Mix Critique

[audionautix]

Hey,
I'm new to the forum. Here is something mellow I produced and mixed for a girl from Lancashire in the U.K. who I only know as "Denise".

This was done entirely "in the box" in Sonar5 and Mastered in Wavelab.

http://www.audionautix.com/transfers/paintapicture.mp3

All comments welcome but try to refrain from using too many "s" words.
ucks,
tinks,
hit,
ell your gear..


Jason S.

[shedshrine]

I really liked the way the first four seconds sounded. Is that all you wanted to post? because when it opened up and played in iTunes it ended right there at the 4 second mark....

Anyway, nice ramp up to introduce the piano chords.

[TheStevens]

vocals sound great. what mic/preamp did you use?

the only thing i might do differently to bring the acoustic guitar down and/or in a little because it seemed a little distracting, like it was pulling attention away from the center and more significant parts like the vocal.

[Professor]

Normally I don't like giving any kind of critique of sound and style from hearing an mp3 files because it is so hard to tell what were EQ decisions and what are artifacts of the file butchery when it is encoded. I also generally like to know whether the track is already completed, duplicated and on the shelves or if there is still time to adjust. For me, there's nothing worse that having a mistake pointed out after it's done, because there's not much I can do to fix it and if it was something I didn't notice before, I'll certainly notice it every time from then onward.

And having said that I'm about to critique anyway, so you can stop now or continue.

Nothing really terribly bad or anything, but I'm listening in the studio, so I've got you up on the large mains. The first thing I noticed was that the piano in the intro seemed to be under-powered for the voice, and also steered to heavily to the left for my taste. At first I thought the vocals could be softer in that intro... and they could be, but they move nicely into the main body of the song, so maybe the piano should come up or the voice just down a little for that intro. The steering on the piano is partly a taste thing, but since it's playing those low notes over the intro with nothing else going except the really soft stringy stuff, it really seemed to peg the sound to the left and pull my attention there. It sounds like a stereo piano sample, so I might pull the left channel pan in to about 10 or 11 o'clock while leaving the right channel panned out around 3 or 4 o'clock, or where ever you might find that the low piano sits somewhat more towards the middle for the intro. Once the band kicks in, you can certainly pull back over to left gently, but if I did that I would also tilt the bass and maybe the kick ever so slightly to the right (maybe 1 o'clock) to balance that sound and give the impression of all the bass elements balancing around the center instead of pulling to the side.
Most of the other placement and level choices seemed really nice except maybe the brighter lead piano stuff about 45 seconds from the end and the suspended cymbal roll coming out of the break. There the piano sounds like a mono sample that's pulling me over to the left. And the cymbal I guess just sounded somehow out of place - not that it's a bad idea, actually it's a great idea compositionally just something feels weird there sonically, probably that it's too bright and too up front. On the other hand, the cymbal rush in the last measure sounds more in-place. But I'm also a drummer and a total cymbal fanatic so I can be kinda hard to please in that realm.
The other big thing is EQ stuff in various places. On the opening vocals I heard a bit of a P-pop on the P and B sounds there. "Pass me all the blacks and greys to help me paint this cloud" especially on 'paint' the plosives were too heavy. If you're mixing off of small speakers, you'll probably never hear it, but it's there and I imagine it's present under the main body of the track considering the lyrics of the song, but it hides in there with the bass, kick, & piano. Still, the easy fix is to switch on a low roll-off for the whole vocal track. Her voice probably never produces a frequency below 100Hz that you would want to keep that far up in the mix. (that's below the A at the bottom of the bass clef) I did a couple big rants on this topic in a few posts last month, so I won't belabor it here.
The big that bugged me about the EQ was that overall, everything sounds very sibilant and like the high-mids are cranked up on everything. Again, it might be artifacts from the mp3, but it might be mix choices, and either way, it's what I heard. "S" and "T" and even some "D" sounds really ring out on the vocals, and the reverb you're using has lots and lots of early reflections so that just exacerbates the sound. Something like an EQ or de-esser on the feed to the reverb could tame that, as would a reverb that is a little thinner, although that does wander into personal taste. The real catch is that everything else seems to sound scratchy too like there's gobs of stuff from 1k to 12k while the space seems confined because there's very little above 12k... but that's impossible to tell from an mp3, so I won't go on about space.

I guess that probably reads like I'm tearing it up, but I really don't want to come off that way. Really the mix is good, the placement, the balance, and most all of the choices are pretty solid. Half of what I mentioned can be adjusted in a couple minutes with subtle adjustments, and the other half are stuck somewhere between personal aesthetics and artifacts from the mp3 medium.

Hopefully that adds up to be more help than hurt for you, and doesn't stop you from posting other stuff in the future.

