really cool version of Deep Purple's "Perfect Strangers" I can send you to show you how my voice sounds in a situation like that with the light widening and effects. Remember....less is more. It's the way you go about the "less" that makes it "more". :)
 
I'll listen on better stuff as soon as I can. I've been so busy with everything that I decided to do nothing from Saturday until tomorrow. LOL! I missed my girl and she lives with me.....go figure. Had a show Friday, worked Saturday morning for an emergency client and when I was done said....let's go wine tasting. I'm still tasting. Hahaha! So I'll be back to work tomorrow if you decide to send me anything. Talk soon and hope some of this helps for now.
 
-Danny

Read, absorbed and digested.
 
Ya, man. Have fun with your girl. That's important stuff. Gotta keep the lady happy and if drinking wine is what it takes... ain't nothin' wrong with that, eh? lol
 
Lots of stuff in your post going exactly along the lines of what I've been thinking but hesitant about for various reasons (mostly confidence related)... so that is encouraging.
 
I'll get this wave off to you tomorrow to peruse at your leisure. I'm currently giving this one a break and fixing up some simpler, earlier projects before going into phase two of this one (and ya... that was totally going to involve a massive overhaul of the drums... the CAL tip is awesome).
 
Alright... get on that wine and have an awesome weekend, bro. We'll talk soon!
 
Thanks.

I think there's been some fantastic advice given in the thread so far. 
 
I know you're against mastering it particularly hot but even a slight amount of crushing and possibly some stereo expansion will make the vocals and snare disappear, and any sustained sounds like the rhythm guitars will seem to be a lot louder in context.
 
I'd personally add a lot more crack and a little more gain to the snare (It's a tough line to walk since it's a sample, and more articulation can reveal a lot of the flaws in the sound as compared to a real snare). It'll seem too loud once you do this but it'll even out once everything is limited.
 
I'd take the bass down just a touch too, since I feel that's overpowering the low end of the guitars a bit (either that or carve out some more space in the bass in the lower mids so it's not stepping on the guitar too much), and the vocals... I think Danny really nailed it regarding "almost falsetto" female vocals. I'd personally thicken that up with some tube compression which is pushed a little into overdriving, just to give it some more hair, being careful to deess after because that'll bring up a lot of sibilance, and then I'd EQ a bit more mid into it. Then, overall, I'd bump up the gain for the same reason as the snare getting lost once the limiter changes the mix balance.
 
It's always tough to anticipate what's gonna happen to a mix once it hits mastering effects, so what I like to do if I'm sending out to a 3rd party mastering house (I usually master here) is strap a decent limiter over the master bus right at the end and crush it all down a bit, hear how it's affecting the relative instrument levels, and then once I'm happy, take it off for the export for the mastering engineer to do their job properly. Almost always you'll find so much stuff pop out of the mix that you'd never do without that limiter on there, but would otherwise be lost once it has the final work done on it if they actually weren't popping like that.
 
Anyway, just one guy's opinion. Good luck with it! 

Beepster
I personally am a conscientious objector in the so called "loudness wars"... which of course may seem completely bizzarre coming from a purveyor of metal. 

Good metal needn't be loud. You listen to it loud, but you don't have to master it loud.
 
Back in Black has a 12dB dynamic range. Black Sabbath's Paranoid comes in at 13dB, Metallica's Master of Puppets is 12dB. Iron Maiden's Fear of the Dark is 14dB, Even Rammstein's Live Aus Berlin and Dark Passion Play by Nightwish are 10dB.
 
Not exactly wide dynamics by broader standards, but much more dynamic than anything in the Top 40, which are often in the 6-8dB range. Metal often sounds louder than it is due to the level consistency of distorted guitars, but metal needs punch, and punch is the opposite of loudness.

Hi, guys. Sorry... I've been off tweedling around on my Linux partition all afternoon doing some personal cummunique stuff and catching up with some folks.
 
Gonna reply to some of the ultra helpful stuff but poking in breifly just to point out that I actually totally arsefracked Jarvse's EZD humanization because... well this isn't being played through EZD. I took his raw MIDI files and ran them through my own VSTi's as part of my attempt to force myself to FULLY produce this track from the ground up.
 
So yeah, the drums are the raw, orginal MIDI files he used to put through EZD on his version going through a custom preset I created using Addictive Drums 2.
 
I was (and am) intending to get really snakers on manually altering the MIDI parts but left it as is for this version to specifically focus on mixing stuff. I guess I almost wanted to keep the drums robotic on THIS version specifically for the effect it has (and out of not being quite ready to go ultra OCD on the MIDI just yet).
 
My bad on that one. Any screwiness in this version has got to be squarely placed on me because I rebuilt it completely from the ground up. Jarvse's version can be heard in the link I posted in the third comment... http://forum.cakewalk.com/FindPost/3286869
 
Tim, Bit and Danny... ya'll rule. Lots of thoughts but I'm all intertubed out so I'm gonna go eat some hot dogs and chill for the night.
 
I will, of course, be back and most certainly appreciate the comments. They have been kicking up a shiztorm of ideas.
 
Cheeeers!