moonbass

I've upgraded to X and so far everything is working from 9 to X perfectly. I don't really use third party plugins so can't vouch for compatibility of these. (I wouldn't know which are 32/64 bit anyway!)

X is more intuitive and pleasant to use so far, but for most tasks it's pretty much the same as 9. Flex pitch is rather amazing!

I know this might be controversial, but I find Logic Help is usually useful (if a bit dry and boring!) and it looks like they've improved it a lot for X.

Just had a look through the description on apple.com and there's loads of new stuff. Flex pitch looks incredible (although hard to know for sure until you use it; I've never really got to grips with flextime). The new drum samples sound a big step up, and the bass amp modeller looks improved too. Looks like a very different set up to 9, but they seem to have made it more intuitive. Can't help thinking its going to eat up RAM, but it'll be fine when I've saved up for the new Mac Pro as well (!)

Ooh, I'm first to vote! There's a clear winner in my opinion this month, and it's a work of pure genius... although possibly approaching a cover version...!
Strong work all round again though with some difficult source material. Very different approaches to the challenge; I'm dying to know who replaced what instrument. Sounds like some people redid the bassline? And someone seems to have found the original a bit slow! Liking the bold edits.
Andy.

I've just had a read of Bob Katz's original paper proposing K-metering. If you've got a spare 20 minutes it's an interesting read (although a bit 'techy' at times:
http://www.aes.org/technical/documentDownloads.cfm?docID=65
It's good to appreciate the difference between VU meters (which you see bobbling around on pro mixing desks) and the peak level meters you get on DAWs, and the effect this has on the finished product/music.
My new puzzle with the system is that if its all about average levels, and a larger dynamic range being better, why do all the mixes we produce seem to have a peak level of -6 or more (ie end up sounding ridiculously quiet)? Katz does mention about the need for compression on home systems using K-20, but I reckon it won't gain widespread usage as its just so different from the material from the past 20 years now! Why are our peak levels so low? Do we really need to compress the final (and he does include mastered) material so much less?!

Sorry, no offence intended Most of the tracks are fine, but the hiss on the vocals at the end is really tricky to tidy up. Anyone got any tips for noise reduction without changing the tone of the vocals? (Preferably with Logic stock plugins would be great )

Can I just check: were the vocals actually recorded on vinyl?!

Thanks for the feedback Mike! Makes me want to go back and mix it again... except I can't face anymore country! But I know we all really appreciate the time you've taken out to listen to our work and comment.
Also thanks for a great display of giving feedback via Pendletons Rules (http://www.gp-training.net/training/educational_theory/feedback/pendleton.htm), which I think it would be good for everyone to consider when discussing each others mixes; sensitive souls that we bassists are!
Andy

Ooh, what a nice surprise to get on returning sunburned from a friends stag weekend. As I mentioned when I submitted my mix, country isn't my favourite genre, and it did drive me mad, but I have finally come to like this song (a bit!)
I really liked most of the entries this month, and I think that the small total number of votes means it's not very sensible to draw too many conclusions from what is essentially a subjective choice (and it was of course very close).
Some thoughts on my mix:[list]
[*]I tried to find and work towards a peak in the song. For me this was the fiddle at around 2.35, and I used a lot of automation to bring this out, and also try to bring out the little instrumental twiddles throughout the song. (Although I made the slide dobro breaks at the beginning quieter as I thought they were naff!)
[*]I struggled to get the bass to sound strong and still like an upright and ended up using some drastic eq and enveloper and exciter plugins... not sure I'm entirely happy with the result!
[*]I think I got the drums to sound as natural as I could (although I have yet again over compressed them I think, especially the snare)
[*]I decided to get rid of most of the stereo instrument tracks (except the strummy acoustic) and use them in mono, which made it more focussed
[*]I think someone was referring to mine when they said it sounded muffled, and I entirely agree. I've bought some AE22 monitors this week, so hope next month I will be able to better judge the high end (I've been using HiFi speakers up until now!)
[/list]
Thanks again Si for taking the time to arrange this. So what's next? I'd quite like to try a dance/house track as I've never had a chance to do one, and I presume it's quite a different set of problems.
Andy

Thanks gents. Typically only last night in a moment of madness I pulled the trigger on the Liquid Saffire 56, so I'll see how that goes for now. Would definitely have gone for the RME if I was feeling more flush! I'm interested how the liquid pre's work in practice though.

