[Dana Nielsen]

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/troubleshooting-spotify-track-sounding-quieter-than-expected/

https://mixprotege.com/forums/discussion/silent-killer-low-end-mix-help/

[Dana Nielsen]

You are on the right track man! And yeah it’s fascinating stuff, trying to get our “hearing the world with our ears” experience to translate to speakers – not to mention, speakers of all sizes.

One note I should mention: This type of limiter automation during mastering is, for me, kinda a last resort. That’s not to say I’m ever ashamed to do it, hahaha; I just try to work out all my automation and dynamics within the mix before it gets to mastering or mastering limiters etc., otherwise it feels like you’re still “mixing” during the mastering process.

On that note, regarding your vibraphone and Pro-L2: it’s true, low-mid vibes energy will interact differently with the limiter than will a guitar pick transient. Try adjusting the Attack (faster), Release (slower) and/or Lookahead (longer). Also, try every single Mode or Flavor or whatever they call it – i.e. Modern, Transparent, Aggressive, etc. I try every one of these modes on every single mix. Typically, one of them is a clear winner, and they’re all really different.

BUT! ….

I’d venture to guess the solution is in your mix, not the Pro-L2 settings. Without hearing what you’re hearing, I’d suggest two things:

1. Apply some compression to the vibes stereo track in your mix so you’re not forcing the limiter to work so hard. If the low-mids of the instrument are the culprit, then you could even try a multi-band Pro-MB or a low-mid dynamic band of Pro-Q4 trained on the trouble frequencies of the vibraphone, so that it’s only triggering compression when those problematic notes/range come into play.

2. Use less limiting on your master. Keep the music in mind – you’re two people playing ambient jazz in the woods, not Metallica lol. If you’re getting distortion from Pro-L2 you must be trying to make the music VERY loud, which in this grenre I don’t think you need. Change the Pro-L2 meter to “Loudness” and try shooting for something btwn -14 and -10 LUFS – that should be plenty loud for this style of music.

Hope these tips make sense and are helpful! Keep us posted on your song and your mastering adventures! If helpful, maybe take a peek at the MixLab “Mastering for Spotify” replay 😉😘

[Dana Nielsen]

Heck yeah man! No rules. No fear. Whatever it takes to shape the dynamics and manifest your sonic vision!

I always try my best to bake those “master bus” automation moves into the mix – that way, if someone else is mastering, I won’t be dependent upon them for those micro moves, and they can just focus on tone and macro dynamics, i.e. the overall limiting.

That said … sometimes your carefully crafted mix dynamics (i.e. quiet verse, loud chorus) will get flattened out by limiters used in mastering. After all, that’s the limiter’s job – to reduce dynamics and increase loudness.

So when needed, I will automate the OUTPUT gain of the last limiter on the mix buss or mastering chain to achieve the specific dynamic shape I want. Rick Rubin calls this technique the “slippery fader.” He might say something to me like, “maybe try some slippery fader on those choruses so they really jump out.”

While you could achieve this by physically/manually riding a fader or knob, this is one instance where (gasp!) I prefer using a mouse instead of a fader. If the limiter’s output for my loud choruses is at 0db, for example, I will change my track settings to view the limiter’s output automation, select my verse sections, and trim them down to like -1.5db. Then I’ll audition the volume change and make sure the automation breakpoints are exactly where they should be – musically – to disguise the sudden moves.

Here’s a short playlist I made a while back demonstrating the “slippery fader” technique. The first song by Green Day is the first time I ever noticed this trick in the wild, back when we were in high school. The second song by Pom Poms is a mix of mine where I employed the same trick.

Enjoy and good luck “slippin'” those faders!

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6bZXOPJ4869mJVLFqlGGqV?si=f0c5e98ec6964ec3

[Dana Nielsen]

Whelp .. my “quick demo” turned into a 90-minute start-to-finish alignment and mixing workshop 😂. I hope you and others here find this helpful and interesting!

This is an unedited, single-take vid, and there are a couple minor audio dropouts but they pass quickly.

Ooh! And … you’ll get an early glimpse at my ongoing studio makeover!

So, grab a bag of popcorn, hit full-screen mode on the video, beam it up to your living room TV and NERD OUT!

BTW, @JLew – this music and the fall foliage setting are absolutely gorge!

[Dana Nielsen]

Great question, Jesse – and great response, @-PT!

Is the iphone the only camera position, or is this a multi-cam setup?

For me, I’d keep this pretty simple:

1. Ensure the clap audio in your close mics lines up with the clap motion in the video. NOTE: mute or disregard the iphone audio at this point! Move the iphone video (with its muted audio) around, frame by frame, until it syncs up nicely with your close-mic audio tracks.
2. Now, unlink the iphone audio from the iphone video so you can move the iphone audio independently from its video track.
3. Next, move the unlinked iphone audio so that it’s “clap” syncs up with your close mic claps. NOTE: sometimes I’ll change my vid editor timeline to Samples at this point if I’m unable to achieve good sync/phase using the Frames timeline.
4. Unmute the stereo iphone audio track and balance against your direct mics to taste!

