How is the HS mix bad?

[ZoSoRose]

So many people rip on the mix for HS and I just don’t get it. Every instrument is clear and balanced, the guitars are nice and punchy, and the bass actually sounds decent and brings out the vocals and guitar. I get the drums sound a little “programmy”, and the originals were better, but that aside, wtf?

I thought all 3 reunion singles sound pretty good (mix and tone wise) 

[downzy]

For me it’s there is zero low-end to HS and Perhaps.  

They sound like they were mixed for Metallica’s And Justice For All.

[GNR4Ever2024]

16 minutes ago, downzy said:

For me it’s there is zero low-end to HS and Perhaps.  

They sound like they were mixed for Metallica’s And Justice For All.

might want to turn your bass up my friend exact opposite for when I listen in my car

[Gordon Comstock]

It's way too loud. The slide solo is the only part that has some room to breathe but even then, it's still trying to put everything at the top of the mix. The low end isn't as bad as AJFA like downzy said but these are still the worst sounding songs in the GNR catalogue.

Perhaps doesn't sound great, but it's the best so far. Perhaps > Absurd > Hard Skool. Add these songs to a playlist with some other recent releases and they really stick out IMO. The vocal effects are annoying, the drums sound soulless, the guitars are too thin to be as loud as the are, and they sound just as muddy as the worst parts of CD, if not worse.

Just look how brick-walled HS is...

[ZoSoRose]

HS is loud, I’ll give you that, but to me it’s pretty balanced so I can just turn it down

I get they’re pretty modern sounding production- wise (funny for such old songs) and have a good amount of compression, but I think they sound pretty good. I crank HS and everything’s clear for me

[ShadowOfTheWave]

Axl's voice is echoey and too low in the mix.

[Voodoochild]

1 hour ago, Gordon Comstock said:

It's way too loud. The slide solo is the only part that has some room to breathe but even then, it's still trying to put everything at the top of the mix. The low end isn't as bad as AJFA like downzy said but these are still the worst sounding songs in the GNR catalogue.

Perhaps doesn't sound great, but it's the best so far. Perhaps > Absurd > Hard Skool. Add these songs to a playlist with some other recent releases and they really stick out IMO. The vocal effects are annoying, the drums sound soulless, the guitars are too thin to be as loud as the are, and they sound just as muddy as the worst parts of CD, if not worse.

Just look how brick-walled HS is...

This. The lack of dynamics makes the song abrasive. 

[eggers]

The only problem I have with it is the boring ass drums. They sound like they are programmed.

[Zeppelin]

I’m not an engineer, but a song can have everything audible, but still be poorly mixed. Nothing breathes in the song whatsoever.

It’s unfair to compare to something like AFD, since it has such great sound. But it sounds like everything has its place on that record. By contrast, HS sounds like everything is competing for space, and nothing is ever going to win.

Beyond that, the instruments have zero balls. There are no great tones and there’s no oomph to the sound, other than horrendous amounts of brickwalling.

[WhazUp]

For me personally, Hard Skool's EQ as a whole is very thin sounding, almost like everything was coming out of studio moniter speakers placed in a tin can.  And the vocals are way to wet with the reverb to my liking.  Mix that with the compression and re-sampled drum hits that make it sound very sterile, I think Perhaps and Absurd sound way better

[betterman]

Its a little too much compressed and the drums sound bad, but overall quite OK. there are several band/tracks that suffer way more than this..

[Cosmo]

I have no problem with the mixes apart from the drums in Hard Skool, but it doesn't ruin the experience for me.

[Billy Cundy]

It’s just not a cohesive mix - the drums feel stilted and I doubt they’re programmed, they’re probably played it triggering with very boring samples. It doesn’t sound like a kit, it sounds like an annoying kick/snare, and cymbals overdubbed in and really low in the mix. No vibe. Compression makes everything sound same velocity too. 

the guitars are fine, not a tremendous amount of character, but they’ve got some width to them.. duffs bass is automated wayyyy down after the intro. 
 

Axl’s vocals do not sit very well at all. Perhaps does a lot better job at recontextualising the old vocal track into a new instrumental. Hard Skool, they sound dragged and dropped, tinny and distant. Just A/B’d with Perhaps and it’s remarkable how much better the Perhaps mix is. 
 

to sum up, HS suffers from shit sounding drums (the drum pattern/production sucks too) and poorly integrated vocals. 

[Jwalker19]

The best way I can describe it is it sounds super copy/pasted (which it is) and lacks a punch.

[downzy]

8 hours ago, GNR4Ever2024 said:

might want to turn your bass up my friend exact opposite for when I listen in my car

I listened to HS and Perhaps on my friend’s $50k recording studio sound system.

After hearing Perhaps, I asked him if he had the bass turned down or off.  He then played a Queens of the Stone Age song and then Welcome to the Jungle and it was night and day.  Those songs you could feel the bass, the low end was present.  You can hear the bass in both Perhaps and HS, but there is no heft to them like how most songs are mixed these days.  

[there is no dana only zool]

Speaking of mixing, take, for example, Illusion I: does anyone with knowledge of, well, mixing lol, know if... imagine you're standing in front of the mixing board.  Now, take, let's say, Right Next Door to Hell, Dead Horse, Don't Damn Me and Bad Obsession.  To my ear, those four songs sound "cohesive."  Does there exist a chance, however, that the levels for the drums may be a bit louder on one (or two?  or three?) tracks than the others?; or perhaps, Slash may be higher in the mix at times and lower in others?  What I'm trying to learn is, in order for an album like Illusion I to sound like the songs all indeed belong on the same album, is there merely some sort of a "template" that was used to ensure this?; and like, so therefore the levels on most of the songs were identical to each other? 