Hi. Thinking of purchasing a proper interface for recording; does anyone have experience of the Focusrite saffire pro 40 or the liquid saffire 56? Is the 56 worth the extra money? And what about the RME Fireface 800: a lot more money, but will I as an amateur notice the difference? And is it getting a bit old? Other newer RME units seem to be a lot more pricey. I'm using iMac with Logic. Any thoughts muchly appreciated.
Andy

Oh dear, I'm afraid I couldn't even recognise which my mix was... I'm sure that can't be a good sign!
I think the general standard is much higher this month, although it didn't make 40 minutes of listening to the same country track entirely pleasurable...
It seems like the biggest challenge this month has been trying to make the drums sound natural rather the drum pads on and 80's Casio keyboard!
I'll add a hearty 'cheers Si' for organising this shindig; top work. Looking forward to next month already.
A.

Could try Driclor from the chemist, but watch out as it irritates some peoples skin.

Rudimentary - Feel the Love
Modjo - Lady ( Hear me tonight)
Stardust - Music Sounds Better With You
Superstar Lovers - Starlight

I reckon a function band playing just dance covers would be great!

[quote name='Chrismanbass' timestamp='1365709818' post='2043417']
not strictly on topic but since we can't share our mixes for the current song anyone fancy giving this a listen and giving me some opinions/feedback? bit of big band swing for your listening pleasure

[url="https://soundcloud.com/chris-hallam-1/big-band"]https://soundcloud.c...llam-1/big-band[/url]

[/quote]

Hi Chris. I really liked the tune. The brass are nicely recorded and sit in a nice sized room, but the saxes and the vocal seem quite dry to me. (The saxes and keys also seem to be panned a bit heavily). The drums and bass are a bit 'toppy' to my ear, and there seems to be little going on in the very low frequency range. I'd like to hear the trombone solo a bit louder. I'd add a bit of high frequency over the mix bus as it's generally a little nasal at the moment. In general it's got a lovely warm and lively vibe though.

To my mind a big band recording is a bit like an orchestra in that you have a big stereo spread, but don't really want to hard pan instruments like you'd do with a rock/pop recording. Of course, you might not have much to play with depending on how it was recorded!
Andy

Okay, okay; I can take it no longer! My mix is in for this month, and If I never hear this song again it will be too soon!
I have to say the stems were a bit odd this month; to say they had used some fancy mic's they seem to have botched several of the drum tracks to my ear. Anyone else having problems making the cymbals sound natural? And the toms seem a bit dodgy too. A lot of nice sounding 'plinky-plonky' things though, and I really liked the fiddle. Well, who doesn't like a fiddle...?

Edit
Sorry Twigman, just realised you said all these things too!

Well, thanks all for this great honour. Do I get a trophy? Seriously enjoyed working on this, and I’m still learning loads by listening to other mixes and hearing how everyone achieved them. I liked the blind voting, but I missed the updates on how people were getting on, and hearing partially finished mixes as a result; so I hope there’s some good discussion on the processes now.

Rather embarrassingly I didn’t actually get my final mix in as I forgot to tell Si I’d changed it. (You can listen hear if you’re interested: [url="https://soundcloud.com/makossaband/sapere-aude"]https://soundcloud.com/makossaband/sapere-aude[/url]
The main difference is that I found the ‘Sapere Aude’ vocal line (no it wasn’t a conscious decision to leave it out, just stupidity!) But there’s also a bit of panning and eq tweaking.)

[b]General:[/b] I use Logic Pro on an iMac with stock plug-ins and my old NAD Hifi as monitoring (I’m saving for some AE22’s!) I thought the song rocked, and was quite quirky with its multiple sections, and I wanted to highlight this. So generally I tried to make the drums lead the way and make the linking sections jump out with panning and eq.

[b]Drums:[/b] I approach talking about these with some trepidation, as I suspect I was a little naughty: Firstly I did some major tone sculpting on the kick trying to get some low end and for the click to cut through. There really wasn’t any low end though, so I also added a gated sine wave at 48Hz for the sub, and (to my shame) the warehouse kit kick from Logic. (In my defence this really only added a bit of low-mids back in.) All three then went to a separate bus to which I added a tape emulator and an adaptive limiter. Snare and toms were eq’d and compressed (fairly heavily) and some distortion applied to the top mic. Toms were also gated and panned hard left and right. The main size of the drums are from heavily compressed room mics, which sounded amazing! (15db reduction in peaks with 10:1 ratio – pretty much a limiter!)