-Jeremy

[audionautix]

Jeremy,
First of all with someone of your caliber ears to take the time and give me a detailed critique of the mix on this is unbelievable-THANK YOU!!!

This is exactly the kind of thing I was looking for. This is the best critique of this mix that I have gotten. I know that there are things that I can be doing to improve my mixes but I'm stumped. Thanks again.
Jason

[Professor]

Well it was my pleasure to help out. Critical listening is always a good thing to practice here and there.

I am kind of curious what kind of monitors you are using for your mixes. And not because I'm going to be a gear freak and say 'you can only get good mixes with this brand' or anything. I mean, yes it does have something to do with thinking that people will mix to make it sound good on certain systems and that sound can come through as a distinguishable 'fingerprint' on other systems. So I try to guess what speakers someone is using based on what I hear on mine. Of course the danger is that I could come off sounding like a dick if someone was using an $80,000 set of Dunlavey speakers and I guessed that they were using NS-10s, or headphones or something. But I'll go out on a limb and guess that you're on a smaller set of two-way nears, soft-dome tweeter with maybe a 6" woofer, like those M-Audio BX speakers, or maybe Alesis M1s or something.
Purely a shot in the dark, and again not meant to be insulting or anything, I'm just testing my guesses really. If I'm close then I can explain what aimed me that way, but if I'm way off then I'm not hearing what I think I'm hearing.


But enough of me trying to act cool and guess monitors. I do like where you're heading with the mix I'm glad my input seemed helpful in getting you there.

-Jeremy

[inflatable]

Oh boy. Busy sounding mix.

The dual drum tracks (brushes and hits) are a little much. Simplify. What is the focus? And what is getting in it's way?

The song also doesn't evolve, but this is also an arranging issue. It just kinda sits there.

As far as mixing goes, the piano is kinda muddy and distant sounding. Do you have closer mics? Other than that, a fantastic effort. Keep it up.

[audionautix]

Proffessor- ashamed to admit the answer is headphones, but I do trasport the mix around to various systems to check for balance and bass etc.


inflatable- thanks for your astute comments. Yes the mix is a little busy.
I have been listening to some current radio things and there doesn't seem to be a lot going on. I'll have to thin it out and see how that works.

You guys rock! Thanks again for taking the time to give me some really spot on observations. I'm going to take all these things and go through the mix again...automate some stuff and see if I can, with your help take this to the next level. Once you get to a certain point, it's the subtle details that really separate the good from the great. Thanks again for loaning me your experience and allowing me to learn from it.

Js

[Professor]

Heaphones was a possibility that started nagging me a little as I was typing that message, and I backed up and added them to the first paragraph there later. Actually it's kind of relieving to read that since I clicked over to the link for your place and saw what looked like JBL 4208 or 4410 speakers in the picture and thought I was gonna feel really dumb for my guess on the speakers.
Of course, now I want to know what model of headphones you used just to see.

Yeah, I am kinda coming around to the topic of monitors having a big impact on the sounds we deliver. And it's hard to balance budget vs. taste vs. quality in that arena. I mean, I know deep down that Genelecs are great speakers, but I haven't heard a set that I like other than maybe their ridiculous top of the line models. But I know that people who do like them and use them on mixes get fabulous results. Same goes for a lot of monitors I like and a lot that I don't, personal taste weighs heavier than just simple specification quality, but then budget can't be ignored either.
Anyway, I had the feeling that the upper midrange stuff might have been the result of something funky with the monitors. And the weird thing is that you should really read that as a complement. If you're a good engineer who is listening carefully, but the monitors aren't telling you the truth, then the mix suffers because you did the right things. A bad engineer can get lucky or unlucky on good gear or bad gear, and it's really hard to know what they were doing or thinking. I'm leaning toward the direction that you were listening and hearing a need for boosts in the upper midrange, and so you put it in there... though perhaps too much because of the headphones.
There's no particular shame in using cans for mixing, though the type of cans may effect the sound you deliver. But that's no different than speakers, is it? Where cans will be confusing is in the left-to-right placement of the instruments because the stereo image is delivered so differently with cans vs. speakers.
But I'm looking forward to hearing the remix.

-Jeremy

[floid]

first, sorry if this is OT.
my monster 70s stereo speakers finally died their last death a few weeks back. As "colored" as they were, some 7-8 years of mixing and then listening to the results on other systems really gave me the opportunity to learn a thing or two about making my mixes translate.
But, they're dead now, and i suppose it's for the best. reading the prof's first post really caught my attention, because i ended up getting some of those very BX monitors he mentioned. i've spent the past week and a half just listening to old mixes, favorite albums, etc in an effort to learn how these monitors present material, and at the moment it feels like having to resort to Babelfish after years of hanging out with the charming Frenchman next door. Well, maybe not that bad - it's not that everything sounds like crap, just noticeably different. Some mixes have really surprised me, and others really saddened me.
I know the best cure is to just dive in, do tons more mixes, listen to how they hold up elsewhere, and avoid drastic decisions for a while...but Prof, i was wondering: what "sonic signature" DO you believe these monitors tend to impart?

