-
Hey Michael! Huge welcome, man! 🎉. Stoked you’re here.
And great work on this mix – thanks for sharing with us!
I think you’re totally on the right track and things are sounding really good already 🤘
My initial thoughts are:
- The snare and perc elements feel loud, bright, and super-stereo-wide. They sound awesome like that(!), but I have a hunch they’re the culprit. Like … I want the vocal to occupy that loud/bright/wide space, which the snare and perc are currently dominating.
- With that in mind, try darkening or turning down the perc elements, experimenting with a less-super-stereoized snare for better mono translation.
- Then try turning up the vocal so that it’s as loud as – or a touch louder than – the kick and snare.
If your Realistics have arrived from Ebay (🥳) you might notice that vocals and snare are sometimes represented a bit louder on those speakers due to their limited bandwidth. That’s normal – just something to keep in mind and learn to roll with.
As for loudness, you’re lookin pretty good already! That said if you really want it louder I’m sure that’s possible with a bit more limiting or clipping. You could try adding a console emulation (driven aggressively) before your limiter to reign-in or shave-off some of the transient peaks, which will allow you to drive your brick-wall mastering limiter even harder with less artifacts, since it won’t have to work as hard now that some of the most egregious transients have been tamed.
Pasting a few links below that I found within the Mix Protégé search bar (top) and AI tool (bottom-right of page), which might offer additional help and context related to loudness, lufs, etc.
Great work, Michael, and glad to have ya in the MP fam!
Best,
Dana
https://mixprotege.com/forums/discussion/zoom-replay-member-meetup-and-qa-dec-13-2024/
https://mixprotege.com/forums/discussion/silent-killer-low-end-mix-help/