Bonus Round: Add a millisecond-based delay plugin to your iphone audio set to 100% Wet, and try sweeping around the delay time (say, btwn 0 and 100ms) to simulate control over how far away the iphone microphone is. By adding 15 milliseconds, the iphone mic will sound as if it’s roughly 15 feet away from your direct mics! (Yay, the science part!). NOTE: honestly, for mixing purposes, at this point I would just ditch the science and use my ears while sweeping around the ms delay time on the plugin until I settle on something that sounds cool… who knows– it might sound amazing set to 1137ms!)

Can’t wait to hear what you end up with!

🤓

PS – here’s some speed of sound info from the ol’ Google machine:

It would take approximately 13.3 milliseconds for sound to travel 15 feet in dry air at room temperature.
The calculation is based on the following:

1. Speed of sound: Approximately 1,125 feet per second (fps) at 20 °C (68 °F).

1. Formula: Time = Distance / Speed

1. Calculation in seconds: 15 feet / 1,125 fps = 0.01333 seconds.

1. Convert to milliseconds (1 second = 1,000 milliseconds): 0.01333 seconds * 1,000 ms/second ≈ 13.3 ms.

A common approximation used in live sound engineering is that sound travels about one foot per millisecond (1 ms/ft). Using this simple rule of thumb, the time would be approximately 15 milliseconds. The more precise calculation above gives a more accurate value.

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[Dana Nielsen]

Duder – this is so chill and so beautiful! Finally able to give it a proper listen (sorry for the delay).

2:44 – there’s a bass that comes in that I could hear louder. I know the REAL sub-bass comes in later, but that pre-bass-bass ..haha.. I’d love that to be a bigger moment.

And overall, it might be nice to have some stereo sauce on the lead guitar. I think there’s a stereo reverb on it that’s long and lush and kinda blends into the gorgeous background pads – and that verb feels good – but I’d also in addition try some kind of short stereo ambience or some Dimension D or maybe some cool subtle Eventide H9000 stereo preset … OR … maybe just turn up the verb you already have on the guitar, lol.

I dig the light sidechain compression you have on the synths (or mix?) triggered by the kick. Giving this track Lo-Fi genre vibes but with much more sophisticated style playing. “Elegant Lo-Fi” anyone?

Me likey! And I can’t wait to see the accompanying video!

💜

[Dana Nielsen]

Thanks, brother @-PT! And thank you again for all your incredible wisdom here in this thread and throughout Mix Protégé!! ⚡️💡🤍

[Dana Nielsen]

Awe, that means so much @JLew – thank YOU for sharing your files and your beautiful music with us all!!

Can’t wait to hear and see your finished video release!! 😍🍁

[Dana Nielsen]

I totally understand what you’re dealing with, homey! If you wanna email me a link to the files, maybe I can reply here with a quick video demo – which might be easier and more useful than describing these complex ideas and techniques with typed words, haaha.

[Dana Nielsen]

This is sounding beautiful!!

[Dana Nielsen]

That’s great news, Bar! I’m glad you’re able to hang onto that 6176 a bit longer and get some more use outta it!

Great question re saturation and when to use it.

For me, it’s really song/production-dependent. Acoustic guitar is a good example. If I’m recording a delicate singer-songwriter style track I’m usually looking for a full-range, high-fidelity acoustic guitar sound with no need for saturation. I may still compress it on the way into pro tools to get a good level without digital overs, but I prob wouldn’t drive the mic pre toward saturation in that instance.

However, I LOVE adding mic pre input gain saturation to acoustic guitars in a rock production! Like, if the strummy rhythm acoustics enter in the chorus… I need them to be loud and proud so they cut through the mix and fit nicely against hard-hitting drums and electric guitars. Even if it’s a folk-rock americana style, I might push the preamp input a bit hotter – not looking to “hear distortion” in the signal, but more to control peaks a bit and give the sound a subtle edge. In this case the amplifier component (the 610 input tube amp on your 6176) will kinda shave off the loudest peaks. This can work to your advantage, kinda like a compressor before your compressor – and it sounds cool in the right context!

Very cheap or poorly made preamps and other analog components sound terrible when overloaded like this on input. In my opinion, this is a huge part of what makes Neves, APIs, your UA 6176, and other great equipment so sought after — how they handle the extremes (intended AND unintended extremes, haha)! Great gear sounds AWESOME when pushed to the extreme, opening up new creative options. Not-great gear sounds harsh, unforgiving, and unusable.

[Dana Nielsen]

YESSSS!!!! This came out amazing, homey!! Great work tweaking the guitar, and I love the increased “pre-bass” level. The mix sounds awesome, the vid is super cool, and you are a BEAST!!! 😍

[Dana Nielsen]

Hahahaa – amazing! Can’t wait to hear what you two cook up! 🍳

[Dana Nielsen]

😂😂😂. The reverb journey is real.

[Dana Nielsen]

#popcornfart 😂🍿💨