Help me choose and fix the mix :)

[MeldaProduction]

Hey folks, I have a recording here I'm really struggling with, mainly because of the drum performance, it's really a pain to make it work well . Anyway here are they:

Original
http://www.meldaproduction.com/temp/Bat ... iginal.mp3
This is the original mix from a collegue of mine, he's doing it for more than 2 years now (no kidding!) so my patience has ended. To me it seems extremely flat and overcompressed.

Wide
http://www.meldaproduction.com/temp/BatIdea_Wide.mp3
That's the new experiment of mine. It is much wider, feels to me that everything is audible, sides are for drums & keyboards, center for bass & trumpet. I'm seeking kind of a futuristic sound, that's why the trumpet is rather experimentally effected etc. The problem is, it seems a little hard to listen to it for some reason, it's pulsing or something...I have listened to it for too much time so I seem to be biased now...

So please help folks . Choose which you like more and I'd be grateful for any comments about how to improve the "Wide" mix.

Just in case you are interested, here's just the drums from the Wide version:
http://www.meldaproduction.com/temp/BatIdea_Drums.mp3

[epiphaneia]

Hmm, actually the original sounds better to my humble old ears (sorry )...

- the drums could take a bit of a transient designer and a little bit of high end (I´d use the abbey road or a pulteq...);

- the "experimental edge" on the trumpet takes away clarity from the mix, you might consider using the original trumpet and doubling it with a trumpet layer that only has effects on the upper mids (hp filter, then maybe put a delay on it that is going through a tremolo or a phaser... original in the middle, effected track to the sides?), instead of effecting the whole track.

... my 0,02€

[Tricky-Loops]

Do you want to illustrate how using the Melda Creative Bundle can make mixes worse?

Seriously, the original sounds much better, the other mix is over-processed with a lot of phase cancellations. The experi-mental trumpet has a nice flavor but sounds like played in a washing machine...

[MeldaProduction]

The trumpet is the last problem, I spend like 5 minutes with it so far, I want to get the rest of it right first...
Phase cancellations...hmmm... could you be more specific? (honestly I have no idea how could you even find that out...) It could be the compression though.

[Tricky-Loops]

How to use trumpets creatively:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVh0SZPG4hs

[MeldaProduction]

yeah

But this one is more about the performance... then it's just delay... I want something "extreme" , transform it to some hardcore lead or something... Anyway as I said, that's the last problem...

[seismic1]

I wasn't so crazy about the trumpet in the second version, but I did like the "immediacy" and the upfront presentation of the drums on your remix. They seem to cut through the mix better, and because they are well played, I want to hear them. The Pultec sounds like a good call, in any event.

[MeldaProduction]

Thanks! I'll work on it a lot more, this was just the beginning to see if I'm headed the right direction. The thing is with the drums that I like that, but I checked many reference songs and it is almost never that wide and immediate, so I'm kind of scared that it may be hard to listen to. And may be since I'm the drummer I may have the "my instrument should be the loudest" complex