Are my ears so bad? Is it a question of taste?

Renoise Songs
1

Hi guys,

A band asked me to do a remix of one of their track. The band is Sandra Kill and the original track is

I did my remix, sent it to the sound engineer and I was totally disappointed with the result!

I’m far from being the best for mixing and mastering and I know the guy who did it, he’s really good at composing and mastering.

Here’s my version :

https:// soundcloud.com/pplo/sandra-kill-punkakill-pplo-remix-master1/s-jxJaJ

And here’s what came back:

https:// soundcloud.com/pplo/b3-rise-back-pplo-remix-master2/s-lMSgn

(Please do not share outside of this forum!)

I just wanted to share the two version with you guys to hear what you honestly think about those.

Thanks

EDIT: It seems I cannot share the private links in here …?? copy paste and remove the spaces to listen

2

Artefaqt mastering seems bit cleaner with more [BASS] and drums with more punch. only real big difference i heard on a headphones, on speakers in my livingroom i did not hear big difference.

3

Artefaqt mastering seems to me a kind of pop-style mastering, attenuating the ear spot frequencies. It also has much more highs and lacks of middle bass, so it sounds harsh. But IMO it doesn’t fit the genre at all, I like your mastering much more, though maybe you could give some element more highs e.g. the vocals and the rave chord. Besides this, I really don’t like the intro, because of that static guitar sound, which is really annoying to listen to standing alone, even without any room information. At least add a slight phaser or so, and some short delay. Later the song sounds fine to me, so the intro maybe is not very inviting to listen to all. I wouldn’t fix the problems in this song with mastering, but instead doing a better mix.

4

what you honestly think about those.

I certainly don’t listen to a lot of music like this, so take what I say with a healthy pinch of salt…

I listened to both on headphones (Beyerdynamic DT-770 Pro studio reference headphones) and on my very average hi-fi speakers (some generic Panasonic shit).

Overall, neither mix really sounds “perfect” to my ears.

Your version is a lot more raw and gritty, capturing more of the aggressive guitar tones, and arguably has a much more “punk” sound to it. It’s a bit more dirty in places, but that’s certainly not always a bad thing. It sounded pretty kickass overall on both headphones and hi-fi speakers.

When listening on headphones, the Artefaqt mix is unquestionably more polished in the low end and high end, but it’s also lacking some of the raw energy and aggressive character in the guitars compared to your mix, since a lot of those frequencies seemed to have been EQ’ed and scooped away. On headphones the low end sounds nice and fat, but it didn’t really translate well to my hi-fi speakers, so maybe wouldn’t sound quite as cool on the typical average system?

I agree with @ffx in that Artefaqt seems to have applied some fairly typical off-the-shelf mastering preset here (at least at a casual glance, I’m sure more went into it). It’s almost moving into what I’d expect from a drum&bass track, for example, without really considering the source material very strongly (i.e. wanting to maintain the aggressive guitars).

Just playing around in Renoise and ripping the audio from both streams, doing a bit of filtering to take aspects of each version and roughly blend them together, I actually think you could combine both versions into a really kickass hybrid, using some of the tighter low end from the Artefaqt mix, combined with the more aggressive mid-range from your version.

Or maybe you could express your concerns to the guy and try to work a bit more closely together to come up with something better.

5

I listen to electropunk quite a lot, and i must say i also like your own version a lot more, its way more raw. the artefaqt one is just way to Plastic for me, like ffx said, its a bit too much pop. it misses the whole punk feeling.

6

Artefaqt mastering seems to me a kind of pop-style mastering, attenuating the ear spot frequencies. It also has much more highs and lacks of middle bass, so it sounds harsh

It sounded empty to me; I listened to some of thePPLo Remix first, which may have tainted my listening, but honestly the second one sounded frail on my AKG K 240 MK II open-back headphones.

I prefer the PPLo version (though it’s not really my taste in music).

7

I want to say a big thank you to you guys for taking some of your time to listen and write some interesting and honest feedback (regarding mastering and composition)!

It really puts things in perspectives. Also, I think I might be a little defensive when someone touch my babies (songs).

After reading your comments and listening again to both version, I think they both have some pros and cons. I will try to work on and submit an hybrid version, as suggested by dblue.

Thank you again for your time and thoughts, this has been very enlightening!

Cheers!

8

I prefer your version, it’s louder raw and gritty, which suits the genre well. The mastered version has a more modern sound to it, but i don’t think that is always positive, especially not with heavy guitars and punk attitude.

I’ve grown up with black metal, experimental rock, polish freejazz and so on, so i guess my ears can tolerate a bit more noisy productions than most.