[Professor]

You know, honestly I've never mixed on the BXs or listened for a very long time. I've heard them a few times, and I tend to be a pretty quick judge of speakers - probably from being an audiophile snob. Either way, the sure-fire sign of small monitors in general is low frequency problems like P-pops, boomy bass, overly muddy bass. The pops come from not being able to hear them and so not dropping on the low roll-offs, the boominess will come from putting peak EQs in down in the range from 50-120 or so, and the muddiness usually comes from using shelf EQs to boost the low-end and then not considering that those EQs keep going past the range where the speaker bottoms out.
The upper mid-range thing is tied to two problems with little speakers like that. One is the crossover point which I think was set a little high in the BX and so will tend to put a bit of a hole in the range from maybe 900-1500 that folks will try to fill. If the mix is at all bass heavy then the little woofer tries really hard to reproduce the frequencies at the bottom and so favors the lows to the detriment of the highs, and that crossover gap just widens even more.

Now it doesn't mean that those are necessarily bad speakers or that you can't mix on them. I mean, the low-end and crossover thing I described really happen on every two-way speaker whether it cost $100, $1000, or $10,000. And I'm not really sure if there is a particular 'sonic signature' when people mix on certain speakers. Like I said, I kinda think I can hear someone who has mixed on NS-10s, or HR-824s, or other monitors, but only when the signature sound of that speaker has fooled the person using them. Ideally there should be no way of identifying the speakers that were used, right? I only hope that my mixes sound neutral and there aren't people sitting there going, 'damn he has got to stop using those JBLs'.

-Jeremy

[floid]

hmm... does this suggest the need for a sub? But then i guess you'd need a second crossover point, which might simply open up another hole in which things could get wonky...
Just as an aside, what made me realize i needed new monitors was a progressively more noticeable tilt toward the right in mixes i'd done over the last month and a half or so. this proved to be the product of my right speaker's falling apart after thirty-odd years of service to five family members. perhaps that one fan i intend to make at some point in the future will refer to these mixes as my "tilt era," or some similar catch phrase. My basic fear is that this commentary will appear in some context such as "after the tilt era, there followed a period that can only be referred to as the B-Xcrement."

[audionautix]

Again I appreciate the comments on the mix. I know that monitors are a big issue with mixing. I do have a pair of JBL 4412's powered with a really nice Forte Amp (remember those?) I find no matter what I use I still tend to gravitate back to the cans because to me, they're like a microscope in a way. I can catch minute details like clicks pops and errant breaths that I never catch otherwise. They also tend to give me a real sense of panning and space placement. The weaknesses seem to be accurately placing volume and pitch.

Isn't the secret to monitors knowing them well? Maybe I just haven't spent enough time with them. They are Seinheiser 650's.

It's a trick I learned from George Massenburg (from an interview I read)
he learned it from James Taylor's bass player Jimmy Johnson.

Jason

[ashcat_lt]

Mixing is like acid-trips and sex - they should be done with people (or speakers) you know and trust, in an enviroment you feel comfortable and safe.

Nobody ever mentions it, but you can get closer (if you can't afford better speakers and a lot of acoustic treatment) with a stereo EQ before your monitor amp.

[Professor]

Isn't the secret to monitors knowing them well? Maybe I just haven't spent enough time with them. They are Seinheiser 650's.

Yeah, I probably wouldn't have guessed Sennheisers so I'm glad I didn't hazard a guess there. I have 650s too, and I love them, and I have 600s and 580s, and in general I really like the whole line. But when it comes to the revealing nature of headphones I think stereo image is an area where they tend to fail while hearing editing needs like clicks, pops, weird breath & vocal stuff, etc. is where they are just wonderful.
As to the secret being, 'to know the monitors well', I think that's both wise and misleading. Knowing what commercial CDs sound like on your monitors, and getting your mixes to sound like those is a very important step in learning what to expect from your mixes. But then taking your mixes that sounded good on you monitors and hearing them on different speakers will do more to illustrate where your sound will emerge when it moves out of your studio. But there are some things that cannot simply be served by "knowing your monitors". Plosive 'pops' are among the biggest example where you will neither hear these low frequencies in commercial mixes, nor in your own mixes, but it doesn't mean that the sounds are not making it into your mix and that they won't be heard by someone with a better-performing set of speakers.

-Jeremy