[Ardour-Users] a few thoughts

Al Thompson althompson58 at gmail.com
Tue Dec 4 15:22:03 PST 2012


On 12/04/2012 03:00 PM, John Rigg wrote:
>
> 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.

Which touches on one of my biggest gripes with engineers.  I see (hear)
too many who, before they even START to mix, instantly patch in all
sorts of "gear' on various tracks, because they "just know" that it what
is going to be needed.  Instead of starting the mic, and  IF a track
needs a specific piece of processing, ONLY THEN do they go about the
process of choosing one, patching it in, listening and playing with it. 
I start a mix with NO processing, because I know that if I've done my
job on tracking the project, the sounds should be what I want.  Then I
go back an add "special effects" (chorus, delay, flange, vocoding, etc)
as needed.

The only situation where this isn't really true is on large projects,
where the tracking engineer is a different person than the mixing
engineer, and there is a producer involved.  The tracking engineer may
not be in a position to make "production decisions" such as specific EQ,
etc, and the producer may be making decisions at the mic level which
weren't considered during tracking.  Even then, I would only patch
specific pieces of gear as needed during the mix process.


-- 
---
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  http://www.lateralforce.com
 
 
My blog, with commentary on a variety of things, including audio,
mixing, equipment, etc, is at:
   http://audioandmore.wordpress.com
 
 
Staat heißt das kälteste aller kalten Ungeheuer.  Kalt lügt es auch;
und diese Lüge kriecht aus seinem Munde: 'Ich, der Staat, bin das Volk.'
                                                - [Friedrich Nietzsche]




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