What "mix problems" do you see in the majority of metal today?

[TheManWhoWalksAlone]

Overly SSSSSSSSSibilant Vocalssssssssssss, and the Bass Guitar being completely mixed out.

 

[Force]

As said, it's a personal thing, mypet hates have to be loud vocals & quite snare.

There's been loads of albums I love but felt were ruined because all you could here was the singer (eg any pre 2000 Europe, well, anything 80's really) or it lost it's beat & intensity due to a muffled, low in the mix snare (eg King Diamond - Voodoo & Helloween - Better Than Raw).

Each to there own I guess, it just shits me when you can't hear everything. Rhythm guitars use to suffer the most. They're in there for a reason, so lets hear the damn things, it's metal FFS.

 

[oddcam]

As heard in the recent BoO album TWDA, low-tuned guitars with the low-end cut out. The tone is 99% pick-noise, and it's up to the bass guitar and your own imagination to figure out what low note is being played half the time. Oh, and the tuning is too low for you to hear the bass guitar.

That album gives me a headache.

 

[All_¥our_Bass]

Inaudible bass

 

[fps]

^That's a subjective problem though. Personally I love to hear new and innovative stuff even if it's extremely digitalized/over produced. If it sounds cool/interesting, I'm game.

True, at one level it's all sound, and I don't judge performance of things like the backing tracks in rap in the same way. Valid point, for sure.

Point one for me, the guitar tones that are currently in vogue, I mean... I like guitar sounds that could shatter mountains. These thin trebly tones just don't do it for me. I mean, you have these bands, you know the ones, they have thousands of pounds of gear, custom guitars made to exact specifications.... and then their tones sound like cack to me.

Point two, I do like the feeling that I'm listening to a meeting of different people, who feel the beat in different ways, who have found a medium point between them where everything is held together in tension between those ways. There's a drama in that, a friction. Yes there's always been quantising, but usually it still maintains some of the original feel of the player, or at least used to, but now you may as well have a drum machine on a lot of the big releases, and everything else gets pushed to match that. I can even point to a band I love, Crowbar, and how an ultra-quantised mix, on Sever The Wicked Hand, severely dented my enjoyment of the record, compared with their previous releases, which breathed a lot more.

 

[DarkWolfXV]

Not enough bass, not enough bass drops, not enough gain on guitars, HP filters all way to 200hz, quantising (if they at least bothered moving notes manually with a little bit of "human inaccuracy" rather than quantising, would sound so much better), obvious autotune on clean vocals (at least try making it sound natural), bassless kick drums (where is the 60hz goddammit).

 

[Mprinsje]

most modern metal sounds very sterile production wise, axefx's not making things better.

 

[Daybreak]

most modern metal sounds very sterile production wise, axefx's not making things better.

Yeah I'm sure Axe-Fx's are to blame for the whole metal industry's unified "sterile" sound. I'm sure, if all the producers had REAL amps, they would dial them in completely different!

 

[MetalDestroyer]

It's impossible to pinpoint a single problem what with today's variety of metal. For instance, no one will argue that black metal has never heard of the bass guitar, but that's specifically that genre, I wouldn't say periphery or insomnium have that problem.

 

[welsh_7stinger]

on the recent bfmv album i noticed a distinct (also heard it on bmth's latest album) lack of low end from the recordings. You need low end in metal. metal mixes without low end = unfinished sounding mix.

 

[spaghettipomodoro]

^Could you not abbreviate band names...

 

[Drew]

Are we talking commercial releases, or the endless "S2.0 BKP AxeFX II Mayones EzMix2 Mixtest!" threads here?

 

[All_¥our_Bass]

Not enough gain on guitars, tones that are WAY TOO TIGHT-even Meshuggah has some sort of squish/sag/give in their rhythm tones.

 

[JohnIce]

Wow, glad I'm not alone in my dislike for that honky telephone-tone people pay thousands of dollars to get Aside from just sounding obnoxious I think the whole thing reeks of bandwagoning and desperation to impress people in social media. Quit filming that goddamn playthrough, grab a pencil sharpener and go write a goddamn song that's actually about something for once

Also, virtual instruments for drums and bass rarely do it for me. It's obviously great for demos but in the end rock & roll is best enjoyed with real friends, kids

 

[MetalDestroyer]

Not enough gain on guitars, tones that are WAY TOO TIGHT-even Meshuggah has some sort of squish/sag/give in their rhythm tones.

I disagree with this, unless you are qualifying it by only referencing the djent movement because the majority of bands I listen to use plenty of gain.

Wow, glad I'm not alone in my dislike for that honky telephone-tone people pay thousands of dollars to get

I personally hate the "djent" tone. I'm all for low-end clarity but there gets to be a point where I'm not sure whether or not people are serious.

 

[pushpull7]

Though I enjoy nearly ALL the music put up here (seriously, most if not all of you guys are pretty ....ing talented) but so MANY good thoughts in this thread. One thing I hear here a ton is too much HP'ing. I'm glad I'm not the only one who has noticed this.

I'm no frackin' mix expert. I DO still have decent ears and can hear when things are thin and maxed out compression wise.

Kudos to the vast majority of people on here. You're ability to record, sequence, mix, etc is admirable. Just many need to put in more time on the "art" vs simply HP'ing/compress/limiting. Frankly, I think that vast majority of people are capable. But there is a reason highly regarded mixers are who they are, it's an art.

 

[akinari]

Now we should really get the ball rolling and email this thread to every big name metal engineer/producers working today

But yeah, I can't stand inaudible bass. I realize that big, clangy godflesh style bass tone I use doesn't work in everyone else's song/mix, but.. y'know.

 

[isispelican]

Too little bass and beef.

 

[pushpull7]

I loled. BUT, this community will be served by a thread like this.

I listen to TON of music on this site. But I rarely comment because I feel 90% of this thread sums up what I'm hearing personally. It's a) not cool and b) tedious to repeat it over and over.

 

[Necris]

Overly compressed mixes with waveforms that look like bricks. If your final waveform looks like a brick start the mastering process over. If it looks like a brick before it's been mastered start the mixing process over, if it looks like a brick before it's been mixed start the recording process over and check your levels. Your mix that still has dynamics isn't as loud as a commercial mix? Good, it will be less fatiguing to the ears and will actually stand out from all of the hyper-compressed mixes.

Over use of compression in general. Why on earth are you crushing the snare drum with compression?

Too much reverb on vocal tracks: A little goes a long way.

Plastic/dead sounding drums, I have no idea how this sound caught on, even if you're using a drum machine you don't have to make the drums sound completely sterile.

Bass with the treble cranked in an attempt to achieve "that clanky tone". The majority of the time all you end up with is something strident and unlistenable.

Over reliance on plugins/presets: Leads to nearly identical sounding mixes and overall laziness.