Kevin,

I was also listening over some very flat, highly isolating in-ear monitors, to both the reference songs I mentioned (don't know if there are YouTubes of them or not - and whether or not YouTube audio is trustworthy for reference is a topic for a different discussion) back to back with your track on SoundCloud. By using these in-ear monitors, it does indeed emphasize panning in one's head, compared to nearfield monitor or other stereo speaker listening. I did the comparisons with in-ear monitors very purposely however, as it doesn't matter if it's a home recording or a studio released recording, the panning highlights are there in both cases.

As to the EQ content and punch and so forth, I think your track sounds very polished as it is with great 'sparkle'. In fact, I would say it's right up in the top 5 or so RealBand assisted tracks I've heard posted by users over the years. I was not expecting that based on your typed description. I was ready for a dull, mono-centric track, with classic woofy vocals. Not the case at all.

I think you've done a great job with the vocals (my guess is that they are high-passed pretty aggressively) as they lack the hallmark low frequency muffle that so many home recorded tracks suffer from (some of mine included).

When I've helped folks mix and 'master' their projects, most of the time I spend effort with carving EQ for different tracks and more aggressively panning individual elements to give the tracks spatial and spectral dynamics. With this one, it is my opinion that you are very very close to being fully baked and ready to sell, with the exception of those harmony vox. I would be willing to send you a mashup of the BGV sections of the tracks that I have listed for references to you if you like. It will take me a little work, but I will do that. I'm not saying that these are outstanding examples of engineering, but they have similar vibe to your song. I don't have a huge modern country collection, but enough to do some comparative listening. I have just a few more in the stack of CDs that I would use for references; another is Lyle Lovett's Joshua Judges Ruth CD. That is an engineering Pièce de résistance, in my opinion. George Massenburg was the engineer. With high quality isolating headphones you can hear with more detail what the engineer was up to, than with typical monitors in a typical home studio. Not saying that those things are necessary for a good sounding playback on most systems, but they are very revealing.

-Scott

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