Quote:
Originally Posted by PVinKC
Would those of you who reviewed mind to please explain the issue as clearly as possible and steps you would take to remedy the issues?
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Regarding the bit about your initial reaction--there's nothing particularly wrong with wanting to defend the merit of your work if you have reason to believe the decisions you made were the right ones (or close enough to the intended effect). Critiques from others are coloured by subjectivity and someone else's sensibilities don't always align with your own. Of course, it's also always worth figuring out where a piece of criticism might be coming from and how much of it you can use to improve, whether you completely agree with it or not.
Now with the comment about too much high frequency content, I really did try a [10dB high shelf cut @ 2750Hz, bandwidth 0.9, output gain +4.1dB] and the top end sounds much closer to the other mixes as well as other random music in my library. I think this one is going to come down to your monitoring. There are some questions worth asking in that case: what are you monitoring on; are you using a volume-matched reference track (or multiple) to use as a rough balance target; and how loud are you monitoring while you work or playback a render?
As for other elements, I think most of your guitars really just need a volume boost. For example, they're much quieter than your keys and bells--elements that I'd consider more background-ish. That said, there is one guitar at 2:45 doing a repeated riff, that sticks out a lot from the rest of them and dominates the entire mix when it's playing. The keys and bells could be lowered in volume and the keys high-passed. If you feel that makes it sound too thin, saturating first might help to keep it sounding rich and full even with the HPF. Your bass has a nasal-ish honk ~900Hz to it that sticks out and uses midrange 'headroom' that could be better served instead by replacing some of it with more midrange in your guitars, or your drum kit, or even a reverb ambience.