Pop Rock Mix Help

[rsadasiv]

I did a rough mix of this song and have a few areas that I am still not sure about.

1) Vocals - The vocal was kind of whispery so I put on a bright reverb and added a bunch of air under it with an eq boost at 2K and 5K. Too much?

2) Drums - I used the default Jamstix kit into some tapeish compression with some parallel compression via Kjaerhus Classic Compressor. Should I replace the drum kit or change the compression scheme?

3) Master buss - There is a small eq boost on the low end, but no hall reverb or limiter. Should I add something on the master buss?

And if there anything else that I am not worrying about that I should be worrying about, please let me know.

[brandondrury]

1) Vocals - The vocal was kind of whispery so I put on a bright reverb and added a bunch of air under it with an eq boost at 2K and 5K. Too much?

I think so. You always have to be careful with how these aggressive "take a chance" style audio engineering decisions translate. I have a feeling what I'm hearing isn't what you heard when mixing.

The vocals seem like they aren't really there. There is a ton of bottom and a ton of the midrange area you boosted but there is definitely a lack of "substance" somewhere in the lower midrange. I'd maybe not boost quite so much in the 2-5K range and I'd try to control the low end a bit more.

I'd make sure to double check this one especially on systems that tend to sound scooped.

2) Drums - I used the default Jamstix kit into some tapeish compression with some parallel compression via Kjaerhus Classic Compressor. Should I replace the drum kit or change the compression scheme?

The drums sound good to me.

3) Master buss - There is a small eq boost on the low end, but no hall reverb or limiter. Should I add something on the master buss?

The low end on this entire mix is meaty, but may be a hair much for my tastes. What happens if you take the low end boost off off the low end. When it doubt, do less on the 2 bus. I can't think of a time I'd ever add reverb on the 2bus. I know that some mastering software comes with reverb knob, but that never made any sense to me.


Brandon