[b]Geetars:[/b] Almost nothing except a little contrasting eq on the right and left so they sounded wider, automation on volume, and cutting reverb for effect in some sections. I pretty much just left the acoustic running at the same level through the whole track.

[b]Bass:[/b] Really struggled with this to be honest, and thought nearly everyone else did a better job than me. It always seemed to sound separate from the rest of the track, so I just used reverb and echo to try and get it to blend in.

[b]Vocals:[/b] Didn’t need to do much, but I don’t really like the reverb I ended up using as it left me with quite harsh sibilants (I’m yet to find a Logic reverb that I like for vocals!)

[b]Mix bus:[/b] Hmm, don’t want to open a big kettle of worms here. Personally I’m with Dave Pensado in that in a digital environment going past zero bad things happen, but up to then all’s fair in love and war! I use a tape emulator, then eq to get a little top end lift, light compression 1-2db in loudest sections, then limiter to clip the top 0.5-1db off the loudest snare hits, then the adaptive limiter to bring up the quieter sections and add beef to the louder sections. I know this is controversial, but the main argument against the loudness war is lack of dynamic range; when I look at the waveform of my track, there is still a heck of a lot more range than most commercial releases in this genre, and I certainly wouldn’t use such techniques on a jazz recording. But more than happy to tone this down if that’s what’s decided.

Again, great track and lots to get your teeth into. Would love to hear how others tackled the bass sound, and also there were some great guitars, especially on vasdim’s that I’d love to hear about. Looking forward to next month!

I think some of the vocal and other parts were recorded incredibly quietly so they were easily missed(!) I had to normalise some stems to get them to a usable level. Cracking tune though.

http://youtu.be/tPk11AugG4c
http://youtu.be/5WCQKGRh7gE

Well done all, especially Si! Thanks to everyone whose taken time to comment; I'm learning some really useful stuff from this thread and looking forward to getting to grips with next months stems.
I'm afraid I haven't got any tracks to offer for next month; I'd be happy to choose from others, but I'm sure Si deserves that honour after a well deserved win.
Everything I would have said about others tracks has been said so here's a few links to some stuff that I found useful this month instead:

[url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNfd-APQUfo&list=UUno8mYpnGhTA9COSW9sP8gQ"]Pensado's Place[/url]: Definitely worth subscribing

[url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFwOlfQY2AQ"]The Recording Revolution[/url]: For really useful basic level recording tutorials, like [url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voHbR5HVWOM"]this[/url] to make big Zeppelin drums; I bought Mike Senior's book on it's recommendation, and it's amazing!

[url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0FpX200S1s&list=FLoMx_iKW1J7YhkqL6ro_6OA"]Rob Williams[/url]: Possibly controversial here, but I had fun anyway!!

[url="http://www.gearslutz.com/board/so-much-gear-so-little-time/201855-how-haas-delay-panning.html"]Haas delays:[/url] Make your guitars sound biggerer.

Just been having a play at getting a better stereo spread, and a kickier kick drum. Pretty sure this will be my final version... I'm starting to dream about the song!

https://soundcloud.com/makossaband/mission-ray-4

[quote name='51m0n' timestamp='1360661720' post='1974025']
How about you put up a mix without the heavy 2 buss processing and we vote on that, but leave this one availalbe so people can hear the difference, then explain exactly what the difference is in terms of precisely what you did, what you used and how you went about judging that it was 'right'??
[/quote]

Okey-dokey, here's my less squished version (with a little bit of other tinkering also):
https://soundcloud.com/makossaband/mission-ray-2-master

[quote name='OldG' timestamp='1360580853' post='1972513']


Powerful sounding mix there.. Are you slamming it with a limiter,by any chance?
[/quote]

Yup, busted! Sorry, I'm aware it's not in the ethos of the mixing competition, but I was keen to try out a mix bus tutorial I'd seen on YouTube... And I was referencing with an Audioslave track!

Hi. Thought I'd give this a go and have really enjoyed it, so thanks to those organising it!
Gave me chance to try some new ideas I'd heard about a try. Only listened to the original after finishing my mix though, and now feel slightly inadequate! Nevertheless, 'ere it is:

https://soundcloud.com/makossaband/mission-ray-mix

Andy

It's Your Thing - The Isley Brothers
Sing A Simple Song - Sly and the Family Stone

Both just sneak into the 60's, and rock crossovers.