J'ai voulu donner un esprit British à cette session (le son moelleux mais chirurgical que l'on peut apprécier dans les productions enregistrées à Abbey Road ou encore Trident). Le but est bien sûr de donner au maximum la part belle au duo guitare/voix qui sont le coeur de cette chanson. C'est une relation plutôt intime que j'ai voulu perturber le moins possible avec les arrangements des autres instruments ; qui sont donc en léger retrait durant le morceau, sauf au moment des "ponts" instrumentaux.
 La voix est teintée de reverb pour le côté intime et le côté "solitude" du chanteur qui déclame sa vision de son amour pour sa belle. Puis j'ai voulu donner de la brillance à la guitare étant donné sa haute qualité de lutherie (une Collings c'est du haut-de-gamme), donc les harmoniques sont très importantes et enrichissent énormément le son en arpèges.

Pour le matériel utilisé : 
C'est du all-in-the-box, n'ayant pas de studio professionnel (pas encore, mais un jour... :-D)
*PC sous Windows 7 64-bit, Core 2 Quad
*Studio One 2 Professional
*Moniteurs ESI nEar 05
*Pour les plugins : ceux fournis d'origine avec le Daw ; le reste sont des freeware : PoorPlate de chez VacuumSound ; Aquavox de chez Acoustica Audio ; FXPansion DCAM FreeComp. J'aurais aimé avoir un De-Esser mais je n'en ai pas trouvé en freeware pour du 64-bit, et les versions payantes, ben..."money's too tight to mention" ;-)

Le morceau n'a pas été masterisé, et aucun effet n'a été mis sur le bus principal. Tous les traitements ont été faits à la piste

Simon's_Cloud_Puremix&Avid-concours-de-mix

Here's my vision of the song, which comes with some explanations about artistical and technical choices. It has been mixed in my home-studio with the following gear :
- Studio One 2 Professional 64-bits running on a Core 2 Quad PC
- Lexicon Omega audio interface
- A pair of ESi nEar 05 Experience monitors and AKG K271 headphones
- Plugins : Sknote Stripbus, Focusrite Scarlett Compressor, OvertoneDSP FC70, Presonus Pro EQ (embedded with DAW), Ignite Amps PTeq-1a, Pod Farm Mods, Vacuumsound ADT and Poorplate

The raw song in itself contained all the elements of a 60's Britsh record from the "good ol' days" : a soulful singer, a round-sounding bass, a bold guitarist and a few-mic'd drummer who hits his instrument as if this latter owed him some money. So my purpose was - like in those days - to put everything forward like in vinyl records, but without sacrificing clarity and taking all the benefits of modern fidelity and bit-depth. So no freqeuncy overlapping was allowed in order to keep everybody compartmentalized and intelligible in the foreground.
So I started with the drums, making the kick to woosh in a controlled way : the kick source sound was awfully distortion-wise boomy, so I had to tighten it with some compression, and once this boominess controlled, I decided to emphasize the low end woosh with a vintage-style "big sound". So the choice of a Pultec EQ emulation performing the "low-end trick" became obvious to me in order to materialize my idea.
Then the snare was treated to obtain a cracking snare sound, whose peak have been tamed with some compression, and depth obtained using some reverb. The Overhead gain has been cranked in order to obtain decent levels for the toms. I found that putting the snare track phase-reverted with the overhead gave more snappiness to the snare and more air in the high-mids. It cracked nicely with the reverb.
Comes next the bass part. The instrument sound and playing technique fitted exactly my idea of mid/late 60's basslines : a "deafy" round sound with a muffled snappy attack. Think Paul McCartney, John Entwistle, or John Paul Jones. So in order to keep the atttack and the roundness I used both DI and amp tracks at the same level, but to avoid mud, I put a HPF in the DI track in order no to repeat and sum the roundness of the amp track, thus avoiding total mud in the low-end. Then a little bit of compression to even the overall track and that's it.
Well, time for the guitar now : the verse riffs are the same and quite repetitive, with the same sound all along the song. So it was difficult to establish a tension between verses and choruses as it was in the raw state , making the song sound a little dull and monotonous. I needed to build some strength increase between the first verse, the first chorus and the rest of the song. That's why I weakened the sound of the guitar in the first verse panning each riff phrase oppositely, and sweetening the sound with vintage-vibe effects in the mood of the song : a phaser on one side, and a vibrato on the other side. Then as the first chorus is attacked, and for the rest of the song, I used artifical double-tracking that made the guitar sound more present and fulfill its space among the other elements that were building a crescendo atmosphere 'till the end of the song.
And finally, the voice. It had to sit on top of the mix, and the dynamic range had to be tamed. Here comes the LA2A emulation included in Stripbus, who allowed a smooth and silky compression, and enabled to tame the peaks of the voice that made it sound too "forward" at cetain loud moments. Of course some EQ was applied to emphasize her voice timbre, and some reverb to give more ambience to the singing, in a reminiscent way of those prized echo chambers.
Then the Drums, Bass, Guitars and Voice stems were processed through the console emulator Stripbus, and the main mix protected from overloads with OvertoneDSP FC70, a Fairchild emulator. Yes, just like in the good ol' days !
So the overall result would be like a late 60's sound engineer that miraculously discovered a digital recording system :-D

Cloud Studio