Nice work overall. The low sustain of the kick could probably be reigned in some more. You can really hear it at the couple breaks in the song and at the very end where there is nothing masking it. I find the snare to be a little too bright and lacking body. With Mandolin and two Acoustics there's only so much room for bright percussive sounds in my opinion.

I started listening on headphones and your wide panning seems quite aggressive leaving the panned elements to feel disconnected from one another. On my monitor speakers it's much more forgiving to the wide panning, but when the vocals drop there is just a huge hole in the center while the guitar solos to the left. One trick I lean into if I want to pan something hard one way or the other is to add a subtle, quiet delay or reverb that returns to the opposite side of the stereo field. While this will narrow the sound stage a bit, it has the benefit of making thing sound more natural for listeners using headphones or earbuds (which is probably a large percentage of modern music consumption these days).

Agree with Tyson. A little haas would go a long way on this one to tie everything back together. You could also slightly narrow your drum width to bring some of the low frequencies in the overheads to the middle more. Good mix. BTW, I have a really good Haas formula for wide-panned and 50% panned instruments if they sound alone out there on the sides. Wide: opposite sample delay of .6ms and -6db of gain. Medium: opposite sample delay of .4ms and -3db of gain. It sounds convincing but will increase the overall gain of the instrument.

Hi Luke! I'm finding it extremely ironic that last week I mentioned it was ok to pan drum OH's hard left and right, and this time it's okay to not. The drums are just 1 of several instruments this week. Last week it was one of 3 instruments.

I like your mix and the automated panning of the the sleigh bells was a nice touch! I think you have a really good balance. I think narrowing the OH's in this track will help fill the middle.

Well done!

Hey guys,
thx a huge bunch for your in-depth reviews!

@Tyson: I get that kick sustain. In the past I often added too little bass, and especially too little kick. So this time I intentionally added slightly more than I would normally have. To me it felt like a little bit TOO much, and I guess that was right after all. Regarding the quiet delay, what a great tip. Will keep that in mind!

@Ron: Awesome, great formula. I guess that's also (part of) the way NeuralDSP implements their Doppler effect which extends a single guitar up to stereo.

@Jay: I remembered your tip from last week! :D Seems like this time it just wasn't the right thing to do haha. I'm still relatively new to mixing, so sometimes I guess I'm more imprinting my own style onto recordings, instead of adjusting my mixing to what a recording really needs. I guess practice is key though!