Audio Balance

[Mark Richards]

Since October '25 I've been trying to compensate for some hearing loss by re-balancing my monitor system both for room acoustics and hearing correction.

After much trial and error, this test mix of a song tracked several years go is the point I'm at. The track is -18 LUFS, peak -1.5 LUFS, dynamic range 7 LU.
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Some broad feedback from the community on the overall balance (or lack of) much appreciated.

 

[Phil Tipping]

Sorry for delay Mark, but only just got round to checking this out.
Need to give it a full run through, but wanted to check first if you'd changed much since the original mix a few years ago, particularly the vocals. I may have messed up the file transferring to the studio PC, but I don't remember the melody rising unexpectedly, e.g. at 22 secs.
It may be intentional, in which case I apologise, but didn't want to continue until I checked with you.
It could also be just me with my one good ear and untreated room

 

[Mark Richards]

Thanks, Phil. For the test mix I'm using my current default FX chain. I think what you're hearing that's different from the original may be the delay + reverb + dynamic EQ (i.e., targeted compression) FX chain on the vocals, which brings out more of the FX tail and brightens the vocal (that's the plan, anyway). It's possible I've overdone the dynamic EQ.

I chose this particular song because there's lots of layers to it sonicly that need subtle blending to make the arrangement work.

 

[Phil Tipping]

Ok thanks Mark. Have had a proper listen now and compared with the original. The balance and dynamic range sounded very good to me, and pretty similar to the original. The waveforms were comparable. Nice not to see loads of flat-topping
It's not much of a professional assessment I'm afraid; I don't have any pro metering so just have to rely on my ear... but hopefully someone else with a better set up (and ears) than me will chime in.

Just as an aside, and I know this wasn't your question, but the song itself doesn't sound right to me... which was why I queried it initially. I managed to find your old version from years ago (Africa CLIP_Original v Exciter.WAV) and although it was just the chorus, the vocals sounded really good, whereas this new one definitely has some pitch and timing issues.

I remember you mentioning a T.C.Helicon so maybe you used it for adding harmonies and it wasn't set right so some of the layers jumped to the wrong notes. The obvious ones are at 22s, 45s and 2m3s, but perhaps someone else could check; it may just be me

The timing also sounded muddled in places, e.g. 37s and 1m15s. It's as if some of the harmony layers slipped out of alignment. The choruses at 2m17s and 3m12s sound a lot tighter and better, and I really like the vocal layering here.

Overall, the backing sounds very clear, similar to the original, and I like the additional backing vocal tweaks in the chorus at 3m34s; they fit really well imo.

Hope this doesn't come across as too negative. You've obviously put a lot of work into this so kudos to you, but it would be interesting to backtrack a bit in the production processes and find out where the anomalies crept in.

 

[Mark Richards]

Phil, thank you

Exactly the kind of critique I need. That's very helpful.

The original was all done within the portastudio. The test mix was done in my D.A.W. so I need to look into that too.

I don't recall using the harmonizer on the backing vocals. I'll take a look at the original track sheet and listen to the individual vox tracks without any FX (probably how I should have mixed it for the purpose at hand), and do a clean submix.

And I'm finding in addition to all the other things I'm trying to adjust for, my "golden" ears have turned silver.

 

[-mjk-]

Spectrally, it sounds completely normal to my ears, Mark. I'm listening on the notebook computer on the road. I use it a lot and am familiar with how it reproduces music.

 

[Mark Richards]

Thanks mj.

That let's me focus now on the vocal anomalies Phil pointed out.