Which mix sounds better? (Rock arrangements)

[Grayburg]

http://tindeck.com/listen/rjmr

vs

http://tindeck.com/listen/zdsi

Just wondering about sound production atm.

Personally, I like how the first sounds more, but I usually get criticism about weak sounding guitars. Also, when I compare to other people's tracks, the volume on theirs is just so much louder somehow.. with lots of clarity, too.

So, I attempted the second, but I'm probably not approaching increasing the volume on things correctly. The mids are probably too cluttered right now, but actually quite a few of the instruments are cut in various 300-1k frequencies. I made sure the very low instruments weren't wasting volume down there, either.

Feedback? ty

[Jamphibious]

I really liked that first song. Got a very JRPG battle theme vibe from it. As for mix quality, I think the lead guitar sounds good. The rhythm guitar does sound a little weak in the mix compared to the other elements, but I personally didn't mind that and thought it worked fine. Of course a more rockin' rhythm guitar is always awesome provided it doesn't make the mix any muddier. Drums sounded appropriate for the genre and had good volume relative to the rest of the track.

The second song was a little louder, and the lead guitar sounded good again, but I preferred the lead guitar in the first track, it seemed cleaner. The rhythm guitar is more prominent here which is nice, but I do agree that there's a bit of muddiness in the mids. Something sounds different about the drums also, though I don't really know how to specifically explain it. Of course it could have to do with the clutter in the mids.

Also keep in mind I'm no audiophile, so hopefully someone else will come along with some more specific tips. What you've got going on is fairly tight so far.

[Grayburg]

I used a bit more compression on the drums. I kind of like a dryer sound as well, though.

Part of the problem may be coming from not really wanting to compromise the sound of the strings and piano, but, in these mixes, they're already higher in the frequencies than I like them solo.

[Ghetto Lee Lewis]

The second one is noticeably louder than the first on my headphones. That guitar just sounds excessively loud. Also, it seems really mid-heavy. I'd look at it on a spectrometer (FL Wavecandy is awesomeness) and see what you're missing. I don't hear much in the way of bass, low mids, or highs on that second one.

The first one is better mixed, but not as loud, and still missing quite a bit in the bass department. I'd look at the whole mix on the spectrometer as well as some of the individual instruments and see how they interact with each other. As far as getting max loudness out of the track, there are some good tools for that (I'm a fan of FL Maximus). Compressing each individual track could help, as long as it's done correctly (watch your threshold, ratio, attack/release, etc.) Also, if you put an equalizer before a compressor, the compressor acts as a sort of multi-band compressor. You could do this with single or multiple instruments and see what works better.

If you want to really see how things interact on the spectrometer, try converting the mix temporarily to mono (FL Stereo EQ is great for this). Panning conflicting parts of an arrangement won't necessarily get you a lot more loudness out of a track, while filling in all the frequency gaps you're missing generally will.