Mixing down, when mostly in the box. How do you do it?

Recording Techniques, People Skills, Gear, Recording Spaces, Computers, and DIY

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rwc
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Post by rwc » Tue May 20, 2008 12:58 pm

MoreSpaceEcho wrote:jeff, you're an expert, which one of those files is the original?
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Post by MoreSpaceEcho » Tue May 20, 2008 1:38 pm

randomly searching old threads again, eh?

alas i took the files down yesterday.

fwiw i could hear a difference between them, but it was SLIGHT. and i bet if i edited the two files together nobody'd be able to tell me where the splice was.

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Post by stompforfuzz » Tue May 20, 2008 8:53 pm

and here I am replying to posts on old threads heh..

I'm glad people had something to say about this, because now I'm less apt to be concerned with extra conversion and simply trust what I hear. I know it's a basic premise to a pro, but being a hobbyist I think I'm more vulnerable to the lure of pure specs since I've been fooled into thinking I can tell good from better by reading about it. Manufaturers of pro-sumer audio junk DON'T want me to listen with my ears instead of my eyes, cause if I did I wouldn't spring the extra xyz $$ for a "better" piece of audio equipment. These days I try to spend MUCH more time writing my music than worrying about how I bounce my signal.

When I have stuff good enough to spend even more money on, I'll be spending it on studio time.

Recording is fun, but my music is becoming much more important... recording for me is like a scratch pad is to an artist, and may remain that way.
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Post by chris harris » Tue May 20, 2008 10:26 pm

stompforfuzz wrote:and here I am replying to posts on old threads heh..

I'm glad people had something to say about this, because now I'm less apt to be concerned with extra conversion and simply trust what I hear. I know it's a basic premise to a pro, but being a hobbyist I think I'm more vulnerable to the lure of pure specs since I've been fooled into thinking I can tell good from better by reading about it. Manufaturers of pro-sumer audio junk DON'T want me to listen with my ears instead of my eyes, cause if I did I wouldn't spring the extra xyz $$ for a "better" piece of audio equipment. These days I try to spend MUCH more time writing my music than worrying about how I bounce my signal.

When I have stuff good enough to spend even more money on, I'll be spending it on studio time.

Recording is fun, but my music is becoming much more important... recording for me is like a scratch pad is to an artist, and may remain that way.
who knows? when you let go a little and get to where you can trust your instincts and your ears, you may just find that this is exactly what you want to do for the rest of your life.

you've got the right kind of outlook. getting into audio recording these days is kinda weird. it's like in the beginning, almost every single person, in some weird enthusiasm-inspired detachment from reality, refuses to believe that just practicing and recording as much as they can will get them better results than marching down and buying some $200 channel strip. I know that when I was getting started, I easily spent more time researching my next purchase than I did actually recording.

once you get to where you spend more time using the gear that you have than you do thinking about the gear that you don't, things just start to get right.

and, these days, there are so many myths and so many outdated "rules" or "best practices" relating to digital audio, that I don't even feel like bothering with some of the internet chatter about this stuff. I don't refrain from doing things just because I'm "not supposed to". honestly, if I'm curious about something, I'd prefer to just try it myself and see if I notice a difference. It beats getting sucked into dramas where people are a little too personally invested in a "technique" or something silly like that.

sorry for the long post... what I was meaning to say was, "Good for you!"

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Post by stompforfuzz » Wed May 21, 2008 5:09 am

subatomic pieces wrote: who knows? when you let go a little and get to where you can trust your instincts and your ears, you may just find that this is exactly what you want to do for the rest of your life.
Amen...

that's the core of it, really - I was pretty caught up in the craft while forgetting the art and it started becoming pretty empty for me. My "inferior" equipment was getting dusty because I was discouraged by the results. It was my fault, and not the fault of the computer or my converter.