[Nick85]

Yeah I have no issue with the mixes. Some people are sound nerds and it means exponentially more to them when something hits their ears a certain way. 

[Billy Cundy]

13 minutes ago, there is no dana only zool said:

Speaking of mixing, take, for example, Illusion I: does anyone with knowledge of, well, mixing lol, know if... imagine you're standing in front of the mixing board.  Now, take, let's say, Right Next Door to Hell, Dead Horse, Don't Damn Me and Bad Obsession.  To my ear, those four songs sound "cohesive."  Does there exist a chance, however, that the levels for the drums may be a bit louder on one (or two?  or three?) tracks than the others?; or perhaps, Slash may be higher in the mix at times and lower in others?  What I'm trying to learn is, in order for an album like Illusion I to sound like the songs all indeed belong on the same album, is there merely some sort of a "template" that was used to ensure this?; and like, so therefore the levels on most of the songs were identical to each other? 

Yes, a producer and engineer will generally track drums for an album in one stint, meaning the gain structure, the mics and the preamps used will be the same across the album. Any compression/EQ printed/committed to tape will also be included. This is the majority of the drum sound, and as this is done in one go, this is why the overall sound and tone of the drums generally isnt going to change that much from song to song. 
 

however, after that initial set of tracks is printed, it’s pretty much entirely at the discretion of the mixer, so volume, compression, delays/verbs, effects and panning can change from track to track depending on what is needed. For example, right next door to hell is pretty simple - it’s two guitars, bass, drums and a lead vocal. It’s plenty of tracks to deal with as I’m sure they had plenty of mics on the kit, but generally a pretty sparse arrangement. The drums can breathe, they have plenty of room to be very present and front and centre, so it’s likely Bill Price cranked them louder than he would on a dense mix like say, Bad Obsession, that features keys, harmonica and more instrumentation.

 

the drum sound comes from the initial tracking/production, but mixing is a free for all and rarely will tracks on an album have the exact same template as every song will have different requirements. 

Edited September 4, 2023 by Billy Cundy

[there is no dana only zool]

4 minutes ago, Billy Cundy said:

Yes, a producer and engineer will generally track drums for an album in one stint, meaning the gain structure, the mics and the preamps used will be the same across the album. Any compression/EQ printed/committed to tape will also be included. This is the majority of the drum sound, and as this is done in one go, this is why the overall sound and tone of the drums generally isnt going to change that much from song to song. 
 

however, after that initial set of tracks is printed, it’s pretty much entirely at the discretion of the mixer, so volume, compression, delays/verbs, effects and panning can change from track to track depending on what is needed. For example, right next door to hell is pretty simple - it’s two guitars, bass, drums and a lead vocal. It’s plenty of tracks to deal with as I’m sure they had plenty of mics on the kit, but generally a pretty sparse arrangement. The drums can breathe, they have plenty of room to be very present and front and centre, so it’s likely Bill Price cranked them louder than he would on a dense mix like say, Bad Obsession, that features keys, harmonica and more instrumentation.

 

the drum sound comes from the initial tracking/production, but mixing is a free for all and rarely will tracks on an album have the exact same template as every song will have different requirements. 

 

Ok.  This is extraordinarily helpful and I am genuinely thankful for your response, mate

 

edit: in case you were wondering what, specifically stuck out the most: "...rarely will tracks on an album have the exact same template as every song will have different requirements."

Edited September 4, 2023 by there is no dana only zool

[DoMw94]

Yeah, I don't get it. It sounds great to me. It's modern, of its time.

If I had an issue, it'd be that we can't really hear the backing vocals. But other than that, it's a rock song – it gives me a fun three-and-a-bit minutes escape from the real world, time I don't need to spend analysing every note

[Twinaleblood]

I think the mixing, while not perfect, is acceptable. The biggest issues are rooted in the mastering: it's the mastering making HS so loud and "brickwalled". The very same mix, mastered in a proper dynamic way rather than loud for loudness' sake, would sound significantly better.

[Billy Cundy]

2 hours ago, there is no dana only zool said:

 

Ok.  This is extraordinarily helpful and I am genuinely thankful for your response, mate

 

edit: in case you were wondering what, specifically stuck out the most: "...rarely will tracks on an album have the exact same template as every song will have different requirements."

No probs. 👍 

[ZoSoRose]

Thanks for the responses, everyone! I totally get that hearing everything does not equal balance, but I’d take the mix for HS over some other “modern” releases like A Different Kind of Truth, Death Magnetic (the other two have been better). Those are what I think of when I think of brick walled

Then again, I am apparently in the minority and think Chinese’s 2008 final version is a great sounding album

[Twinaleblood]

14 minutes ago, ZoSoRose said:

Then again, I am apparently in the minority and think Chinese’s 2008 final version is a great sounding album

I'm totally with you on this. Chinese Democracy's mastering is an amazing work, even more so if you think how dense and layered the production is.

[2020_Intensions]

3 hours ago, DoMw94 said:

Yeah, I don't get it. It sounds great to me. It's modern, of its time.

If I had an issue, it'd be that we can't really hear the backing vocals. But other than that, it's a rock song – it gives me a fun three-and-a-bit minutes escape from the real world, time I don't need to spend analysing every note

It's not modern at all. It's fucking shit. Mammoth WVH .. That's modern and sounds amazing.