So here's my quick mix (that no one asked for, yay), without listening to the original mix first. Based on what's in the tracks I'm going for an electro sound and am not shy about adding FX. I'm imagining this drenched in long-tail reverb.
ROUGH STUFF
* I'm going to start with the basics: bass, drums and lead vox, adding the rest in along the way. This way I can make sure I get the most important elements balanced without having to worry about the fine details too much for now.
* Group the two lead vox tracks and the two bgv tracks together (one group for each); in all the remaining step I'm applying processing to the group except as otherwise noted.
* Reduce bass by ~15 dB, drums by ~11 dB (you'll see more of these level changes. I actually did them gradually so the total result stayed close enough to 0 dB, but I'm sparing you the intermediate steps because they're boring.)
* Low-cut lead vox at ~110 Hz, bandwidth = 1.75 octaves, my usual starting point to get rid of useless bass without changing the character too much
* Add some baseline compression on the lead vox to get started: 2.5:1, threshold ~-15 dB non-RMS, no make-up gain. This is just so I get somewhat consistent levels to get a rough idea of everything and I can always tweak this later with automation and stuff. For Song Fight that's usually the limit of what I do, actually.
* Reduce lead vox by 6 dB on top of compression.
* Remove breathing on lead vox, mostly with a gate plugin but one or two manual cuts.
* Pitch correction on lead vox to line things up more. Works for me for electro. I used MIDI notes to control the target pitch, using the free plugin GSnap.
* Low-cut bgv at ~350 Hz, bandwidth = 1.75 oct. I find that leaving too much of the body in in background vocals muddies things up, so I tend to be quite drastic with them. This makes them come across more in-your-face, too. If they are too present I cut some highs, too, but here they seem fine.
* Reduce bgv by ~13 dB.
* Pitch correction on bgv, see above.
* Key inharmonic competes with vocals for sonic space. The meat of this is in the 2.6-2.7 KHz region, so I'm taking away a bit there in the background vocals. Actually quite a lot, a cut of 9 dB. The vocals don't need to sound good on their own after all, and the strong cut is masked by the lead vox which I'm leaving along for now, so it has the 2.6-2.7 KHz area unchanged.
* Reduce key inharmonic by ~6 dB.
* Low-cut key inharmonic at ~450 Hz.
* Reduce key temp mass by ~21 dB for now. Not sure about this yet.
* Low-cut key temp mass at ~450 Hz.
* Reduce elec piano by ~9 dB for now.
* Low-cut elec piano at ~250 Hz.
* Reduce piano by ~10 dB for now.
* Low-cut piano at ~250 Hz. Piano is a prime candidate for cutting in pop/electro when it's more of an accent than a fundamental element of the arrangement.
BASIC FIXES
At this point the basics seem fine, though the lead vox doesn't come across as having the same level throughout the song. I'm increasing the compressor ratio to 4:1 (this is electro so that should be fine) and bringing it back up by ~2 dB, it's much more up front now.
Key temp mass is obstructing the piano. I'm adding some side-chain compression to reduce it whenever a piano note comes on.
Adding 3:1 compression with make-up gain to key inharmonic to make the attack a little punchier and compensate for some of the notes being a bit weak. (Again, given more time this would be a job for automation.)
One thing that still bugs me is that the bass is all low and no definition. I'm adding selective compression (3:1) below 100 Hz, threshold ~-17 dB (no RMS, no make-up gain), so that the rest of the bass gets emphasized relative to the low frequencies. In compensation I'm bringing the level back up by 8 dB. To emphasize the character I'm also boosting around 800 Hz by ~6 dB. This is still all very rough but hopefully better than nothing. Side note: this is wrecking the lowest base frequency (D) but that one will be inaudible on many systems anyway. Consider not going below low E or G or thereabouts if you can help it.
REVERB!
Finally! Let's smother everything. I'm creating a reverb bus. Decent convolution reverb is sometimes hard to get a hold of so I'm using free algorithmic reverb plugins (Kjaerhus Classic Reverb in this case) just to show you can get something half-decent from them, too. Tricks to make it sound decent:
* Big room size. Simple algorithmic reverb tends to add strange modulated frequencies to the output if you make the room too big, but Classic Reverb is fine here.
* Some dampening but not a lot, otherwise the room goes back to sounding smaller.
* Some pre-delay to increase the sense of distance (reflecting walls further away).
* Lots of dampening of high frequencies. Reflecting those too much sounds metallic. Classic Reverb emphasizes ess sounds pretty strongly here, this would need more work I guess (e.g. automation to cut the ess sounds).
* Reduce early reflections a little so the reverb focuses more on the tail than on fattening up the base sound (which isn't so effective with pre-delay, anyway).
* -10 dB adjustment to reverb, because reverb works better when it's slightly more subtle. This is far from subtle but the base level of the plugin is definitely way too much.
Now I'm sending all the other tracks (except bass which is flabby enough already) to the reverb bus, post-FX and post-fader, with the following adjustments:
* +3 dB on drums to make them a little more spacey
* +4 dB on reverb for bgv, -4 dB on the bgv group itself to make the whole thing go more into the background
* +6 dB on reverb for key inharmonic
* +6 dB on reverb for key temp mass, -2 dB on the track itself to take a little bite out but keep it very noticeable in the background
Finally, a brickwall limiter (JB Barricade) on the master bus, bringing things up by 3 dB and limiting to -1 dB. Normally I wouldn't compress this strongly but this is electro... and pumping is still fairly subtle if you ask me, especially if you turn up the volume.
Okay, that's a basic mix done, in 1h45m. If I had MIDI stuff, too, I'd re-render the piano using a different plug-in. This one is a little plain. Also the bass because this one is a little tricky to fit in the mix (and personally I'd prefer the bass with slightly more bite).
RESULT: http://static.music-jk.net/attic/iveg-e ... indmix.mp3
I'm attaching the REAPER project file (in a ZIP file to satisfy the upload policies of the forum) if you want to take a look, REAPER can be downloaded for testing without restrictions. All the plugins I mentioned are required, plus the stock REAPER plugins. Here's the list of extra plugins again, in one convenient place:
* JB Barricade (brickwall limiter)
* Kjaerhus Audio Classic Reverb
* GSnap (by GVST)