The files that you can download on this page accompany the Mix Rescue article which appears in Sound On Sound June 2014
Audio Examples
01_Oh_Boy_original
02_Oh_Boy_remix
The 'before and after' mixes, roughly level‑matched. The original is pretty loud, so a fair amount of limiting was necessary to achieve this!
03_Drums_raw
04_Drums_processed
In these files you hear each drum mic in turn — kick, snare bottom, snare top, overhead, 'Elvis' mic and room mic — followed by the complete drum mix. As you can hear, the under‑snare mic was used only as a reverb feed in the final mix.
05_Bass_raw
06_Bass_processed
The bass guitar received some transient processing to tame the note attacks, plus compression and saturation.
07_Acoustic_Guitar_raw
08_Acoustic_Guitar_processed
The raw acoustic guitar sound combined a woofy low end with harsh high frequencies. This was tackled using EQ and a tape emulator.
09_Lead_Vocal_raw
10_Lead_Vocal_processed
As recorded, the lead vocal sound was thin and harsh. Quite a lot of processing was required to thicken it up.
11_Gang_Vocals_raw
12_Gang_Vocals_processed
This chorus of Othmar Schönafingers appears towards the end of the song. With the aim of making it sound more like a real group of singers, I rolled off a lot of the top end and applied masses of reverb.
13_Oh_Boy_remix_no_Drive
In remixing 'Oh Boy' I made a lot of use of the Drive saturation control in Softube's Console 1. Out of curiousity I decided to see how the mix would change if I reset the Drive controls on every channel to zero... the answer is "very different indeed”, as well as being some 7 or 8 dB quieter (before limiting).