Can you imagine at one point I considered myself a recordist and didn't own a single microphone? It was all software, and a couple of amp modeling di box thingies. Worst of all, it was just me pushing buttons and doing my best to imitate the sound of real live instruments being played by real live people. Almost as though I was trying to piece together a photo album of my own memories using the generic stock photos included with 1.99 photo frames. Perfect smiles, perfect hair - a supremely refined collection of memories that weren't mine but somehow were supposed to be. Now I just want to be a guy with a guitar and a few toys, but that's an improvement in a big way for me.

In fact, maybe sometime soon I'll see what it feels like to hit record and play some real instruments with other real people on the other end of some real microphones. Ya know, like ugly polaroids with blurry thumbs poking into them that have more power in their washed out features than can be reproduced on purpose.


Man, this is what happens late at night! Message boards turn into my diary, ha!

Thanks for helping me the rest of the way to full realization of what I've been chasing with my audio habit, subatomic.
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Post by MoreSpaceEcho » Wed May 21, 2008 6:53 am

stompforfuzz wrote: Can you imagine at one point I considered myself a recordist and didn't own a single microphone?
i recorded for years before i actually put a microphone in front of anything.

the first time i did it was kind of humbling.

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Post by Babaluma » Wed May 21, 2008 7:21 am

me too!

i've been making electronic music since 1992, but have only started taking micing things seriously in the last couple of years. it's amazing how different and nicer electronic timbres can sound when you run things through decent guitar amps, mics, pre-amps and compressors!

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Post by stompforfuzz » Wed May 21, 2008 8:09 pm

MoreSpaceEcho wrote:
stompforfuzz wrote: Can you imagine at one point I considered myself a recordist and didn't own a single microphone?
i recorded for years before i actually put a microphone in front of anything.

the first time i did it was kind of humbling.
Wow! Glad I'm not the only one!
Babaluma wrote: i've been making electronic music since 1992, but have only started taking micing things seriously in the last couple of years. it's amazing how different and nicer electronic timbres can sound when you run things through decent guitar amps, mics, pre-amps and compressors!
That is something I've REALLY wanted to try out.. I recently hooked up with a bassist with a garage space where we can jam, so now I finally have the chance. Audio destruction with real gear used (most of the time I'm betting without meaning to) incorrectly.. I'm looking forward to it :twisted:
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Post by GetHimEatHim » Fri May 30, 2008 2:25 pm

This thread is really interesting to me.... I've been mixing exclusively ITB for as long as I've been recording, and I've always been haunted by the feeling that I'm doing something inherently "wrong."

When we were doing our last record, we mixed most of it in-studio with a nice Manley tube mixer, but we were on a tight budget and the clock was ticking away.... I wound up remixing three tracks myself on my home computer, using an old version of Sonar. Yes, when you listen closely, you can tell that these tracks lack the hi-fi "punch" of the tracks mixed though a nice tube mixer w/ all kinds of Chandler, Fearn, etc outboard gear.... but having the extra time to mix and tweak, I was able to pull off some texture / dynamics changes that I couldn't get to work with the limited time and resources we had in the studio. And, hey, I learned a ot in the process.

I also have *very* little experience tracking.... aside from our first demo, which was done entirely with SM57's and a Behringer mixer. And, you know what, I still kind of love how that recording sounds..... there can be something really freeing about not concerning yourself too much with fidelity constraints and just trusting your ears when they hear something cool and exciting -- for whatever reason, the hi-hat sound on that first demo is still my favorite on anything we've ever released. That's probably the main reason that I'm limiting myself to recording my own band and those of my friends..... I think I have a much better ear for color than I do for fidelity. I'm totally neurotic and terrified of messing up other people's work, but I kinda love messing up my own work.

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Post by Snarky » Fri May 30, 2008 4:10 pm

You guys are turning me on with all this hot hot talk. I love it.
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Post by MoreSpaceEcho » Sat May 31, 2008 10:59 am

*coos softly*

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