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[It's the author again. Thanks everyone for your advice so far. For real.] What about a spectrum analyzer? Do you guys think that it's a bad idea to use one in the mixing process? I've been using them on each individual track to see if there is anything weird happening in the sub-lows, to see where...

other people's methodology on EQing Lots of entirely awesome input on this thread, so I won't duplicate any of the previous brilliance. One simple yet profound approach I suggest you try, and form your own opinion of, is an EQ approach called "cut the uglies". (This potential approach will already ...

And those carbon-comp and tolerance articles are great, thanks guys!

Hefty car or truck battery and a standard 12VDC to 120VAC inverter of sufficient amperage - is classic for mobile rigs. And a wall powered car battery charger/jumper to keep the mobile batteries topped off between adventures. It's not re-inventing the wheel, but it works.

I hear you wondering if anything newish has come along that's advanced the state of the art - but nothing really has. The golden age of guitar rack preamps was back in the rack craze days, and agreed, the ADA MP family is still one of the champs. That BK Butler was also quite good, agreed. Obscure b...

Very cool, losthighway! Another "crafty" sidechain thing: send an early version of the sound to the sidechain input - say a vocal, make a copy of the vocal track and move it 100ms early, send that signal to the sidechain input, send the regular vocal to the regular input - set the compressor attack...

Very cool, losthighway! Another "crafty" sidechain thing: send an early version of the sound to the sidechain input - say a vocal, make a copy of the vocal track and move it 100ms early, send that signal to the sidechain input, send the regular vocal to the regular input - set the compressor attack ...

See: The Beatles "Tomorrow Never Knows" - drums are a tape loop, ala sampling - many other layers in that song are tape loops and chopped tape... The Beatles "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite" - tons of the spooky break sounds are small chopped and spliced tape chunks re-assembled in loops and stri...

Symptom like that in an Otari deck... first suspect is the relays. Otaris have lots of switching relays for control functions. They get gummy or corroded and fail. If you're brave, that's the first thing to look into. Those decks are densely built though, and you may be better off taking it to a tec...

Chipping in: yes indeed, 24 bits is lots of headroom and it's not a good habit to be running up in the tip top of that at the track, buss, or master level - overs can be happening that you don't notice directly, and that can add up as a spackly buzz that's just not pleasant to the ears. If you are r...

They'll only listen to it once, and often just the first 30 seconds of each song. So have musically compelling action up front, and definitely get it mastered.

Yes and yes to all above. De-esser. Reamp it again. Tape! First thing I'd try: run through tube echoplex or equivalent, 100% wet, no feedback. Adjust gain driving into it. Gets the tube and tape and tone thing all in one go.

Agreed that 2 to 4 samples isn't going to change anything about feel. 2 to 4 milliseconds can. It's expected that re-amping is going to change the look of the waveform - the frequency response and frequency/phase response of the amp and mic and pre are going to juggle the small details in the audio....

In addition to all the previous excellent suggestions - With already recorded drums... zooming in and time-and-polarity aligning the mic tracks can sometime produce wonders of improvement in thickness and coherence. (Make sure to preserve playlists of the original time placement so if you get confus...

The inputs and outputs of a 201 are unbalanced, use regular TS cables both ways. It's expecting a guitar-ish or old synth high impedance low level input, so it will behave more naturally if fed with a re-amp, but it will still work if fed directly from an interface as long as you keep the levels to ...