Finally. I've been mispronouncing it in my mind for so long now....
And, FWIW, how to pronounce "Vieira"...
That's where my family is from, so yes...you DO know that Vieira is a PORTUGUESE last name, right???
After all of these 'corrections' it sounds much better to me, but the vocals (which come mainly out of the mains but also from the rears with a good bit of reverb on them) still seem a little distant and a touch harsh, and the bottom end of the kick drum and bass guitar could definitely be more defined too, with maybe a bit of judicious eq.
I've been playing around with this in Audacity for a while, and after about 10 different iterations, I think I've finally got it as close as I can for my tastes, as far as just basic level adjusting goes.
The center channel has literally nothing at all a good bit of the time, but quite often does have just a bit of drum bleed, a tiny bit of what sounds like direct injected bass guitar, and occasionally some massively loud guitar solos or keyboard highlights. There are no vocals at all, except for maybe some traces of bleed through. I ended up going with -3dB on the center to reduce the huge discrepancy of the occasional guitar/keyboard part. I could've possibly gone a bit lower, but I didn't want to take away from that little bit of clean direct bass guitar sound, and those solo parts should stand out a little more overall, just not to such a ridiculously absurd degree.
The bass/LFE is incredibly weak to me, so I tried increasing it a stupid amount, which ended up sounding way too thud-like and boomy, just on certain sections, so I kept reducing it to where it still has some oomph without being too boomy, and ended up settling on +9dB.
The surrounds were quite weak to me overall, so I increased them until it sounded more balanced, and while the few bits that are actually back there in the surrounds sounded much better to me, the echoey/reverb stuff stood out too much, so I kept backing it off until it sounded like the best balance between enough of the actual instruments and not too much reverb at +2.5dB.
After all of these 'corrections' it sounds much better to me, but the vocals (which come mainly out of the mains but also from the rears with a good bit of reverb on them) still seem a little distant and a touch harsh, and the bottom end of the kick drum and bass guitar could definitely be more defined too, with maybe a bit of judicious eq.
I'd say that for me, what I did takes it from my original vote of 4 (probably too harsh) to probably somewhere between 7~8.
Maybe it is his truth....Good to know! I'd bet he blocked me because I wrote him asking if he'd heard the commercial blu-ray, giving him the benefit of the doubt that a mistake occurred at mixdown, at mastering or somewhere in the process, maybe not even his fault. If the blu-ray truly does sound like he intended that might have pissed him off. (I may have tweeted that too...)
Man, I dig the effort and determination! At the end of the day, is the "surround" experience of this mix really worth all the fixing it needs? Can you employ the same technique to unbury the super-awesome guitar overdub during Armageddon? And the center channel is a mess. Some (maybe all?) guitar leads are WAY too loud, some synth parts are too loud, IIRC, while others are ok. Point is, this thing needs a LOT of fixing. And when all that is done, do we have a better experience than the original Terry Brown mix? While only stereo, that fucker is SWEET. They made sure, trying different mixing studios to get the right vibe, even. I think they chose Trident? And I doubt "Sheekie" did his mix there and I highly suspect he did his mix on a system severely out of calibration. I mean, it must have sounded ok to him?!I think I may have found a fix for this. I followed your suggestions (great improvement!), but took it a step further by using the new 'spleeter' tool to extract a lead vocal stem and remove it from the front channels. I mixed the isolated vocal stem into the center channel and back into the mains at a lower volume. The vocals stand out much more now, and you can't really hear the digital artifacts from the vocal extraction unless you solo the center channel.
Here's "Circumstances" with the mod:
View attachment 51211
Funny how that works out...huh??? obrigado!!!That's where my family is from, so yes...
Yes, to my grandmother's village in the North and my grandfather's town on Tercera. Very beautiful. Clean. Friendly.Funny how that works out...huh??? obrigado!!!
Portugal is a wonderful country..I am sure you have been there,...
I could never figure out how to pronounce producer Bill Szymczyk's name when I read it on the back of James Gang and other albums. ( I know now it's "simzik - So why all the extra letters?) I thought it was like Mr. Kltpzyxm from the Superman comics.Yeah, these odd-ball names in album liner notes. Our minds make a best attempt.
https://www.howtopronounce.com/french/chycki
Sounds more like "sheekie" in French.