These two tools I've found really helpful as a check and balance...

[Lynx_TWO]

Mix Monolith by Ayaic, and their COS Pro EQ

https://www.ayaicinc.com/mix-monolith
https://www.ayaicinc.com/cos-pro

The reason I've found these tools really helpful is as a "dummy check". Often, in a dense mix, it can be easy to miss some subtle elements the artist has included in their recordings. Generally, after I do any needed track preparation, load all tracks into reaper, create subfolders/groups/busses for Stems, and adjust panning on each track to taste in order to create the desired stereo separation, I'll throw mix monolith on all tracks (not the stems), select the corresponding instruments, hit Listen, play the mix through once without listening, then hit Mix. Then, since Mix Monolith keeps the data internally, I'll play each Solo Stem through again while adjusting the =-10dB volume slider on each subtrack since the current LUFS measurement standards, while very good, are not perfectly precise measurements of volume.

Once this is done, I'll lock each instance of mix monolith. Otherwise, when using Mix Monolith to listen to and mix each stem it will change the mixing level when hitting Mix on the stem instances again.

Finally, I'll throw Mix Monolith on each Stem, hit listen while playing the whole mix, then hit Mix. Repeat the process of adjusting the volume on each instance again. This gets you 90% there.

From there, start adding your volume envelopes to adjust everything through the mix as you want.

COS Pro. I've found this tool extremely helpful due to the ceilings you adjust the slope of in order to generate a 31-band or 50-band EQ curve for your stems. The best way I've found to use this is: Do not use any of the pre-sets. Let it listen to your audio, then generate a ceiling based on your current audio. From there, adjust each of the 15 slopes to taste, and allow the software to again create an EQ curve. If you do not adjust the slopes and simply generate a correction curve, you will notice that, especially with the 50-band setting, any peaks across a slope will be smoothed out which automatically and subtly corrects for any discrepancies across a given slope. It's a bit difficult to explain until you try it, but it becomes immediately intuitive once you see what's going on.

Anyway, these two tools I've found to be great "dummy checks" for anyone just starting out, and also good for even professionals since we can all get in a rut sometimes. Remember that it's the electricians who have worked for 20 years plus that usually electrocute themselves because they started taking something for granted

Hope this helps, and I'll be interested to see if anyone else has used these tools before.

[sammartin23]

Hello,
I just bought mix monolith and COS pro but can't seem to get them installed.
Windows 10 64 bit
I install the plugs and then open Reaper and it finds the dll in the scan and prompts me to enter the activation code. I do that and get green arrows across the board with the act. code but then it just hangs, stating, "working"

I've uninstalled numerous times and tried the vst2 and vst3 plugs in the recommended install folder and in a custom folder. I tried to wipe vst cache and rescan and the same thing happens.

Any ideas?

Thanks

[TonE]

How is Automixer jsfx compared to Mix Monolith by Ayaic? Where is the difference? Do any jsfx alternatives to Mix Monolith exist already?

[Lynx_TWO]

Originally Posted by TonE

How is Automixer jsfx compared to Mix Monolith by Ayaic? Where is the difference? Do any jsfx alternatives to Mix Monolith exist already?

Automixer is great for Podcasts (multiple mics, mic bleed, etc) and I use it for that purpose, but it wouldn't really work for a music mix. You'd end up with a lot of weird ducking and leveling issues. Not to mention I believe there's a track limit that most mixes would exceed.

Mix Monolith basically sets different instruments at specific recommended LUFS and then you can adjust from there. Depending on the instruments, it will also auto-duck, say, the Kick drum to the Bassline. I honestly don't use Mix Monolith that much anymore since, now that I have almost 200 mixes under my belt, it's faster for me to adjust manually. However, I'd still recommend it, at least for people starting out. Or maybe if you have a mix with a very high track count. These days I start with the kick and the bass, then add tracks and adjust each one based on the kick and bass.

What I do now is normalize all tracks to -26 LUFS, save as 32-bit Floating Point, then losslessly compress those tracks to WavPack before importing to Reaper which saves a ton of space and gives me a very fast starting point, allowing me to simply adjust the volume of each track in +- 1dB or 3dB increments.

I do HIGHLY recommend the Duck plugin by Devious Machines ($19 on sale) for ducking bass to kick. I've tried other methods including dynamic EQ, TrackSpacer, etc. and Duck is just freaking awesome. After sending your kick to your bass track on channels 3/4 to create a sidechain, you put Duck on the bass track (or folder if you have multiple bass tracks) and set Duck to Trigger Mode. Set the lookahead setting to maximum. It syncs to the Tempo of your track and you select 1/4 note, 1/32 note, 1 bar, etc., and draw the curve you want. Doing it this way avoids the phase issues you run into with other methods and you end up with an extremely solid low-end. Add the Pi plugin by SoundRadix as the last plugin in each track, and Pi automatically rotates phase in real-time to keep everything in phase regardless of your EQ and compression messing with phase. It's literally a set-and-forget plugin.

https://deviousmachines.com/product/duck/

https://www.soundradix.com/products/pi/

[Lynx_TWO]

Originally Posted by sammartin23

Hello,
I just bought mix monolith and COS pro but can't seem to get them installed.
Windows 10 64 bit
I install the plugs and then open Reaper and it finds the dll in the scan and prompts me to enter the activation code. I do that and get green arrows across the board with the act. code but then it just hangs, stating, "working"

I've uninstalled numerous times and tried the vst2 and vst3 plugs in the recommended install folder and in a custom folder. I tried to wipe vst cache and rescan and the same thing happens.

Any ideas?

Thanks

That's a weird one; I've never had that happen before... Are you sure it's hanging and not just waiting for you to play the song through so it can learn your levels? Some plugins also require you to reload them on your track once you activate them.

[sammartin23]

Originally Posted by Lynx_TWO

That's a weird one; I've never had that happen before... Are you sure it's hanging and not just waiting for you to play the song through so it can learn your levels? Some plugins also require you to reload them on your track once you activate them.

No I can't even get it to show up in Reaper, just hangs after I enter the activation code. I suspect it's something with ilok. I haven't bought any plugs in quite a while and it's possible I'm not doing the ilok crap right.

[Lynx_TWO]

Originally Posted by sammartin23

No I can't even get it to show up in Reaper, just hangs after I enter the activation code. I suspect it's something with ilok. I haven't bought any plugs in quite a while and it's possible I'm not doing the ilok crap right.

You might have to open the iLok manager, and check to make sure it’s enabled on your iLok.

[drewbarlow]

Originally Posted by Lynx_TWO

Mix Monolith by Ayaic, and their COS Pro EQ

I'll throw mix monolith on all tracks

Hi, Lynx_TWO!

I'm a mostly-competent Reaper user, new to Ayaic software; still wrapping my head around the process. Please pardon the question if i'm missing an obvious solution here.

Some of my track counts get pretty large. Is there a Reaper script or shortcut you use to add Mix Monolith to all (or selected) tracks?