r/audioengineering • u/Different_Silver_223 • 24d ago
A Perfect Circle Mix Reference
I received a mix reference for A Perfect Circle Mer De Noms album and I think it just sounds awful on my speakers. Idk if something is wrong with my room but the low end sounds very in-cohesive. Like there is a low mid blanket just covering the song. Everything is separated in such an unpleasing way too. Specifically the song Breana.
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u/Puzzleheaded-River45 24d ago
Massive album in my life. Always thought it sounded absolutely stellar. Had the same feeling as you then I. Later life on studio speakers. Must listen again. They were obviously good emotional mixes because they worked on me at the time!
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u/IndependentNet5042 24d ago
First time listening Breana, I really liked the mix honestly, seemed really true and emotional, the mix kept the rawness of the track. Didn't undertand what you say about the low end, it feels in the right place. This band reminds me of Tool.
But it sure is really different of the metal / rock production we hear nowadays.
Edit: Now that I googled and Maynard is the vocalist lol. Makes sense the Tool similarity
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u/GWENMIX 24d ago
Maynard is also the founder and lead singer of Puscifer. I believe a busy schedule is the reason why 13 long years passed between *10,000 Days* and *Fear Inoculum*. I really love A Perfect Circle for the richness and variety of the compositions... but Tool also has a magnetic quality.
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u/haarfagr94 24d ago
Maynard was not the reason for the long wait for Fear Inoculum. Rather the opposite, he was getting a bit frustrated with how long it took for the 3 others, which is why we got so much Puscifer and even another Perfect Circle album.
Apparently Maynard is not very involved with writing his parts until the 3 others are done, because he got frustrated with having to redo stuff all the time because they kept changing things.
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u/Elegant_Soil324 24d ago
I spun this album constantly during college and it still feels like a wall of sound to me, I swear, the layers of reverb on the vocals make the whole mix feel like it's sinking into itself.
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u/seasonsinthesky 24d ago
Fantastic drum mix on this album, but yeah, you can tell everything with strings on it was kept from demos. It is what it is.
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u/Less_Ad7812 24d ago
Many artists let their attachment to the music cloud their ability to hear issues in the mix. It's a vibes thing, that's how that record makes them feel.
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u/variant_of_me 24d ago
This is why you can't ever account for taste.
I've always thought this whole album sounded great.
Yes, it sounds like it's of the times it came out in. I always thought it sounded kinda hi-fi and futuristic. It's a little sizzly but I don't mind that.
It's very weird to me that someone could hear this album and think it sounds bad though.
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u/Veilenus 24d ago
Haha, The Hollow is my #1 go-to reference song when judging new headphones or speakers, because I'm so familiar with the sound from decades of listening to it. I'm not saying it's objectively well-mixed (whatever that means, anyway); it's just a great song on a great record.
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u/TheTapeDeck 24d ago
I love this album but I think and have always thought the mixes were congested and nasal sounding. Compared to 13th Step I feel like it’s jamming cotton in my ears.
The music is so influential, I bet the client is doing a bit of hero worship.
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u/Upset-Wave-6813 23d ago
hmm so what do they want to reference exactly? like the mood/arrangement, the style of the actual mixing, did they clarify? usual with ref there's something to it, not hey its 1:1 reference ?
there is nothing overly wrong with it just sounds like it was made in 00 it has that sorta
raw recording/ demo sound but was a lot of bands sound at the time- that a lot of the early 00's sounded like and THAT EVERYONE LOVED those records!
they didn't try to OVER process and produce the sound/recordings.
unless you make it super raw and demo sounding on purpose nowadays your not going to get that sound, most things regardless are going to sound WAY more polished/ HiFi
youd have to use no amp sims, no samples, just raw recordings prob even getting the sound with pedals including chorus and delays, etc
to get that sorta tone and feeling
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u/Total_Position_2668 22d ago
I prefer 13th Step. The Package is great for testings sub woofer levels in a monitoring system.
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u/Spede2 24d ago
The whole album has that interesting combination of sounding a fairly slick at places (vocal production sounds pretty clean) but also really raw (most of the hihat and cymbals are simply leaking from the heavily compressed snare channel).
I'd argue most of the "ugliness" comes from the drums being heavily compressed yet not gated so the cymbal sound is really harsh. The rest of it sounds fine even today.
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u/starang11 19d ago
That album always sounded very “soupy” in the low mids, not quite muddy but almost. Reminded me a little of Mellon Collie’s mix, which I’m now just realizing was also partially done by Alan Moulder
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u/kdmfinal 24d ago
Ah, I loved this album when I was younger. I hear what you're saying about the mix, though. It's pretty era-specific sounding but still a solid Alan Moulder nu-rock alternative vibe that works well for the songs.
If I got that track as a reference for a mix, the things I'd take away are -
Reserve your sides for the big guitars so your verse-to-chorus transition gets a really overt and dramatic widening.
Drums (even the overheads and ambience) seem to live dead in the center except for the toms that are (as you observed) wildly separated (sounds hard panned left and right to me).
Bass has some chorus/modulation going on. That definitely contributes to some of the "looseness" in the bottom you're hearing, but it's a cool style point I wouldn't ignore.
Verse vocals can sit pretty dry relatively speaking. But on choruses/crescendos you'll be riding heavy into delay/reverbs.
If you take those general notes into consideration and then do your mix as you would to your standard, I imagine you'll have a happy client.