Pretty Final Mix- Request for ears

[chaosMK]

My ears are a little tired- I've listened to this song a million times on many different stages of mix/recording. This is a pretty final mix of one of our songs (modern prog metal, this song way more prog than metal). Album is coming out in about a week.

http://www.mediafire.com/?z5jnzyzek0m

It sounds pretty good and balanced to me... curious if anyone hears things which should be considered (particularly drums) before we wrap things up.

[sirmike75]

sounds good were are the vocals

[Herbie 80's]

Listening through Foobar2000, Mackie audio interface, HD 485 Sennies.

It sounds alright. It sounds pretty muddy at times, and often there feels like there is no room in the mix. Mostly because of your guitarists tone. The bass has no feel to it, it lacks 'balls'. At times the bass line doesn't fit quite well.

The drummer is nicely articulate. I liked the sound of the ride, but you can barely hear the kick drum.

IMO, turn the guitarists down, take some of the bass and mids off of their signal, and push the drums and bass up. It'll get rid of some of the mud, and make the mix breath more.

It also sounds a lot better at higher volumes. I find that the higher the volume, depending on your set up, the less mud. But you don't want that.

[foq1978]

Originally Posted by Herbie 80's

IMO, turn the guitarists down, take some of the bass and mids off of their signal, and push the drums and bass up. It'll get rid of some of the mud, and make the mix breath more.

^^ That's what I would have said earlier if I could articulate it.

[chaosMK]

lol, no vocals. We got tired of American Idol auditions after about a year (band has been around for about 5 years, with bad vocals the first 3), and had so much fun writing and doing shows instrumental that we just moved on.

Honestly with more technical odd time metal, vocalists have a very hard time. My theory is that most people who fancy themselves singers are really just Karaoke singers who took it one step further, but not *musicians* per se. That's the trouble with prog metal- you need a vocalist who is a musician. Hard to come by!

[chaosMK]

Thanks for the points guys- this is just the type of stuff I was hoping to hear.

[MonkeyBass]

My initial impressions listening on room corrected Mackie HR824's is you need to carve out some space at 150 Hz or so. Give the kick some beef around 60 Hz. Brighten up your overheads. I'd bring down the snare reverb. Also give the guitars some clarity in the 2kHz or 3 kHz range.

Good song man!! I like your playing. Good tight band. Was this in your home studio?

[bassbrad]

On 1st listen thru JBL computer monitors it sounds very good, bass drums might need a touch more punch or EQ at 450. All the instruments, (trio right?) sound clear with all parts represented. I like the composition for the drama and surprise.
Thanx for the fresh tune, B

[tomas_almeida]

More sub to the kick and a little less reverb on the snare (or maybe just a little less louder, just a tiny bit).
Instead of having your bass with so much high-mids content at 2kHz try having them more around 1kHz or 800khz, so the sound is a a little fuller.
In the "clean" part (starting at 1:38) the guitars could be clearer, more bright.

Oh and I like the band a lot. Really looking forward to hearing how the album comes out, really loving the sound on this song.

EDIT: I think I remember seeing your band on progarchives.com ! It really deserves it's place there!
EDIT: Went there to check and apparentely I got mistaken. Infortunately.

[chaosMK]

Thanks for the comments & for listening everyone.

G-string, our drummer on this album recorded on the last Aghora album (formless) - that should be on Progarchives.