...so, here's my final contritution:
https://honeysuckers.rocks/media/audio/ ... 0final.ogg
The session: https://honeysuckers.rocks//media/audio ... nal.ardour
my mixing log:
1st listening, mono, equal levels, starting with an empty template:
- horns and violin blend very well, excellent dynamics in ensemble in prelude
- piano and backing vocs promiment, lead voc a bit behind but audible
- almost no coverage of instruments in mono, very good arrangement
- well handled dynamics by the band
- a hooray to the recording-engineer for finding the right balances
- almost no background noises !
- i was really shocked by the immense impress of 3d sound of someone
blowing her nose, until i realized it was my wife (DJ Snodconk, sitting right
behind me with a cold)
spreading to stereo
Positions in intensity stereophony:
https://sengpielaudio.com/HoerereignRichtungDL.pdf
Directions of listening events:
L---4/4---3/4---2/4---1/4---0...
diff L/R in dB:
---18dB--11dB--6dB---3dB---0dB...
pan ardour:
100%--93%---83%---73%---60%---50%...
Drum:
- OHs bring a wide image - set the panaroma of toms to the direction they have on OHs, snare is not centered on OHs. Trying to center it via panorama takes away the depth of the toms, and their balance concerning dynamics. So, for the beginning, the sn mics will get their direction by pacement in OH. It would be possible to duck OHs away on snare hits, but since i heard the last record of Tom Jones (studio and live), i take the chance not to set the snare in center.
Horns/Violin:
- French Horn and Violin seem to play with each other, so they are close to center at Horn: l1/4, violin: r1/4
- the rest of the brass is symmetrically spread onto the positions mentioned, keep it wide from the outside to the inside to leave room for guitar and vocals
Guitar: 2/4L
Vocs: Lead remains center, vocals Drums/Guitar on 1/4L and 1/4R
...Listen again...
Panorama is ok for now, no overweight of a side (maybe in the last crescendo,
but i'm going to have an ear to this later)
...switching back to mono and do some faderriding on gains/levelling and do some bandpassing, just to find a better balance between all acteurs. Bringing
up first busses. All for a rough balance.
...the difficult part seems to be towards the end "..so many words..."
everything builds up, band is great, but loudness of the instruments must be
adapted.
A very rough adaption of volumes in:
Big Big Train - Transient of venus - balancing and rough volumes.ardour
That was the rough part, now let's begin the fine work. This means adding some compression, making the vocals more airy and removing some flickering it's an early stage for the flickering). Bringing Git DI and Git mic to the same position? That would bring a little bit of the old Genesis-feeling, but spreading them makes them more clear, so: 2/4L
and 2/4R.
Next: Routing the different instruments from keyboards into seperate busses:
Strings (into which also the violin is routed), Orff (although that's not a real orff instrumentation), piano, arp (that sound reminds me on an ARP, Probably because of the Genesis-like mood of the song) and organ. Doing some faderriding again (mainly on the gains of the newly created busses), because sunrats intermidiate mix showed me, i missed some of these instruments, especially on the volume ramp and on the end.
Again adapting volumes in mono.
Applying compressors. I prefer sidechained multiband compression over eqing. In the digital domain, we are without limitations and can create an instance, whenever necessary.
What i find really remarkable: the bass is still untouched.
Focus on the drums
OHs will slightly be ducked by snare and toms
TOM2 seems to be tracked with a slightly too short gate
I'm a big fan of parallel-compression and multiband-compression/sidechained-multiband-compression. As the tracking (concerning microfone placement) is really well, i have no need for equing. Bring in some clarity to the vocals by Dolby-A trick (https://www.audiothing.net/blog/the-dolby-a-trick/). They are a bit harsh, de-essing is hard. Voices are very warm, i want to preserve that warmness on the compromise of some little pops in p-vowels.
Next step: more subrouting. Create three collector-groups:
- snare and toms
- tonal instruments except bass
- all vocals
The main purpose is to do some smooth sidechained-multiband-compression on the instruments collector, keyed by snare/toms and vocals.
Now it takes vengeance, that i didn't took care enough on the gain-staging on the beginning of the mix. It all runs very hot... but there ist still room until clipping - don't mind some red clip indicators, there's still a (shrinking) headroom. Nothing that cocks it until now.
Time to start with some effects. The mix is already very dense, so i don't go the usual way with adding some reverb first.
First spread bass: adding a bit of saturation to the mic and spread it with a pseudo stereofication.
...some reverb on the snare, a bit less on toms
...not clear for reverb on horns/strings, better Nothing
...Vocs: a delay into a reverb, a bit of chorus, widen and deepen it with
pseudostereo, send must be sidechain gated by vovcals, out must be sidechain-ducked
by vocals
...regaining and recompressing horns
...regaining and recompressing vocals, applying a multiband compressor between 1000 and 2000Hz on the vocals collector
Mastering
Setting up mastering bus :
- a mid channel
- a side channel
- a bass (sub) channel (fed by bass, kick and synth bass), 2 Bands parallel
compressed
The mix is now at 3dbTP and -15dB LUFS, so simply reducing on the mastering bus to -2dbTP and adding parralell compression to reach -14LUFS. From now on it's simply fighting for numbers, without breaking the sound. ...and adding the first eq (it's on the mastering bus, above 4k).