Need assessment on a mix+master rework in-progress
Hi again, everyone!
I worked on a mix+master adjustment of a 2021 track and am running into problems again, mostly of the PC performance kind, what makes committing first necessary. I wanted to ask for your opinion before I do so - if the only persisting problem is the bass side-chains or if you might think that I already kind of over-treated that track to death and/or need to adjust stuff like basses' dynamic EQs first. I spent about 5 or 6 days working on the track lately, most of the time micro-editing values and often not being able to playback properly, first because of NVIDIA driver problem, then probably by using too much heavy plugins together, I already went to maximum buffer size and closed/disabled whatever I could in Windows or in the DAW's cue channels (Analysis/Reference/2nd headphone Sonarworks) before going back into the project the last times.
While micro-editing those values to get rid of that damn ugly distortion in the basses when they coincide with vocals, the overall feel of the basses changed multiple times, current version not sounding the very ideal way and maybe already being too over-processed to a lackluster extent, it's hard to say.
I'm also not sure if the VocalSynth2 affected tracks (the buzzing synths) sound "attractive enough" at that moment. And those VocalSynth2 tracks and the Ozone Dynamic EQ instances on the basses are causing the most of the resource load on the system that still can be saved by bouncing the single tracks...
Other than that I'd probably like at the end to add some Oxygen to the Tops, but otherwise I'm content with that master.
What would you say regarding those concerns or what other comments do you have? Can you maybe even recognize the clashing regions in the frequency range that should be easily adjustable between those Basses and VOX or other sounds? Am I over-limiting maybe?
I'm sorry for not having labeled the single channels properly, the legend on screenshot is: red for Kicks, yellow for Tops, brown-orange for Drum-loops and stuff like Claps, green for Basses, pink for VOX, violet/dark-pink for VocalSynth2, cyan for a Synth-loop.
The whole production was done in Loopcloud with its editor, pretty much all transitive FX and much of mixing FX work was done there, then exported to Cubase.
You might compare with the 2001 version, and 3 RC versions and maybe I'll even upload other versions in-between, when I go through them again to find the one with best bass timings. The current one is RC4. But maybe the RC3 (or rather RC2) was better and I rather should continue to work on that, maybe "franken-mixing" a bit again? Switching between different versions, of which there are too many, with only tiny differences, and also between my 2 headphone pairs and speakers I sort of lose all perspective fast.
P.S. Maybe what I'm asking for is a bit unfair since I introduced FUSER and FireCobra on the Bass Bus in the latest RC, latter introducing new distortions, first perceived in a helpful way, and the RCs before that had Neutron Unmask there, either way I ran into live playback issues fast and couldn't correct properly and hear the results before exporting. I couldn't hear those specific masking distortions when disabling master and bus FX. There is side-chain to all VOX and kicks on smart:comp on Bass Bus and also in on VOX in Fuser.
P.P.S. When I open the Highnote link without being logged in, I can't see the 2021 master. It's only accessible to download there in details
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Artem Meshbeyn
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Need assessment on a mix+master rework in-progress
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