Do People Listen to What They are Doing?

Post by **TapeOpLarry** » Sat Apr 05, 2008 10:41 am

Here I am overdubbing and mixing on a session someone else tracked. Even though it was a tracking session there were a lot of plug-ins on stuff, I'm assuming for rough mixes, y'know? But every time I remove plug-ins off the tracks they start to sound better for every plug-in removed. Wow.

I get the feeling there's a lot of engineers out there working by rote and not paying enough attention - especially in the computer DAW world. Do the rest of you get this feeling from sessions you finish up?

syrupcore · Post by **syrupcore** » Sat Apr 05, 2008 11:04 am

I get that feeling from my own sessions when I open them the next day.

chuckfurok · Post by **chuckfurok** » Sat Apr 05, 2008 12:19 pm

syrupcore wrote:I get that feeling from my own sessions when I open them the next day.

me too!

rwc · Post by **rwc** » Sat Apr 05, 2008 12:31 pm

I couldn't disagree more. That whole idea of "looking at the screen" instead of listening never clicks. I don't see why so many people shitcan seeing plugins. I'm not looking any less at an LA-3A or pultec as I mess with it. You can "just put plugins on" because it's easy and fast, but in any competently equipt analog facility, an engineer can patch in an spx 90 and a stereo width processor and an ssl compressor and a harmonizer and begin fucking up a perfectly good horn section as fast as any DAW user.

When I first started I did add stuff that really didn't improve anything. The next day or hour I'd look and think "WTF was I doing." This doesn't happen like that anymore. DAWs didn't have anything to do with this; rather the fact that I was an amateur at the time.

I'd rather blame my own decision making and (lack of) critical listening when I DO get that one CD I bring home and think "hmm.. this sax could be a little brighter", than blame the computer screen. Thinking the DAW workflow is going to mess me up because it is a computer would mess me up even when I don'tJust saying. I've done too much work I liked on computers, where adding a plugin or two was an improvement, to denounce that method of working.

Post by **TapeOpLarry** » Sat Apr 05, 2008 12:54 pm

rwc, I think you're misreading me here. I'm saying the person before me should have been listening more. As I remove his plugs I hear the sound get better, so it seems he wasn't paying much attention to what his work process was doing. This could happen on DAW or tape, at least some of it's undoable on DAW. I'm hearing this stuff because I'm listening, not assuming!

rwc · Post by **rwc** » Sat Apr 05, 2008 1:06 pm

My fault. Reading "especially in the computer DAW world" hit a nerve and I began responding to a phantom anti-DAW post I had in my head.

Post by **TapeOpLarry** » Sat Apr 05, 2008 1:09 pm

There's probably a million reasons for "especially in the computer DAW world". Especially since the last tape someone gave me to work on was 100 years ago.

MoreSpaceEcho · Post by **MoreSpaceEcho** » Sat Apr 05, 2008 1:09 pm

i can't comment about the plugs, as i don't get PT sessions to mix, but oftentimes when i get the raw files from other people to mix, i wonder what the engineers were thinking when they recorded the drums. not that i am a genius at recording, but i just wonder how people are listening to these drums on playback and thinking "yeah, sounds great!"

by way of example i'm talking about kick drums (on funk records) that are all D112 beater click, snare drums that are all 200Hz thud, room mics that are all trashy cymbals....

red cross · Post by **red cross** » Sat Apr 05, 2008 1:33 pm

My fault. Reading "especially in the computer DAW world" hit a nerve and I began responding to a phantom anti-DAW post I had in my head.

But you have to admit it's much easier for someone without alot of experience to just throw compressors and eqs on everything now, especially if they come with names like LA2A, Pultec, Fairchild etc. They just sort of assume its automatically making things sound better because of the cool GUIs and stuff. I know, I was pretty much guilty of the same thing when I first started on Protools too.

rwc · Post by **rwc** » Sat Apr 05, 2008 1:57 pm

red cross wrote:
My fault. Reading "especially in the computer DAW world" hit a nerve and I began responding to a phantom anti-DAW post I had in my head.
But you have to admit it's much easier for someone without alot of experience to just throw compressors and eqs on everything now, especially if they come with names like LA2A, Pultec, Fairchild etc. They just sort of assume its automatically making things sound better because of the cool GUIs and stuff. I know, I was pretty much guilty of the same thing when I first started on Protools too.

This is complete speculation on my part - I think that people who are still amateurs are more likely to be working on computers than fully blown out analog facilities, because they cost more. By the time you get to a point where someone's willing to pay enough for you to be working with them in such a facility, chances are you aren't an amateur. Whereas it's not hard to take the dell dimension in your dorm room, throw a cracked cubase/plugin set on it and get to work on your acoustic gtr/vocal demo. There's no "standard" to do that.

