[Ardour-Users] a few thoughts

[John Rigg]

On Tue, Dec 04, 2012 at 08:05:42PM +0100, Adriano Petrosillo wrote:
> I'd like to point out that my suggestions came out after having mixed my
> band's album. I experimented with large numbers of tracks and overdubs (I
> tried the "Steve Albini" way of recording - having a large number of
> microphones and mixing them in later - hm, maybe it's because I don't have
> his rooms, or his microphones, or his preamps, but, although I carefully
> positioned them avoiding differences in distances from mics to source, and
> even after aligning tracks to avoid phase cancellations, I generally ended
> up scrapping more than half the tracks :D )

You missed Albini's most important pieces of equipment: his ears and his
experience. I bet you could take raw tracks by anyone at a similar level,
recorded on any level of microphones and equipment, and make a usable
mix just by balancing levels and adding little or no EQ or FX. I think
you're over-emphasising the important of post-tracking processing.

The main role of a DAW in my own work flow is not to "fix it in the mix",
hence my dislike of having any processing apart from fader gains enabled
by default. Of course in the real world it's sometimes necessary to fix
things, but I still don't feel it should be the default position. There's
nothing wrong with allowing a customised setup, but having lots of bells
and whistles enabled at start up would actually slow me down. I'd have to
customise my own setup to _not_ use this stuff unless I specifically
enabled it. Some of the opinions in this thread have been a little harshly
expressed (and I understand your frustration), but I'm sure I'm not the only
one here who operates the way I described.

There's nothing wrong with making constructive suggestions, but bear in
mind that not everyone requires the same thing from the tools they work
with.

John