Yo wassup guys. I was checking out this walkthrough (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwLkKJamgpk) of one of Kompany's tracks showing how he mixed it and everything and I was surprised at some of the techniques he was using and wanted to get some of your thoughts on it.

The biggest thing I noticed was that every channel and effect rack is clipping like crazy. You can see his master is completely slammed into the red every time he plays the full track. How does the entire track not sound like shit with all that clipping? Any time my meters start going red I can hear all sorts of distortion but if you listen to the final version of the track on Soundcloud https://soundcloud.com/electrostepnetwork/backlash_esn?in=kompanymusic/sets/backlash it still sounds incredibly clean and loud, super compressed, but loud.
Obviously he could have sent this track out to be mixed/mastered by someone else but even still theres absolutely no headroom to work with.

The second biggest thing I noticed was that he sends EVERYTHING to a stereo imager. I've always heard to leave everything below 150 or so in mono for many reasons but it works great on the final version of this song.

Finally, I can never figure out why my tracks never match the loudness of others on Soundcloud so I went and tried some of these techniques on the current track I'm working on. When I exported the track the master meter was fully red but it ended up sounding great and way louder than I can normally get on Soundcloud. Is the secret to getting loud tracks on Soundcloud as simple as clipping the shit out of it?

I'd love to hear your opinions, if you think this is a good way to mix, if any of you mix this way, and whatnot. Is there a way to compete with the loudness of tracks like these on Soundcloud without blowing your meters up?

Broad questions and topics I know but curious to hear your thoughts

Haven't had this problem very often but every now and then when I'm mixing a track with a very low 808 style sub it will sound well mixed on my headphones, monitors, and laptop speakers. However, when I go play it out over a large PA the bass will be far too loud and drown out everything else. I need some new tips and tricks on getting the sub levels in a strong, but not overpowering, range before I embarrass myself by playing a blown out mix during a set lol.

I tried this method and I absolutely love it. I took it one step further and got even better results by using this pink noise sample that I EQ'd to account for Fletcher-Munson curves.

https://soundcloud.com/somedudestunes/pink-noise/s-saZyz

You'll notice that the spectrum of this pink noise represents the standard spectrum (of popular House tracks in this case) much more accurately than regular pink noise. This is still only to be used as a starting point and won't guarantee you a good mix down but it can definitely help you get close to a more professional mix!

probably a bit overkill but, on mixes that I cant seem to get right, I like to imagine my mix in nontants (like quadrants but 9 of them) so you have the left, middle, and right of the high range, the left, middle, and right of the mid range, and the left, middle, and right of the low range. Ill use panning and frequency band sidechaining to pick out these individual sections of the mix and clean them up individually to give each section of the mix its own treatment until they all fit well together

Very juicy idea.  How is this accomplished?  Do you have separate dedicated mono/stereo tracks?  Do you have any mainstream examples of this being done?

Yea, I'll separate whichever instrument I'm applying it on into stereo and mono and place the sidechain on one or the other. Not sure of any mainstream examples though.

How do you account for a mono soundfield when you do that?

I've only used this mono/stereo sidechaining a handful of times and unfortunately the effect disappears a bit when it's played in mono. I usually only use it on less noticeable  elements in the mix like background stuff so I wouldn't recommend using it for bass and kicks. I do suppose it would be possible to bus the stereo of the bass to a new channel, invert it, swap the stereo channels, and gate it to the kick (or whichever element is driving your sidechain). That way whenever the kick hits, a bit of inverted bass would play on the opposite stereo channel of the source and cause no sidechain effect in stereo but once put into mono would cause sidechain to the entire bass. Kinda wanna try that now lol

always mix at low levels! if your mix sounds good low it will most likely sound good loud. if your mix sounds good loud theres a lot less chance it will sound good low

not sure if youre working on the mix or not yet but theres very little atmosphere to these instruments. A bit of reverb and stereo placement could really open up this track and give it its own "space." I like the organic sounds and think a flute would sound really nice in there just as long as the melodies arent overlapping to much. Maybe make the flute counter the existing melodies so they play off each other

I didn't really find the pitched-down male vocals convincing. The pitch correction (?) in combination with the quiet voice makes it sound like an insecure singer. It is also hard to hear the lyrics, which may be a problem with articulation or just due to the processing.

haha I am an insecure singer so that makes sense! thanks for the feedback i appreciate the help!