Post by **TapeOpLarry** » Sat Apr 05, 2008 2:31 pm

Very few people are really using tape, and those projects tend to stay in one engineer's hands.

chris harris · Post by **chris harris** » Sat Apr 05, 2008 2:46 pm

I had a client recently who told me that the previous engineer in town that they had worked with had saved plug-in presets for ALL OF THEIR INSTRUMENTS. They claimed that it made things go really fast when they came in to do their second record with him.

zoinks!!

I know that there are lots of people out there (even experienced people) who ARE working by rote. I even see people interviewed in TapeOp who claim to use the same compressor on every vocal or every bass track. I know that some people (somehow) get good results this way. Seems like a bunch of bullshit shortcuts to actually listening, to me.

I have certain compressors that I might use most of the time on certain sources... but, never without listening and making sure that the tracks need that.

There are a lot of people trying to make the audio production process into somewhat of an assembly line. I wish they'd just go to work on an actual assembly line and leave the making of records to people who actually care about getting the best sound out of each mix.

RefD · Post by **RefD** » Sat Apr 05, 2008 3:00 pm

*considers sending Larry a reel of 2" 16 track recorded at 15ips with an IEC curve*

70s space rock, of course!

Jay Reynolds · Post by **Jay Reynolds** » Sat Apr 05, 2008 3:42 pm

I know I've been guilty of, at the end of a long tracking session, doing a little bit of "pre-mixing" in the box. If I'm reasonably fluent in the DAW I'm working on, I can pop in a lot of plugs pretty quickly. But since its the end of a long day (or even a short one), I'm in a hurry and I tend to be very rote in my approach as compared to when I start actually mixing. Usually its an attempt to get the whole thing a bit more "production-ey" because the clients have asked for a reference cd of some of the songs.
Another culprit in the 11th-hour is the clients. I can usually keep my listening levels reasonable in tracking, but once we're "done", I often get asked to let it rip. That doesn't help, usually.
Lastly, for me, my head is in a different space when I'm tracking as opposed to mixing. I know physics doesn't magically change depending on what task I'm working on, but I've got a general process that I follow in each phase. And I have yet to take time to really set up all my auxes and busses when I'm doing one of those "quick and dirty" jobs at the end of tracking. So I start knowing that that this really isn't going to be right in the first place.
That being said, I've never been happy with many of these types of "mixes" that i do at the end of tracking. If the project stays with me, they represent a starting point that gets built on. It saves me the trouble of inserting a bunch of comps and eq's etc. If its going out to someone who has the same DAW and plugins, I'll let them know I did some "work" on it after tracking that they should take with a grain of salt and I'd be more than happy to reset the mixer for them. Otherwise it all gets bumped down to contiguous audio files without any plugs whatsoever.
I guess it may be poor communication skill as opposed to bad ears. Hopefully.

fossiltooth · Post by **fossiltooth** » Sat Apr 05, 2008 3:51 pm

TapeOpLarry wrote:But every time I remove plug-ins off the tracks they start to sound better for every plug-in removed.

It's tough to say if 'people in general' overuse plugins. It clearly comes down to the individual. "Overuse" is in the ear of the beholder, I guess.

Some people track with plugins. I think that's definitely crazy! I've met folks who will track a sound that's way too thick/thin/whatever for the mix, and immediately throw an EQ on the track on playback. I've even seen people use the normalize function to bring up every track to 0dbfs across the board because they didn't look loud enough. Yikes!

But, let me play Devil's Advocate for a second: Sometimes, some of your sources should sound "worse" once you're through with them! I know that when I'm mixing, I might spend a a good bit of time purposefully "degrading" sounds in ways that I think are musically appropriate.

For instance, if you were messing around in one of my mixes and you were to take off my hi and lopass filters off of a particular guitar/synth/vocal/whatever, you might immediately think that the guitar/synth/vocal/whatever sounds "Better" after removing the plugin. You'd probably be right! The source may very well sound bigger/brighter/beefier/whatever without any processing.

But, what about how it fits in conext? How does it sound after listening for a prolonged period of time when you're listening to the mix as a whole? Just because the guitar/synth/vocal/whatever sounded more upfront/immediate/dynamic/full-range/whatever after removing a plugin, doesn't mean that's what's right for the mix.

On the other hand: I hear ya, Larry! I have heard plenty of novice recordings that sound totally "overworked"... like someone is feeling around in the dark for sounds. I know the feeling first hand... I've been there myself!

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Do People Listen to What They are Doing?

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