Carolina in the Pines

Carolina in the Pines

Performed by: Pretty Saro

Style: Bluegrass

Mix date: March 2021

Recording: Live recording

Notes:

These tracks were kindly provided by the Cambridge MT multitrack library to practice mixing. All original performers, recording engineers, Cambridge MT and others are acknowledged.

I used these tracks to do a comparison of making a mix using my Yamaha HS5/HS8 studio monitors and a mix made on headphones (Sennheiser HD650) but using the Waves Nx Ocean Way Nashville plugin, which simulates a studio environment.

I did only one iteration on each mix in this case. Listening back I would make some further changes. I also included the original mix below for your reference, which in some respect is much better than the two mixes I produced.

Generally, it is stated that making a mix on headphones is more difficult in the sense that it does not translate to other listening environments. The Waves plugin is supposed to solve this. Listen to the two mixes below. There are quite similar (which is good in a sense) but not identical. Some observations:

• The reference mix has a much better stereo field w.r.t. the guitar/mandolin but also the two vocals. Although, I initially did the same I (accidently) removed this while focusing (too much) on other aspects of the mix.
• The vocals in the reference mix are much clearer.
• The low end of the HS5 mix is inferior (to my ears) compared to the Nx mix. I always have difficulties in getting the low-end right and I generally listen to a mix several times on different playback systems to get this right. Even though I use the ARC system with my monitors, this continues to be a problem and probably related to the fact that my room is not acoustically treated at all.
• To my ears the low-end of the reference mix and my Nx mix both work within the mix.
• I only used compression and a little distortion on a parallel vocal track that I mixed back in to give more clarity to the vocals. I didn’t use any other processing. This is actually the very first mix on which I didn’t use reverb or delay. Instead I only mixed in the room microphone. In the HS5 mix this sometimes sounds little too much, while in the Nx mix I am happy with the result.

I think I should have made a third mix on the headphones without the plugin. In addition, it is difficult to make two independent mixes of the same song. The first mix was done on the HS5/HS8 monitors which already points to important aspects of the song/mix and, consequently, the second mix is not really independent anymore. However, I will do a few more comparisons of other songs in the near future.

An other point to notice is that this song has only a very limited number of tracks (7 tracks in total) and, therefore, is maybe to simple to expect differences between the two mixes? However, there was a lot of bleeding between the microphones in these tracks.

Raw tracks: available on request or from above website

Final mixes on SoundCloud: HS5 mix  and  HD650/Nx Ocean mix

Leave your comments: not on mixoff.org (sorry)

Listen at SoundCloud

Mix on the Yahama HS5/HS8 monitoring system:

Mix on the Sennheiser HD650 / Waves Nx Ocean Way Nashville

The original mix, for your reference: