Did you think the mixing in. A Thousand Suns was good, bad, or average? I thought for the most part it was good, but Wretches and Kings in CD quality is horrible. The guitars drown out the vocals and the "hey hey hey" part is very loud.
Thanks for this thread Nick. ATS is my favorite album, but the mixing is really disappointing in a few songs. I actually have a better experience listening to in on headphones rather than my hq speakers. As you said, WaK is pretty bad. Chester's chorus should be much louder IMO. In WFTE, Mike's second verse (the highlight of the song) is also way too dominated by the other music. And finally, The Catalyst has the same problem. After the Lift Me Up part the "God Bless Us.." is too quiet. I guess whoever mixed this hates cranking up vocals or something, haha. But like I said, I don't notice these flaws when using headphones. So that's how I listen to it for the most part. Though, the other 6 songs are fine.
I think it's mixed perfectly. It's a musically dominated album. There's no reason to crank up the vocals to drown out the instrumentals. The vocals taking a back seat is exactly what LP needed.
The guy who mixed "A Thousand Suns" also mixed "Minutes To Midnight". Obviously, he went by what the album needed to be and how it needed to sound. I have problems with the mix at some points on the album too, but I guess that's how the band intended for it all to sound. :"
I read an interview of Dave..he said its a headphone song or somethng like that...better listen it on a headphone..
My equaliser in Windows Media Player seems to fix and balance things out. Does need to be tweaked a bit though.
The only song to me where the mixing was noticeably bad was "The Catalyst". It's one of the band's best songs, yet regrettably one of their worst mixed as well.
I see where you're coming from, but instances such as Mike's second verse in WFTE is really powerful stuff. And when it get's dominated my the other music, it bothers me. But to each their own.
I have to agree on this one. This song is easily the best one on the album or in its field..but something about the first part of the song puts me off. Real bad. I hardly listen to it.
It's definitely the band's most fidelic album, the loud parts are loud and the quiet parts are quiet. Seems simple enough, but I've heard so many albums hampered by excessive compression thanks to the loudness war. Granted, that's more of a mastering thing than mixing, but it still has a big impact on the sound of the final product. That being said, I think Minutes to Midnight is their best "sounding" album. A Thousand Suns has a fair number of spots where it's hard to keep track of a specific part because all the layers just start to blur together. I know it's hard to cram a ton of different tracks into a digital mix where you have a fixed ceiling to work with, but I still feel like they could have done a better job with it.
I thought the mixing was generally good in my opinion, especially on When They Come For Me. They could'nt have done a better job on W&K, seeing as its full of digital effects.