Moved this data here. My fustrations.
To Mix or Not to mix
The Delima. Give me a break.
I will be attempting to better this mix later in various ways.
Jman said
And the snare sounded acoustic, but a little thin to me.
I like the acoustic snare sound. When I hear it on the radio I think.. What happened.. With all these electronic drums and everything and people don't know how to tune acoustic snare as they once did.
I am not a drummer but play real drums a little. And I have practiced tuning them for years now.
So I will explain the delima that drives me nuts here. First I have to say that mixing and sound quality
probably comes at different levels for musicians and mix engineers D.O.P on the craft and if someone is
pro, semi pro, armature, basically what ever. For me, sometimes it's okay but I truly find that when I mix the drums that are recorded in a real studio verses the electronic ones they don't compare at all. Even though I
don't have the separates for the studio ones they seem to sound much better. Some drummers that are recording well with acoustic drums their stuff sounds really good. Even midi sounds better to me than the Electronic kits sometimes. Not always. For some songs Jman your drums sound great and come out acceptable in the final mix in most cases/songs. Kens snare really was sounded terrible in "She" Sorry Ken.
I am not knocking what you use because I want some too. And I am not talking about eq'ng them. Even when listening to them as they are. Maybe when you use a different snare on the electronic kit they will sound better. I am sure in a real studio they would make them sound 5000% better.
Now the mix delima..
There are many things that can em-peed a mix from the working one. Cleaning the tracks and room noise for starters. And the big one is having a good set of "STUDIO MONITORS". And it does not end there. A good pre-amp and stereo amp help big time. And another important factor is the software one uses. Analog to me is so much easier than digital. I read somewhere that the real "Magic" is in Analog because of something to do with the math.
So I will go and do the math. I know we have to use what we have available to the best of what can be achieved. Of course I know that recording the track's is another important aspect tool. I mean get it right from the recording phase.
In a nut shell..One day I go mix. Everything sounds okay. Can't hear the hats .. Fix that and next the acoustic has gone flat.
Fix that and then you cannot hear the toms.
I like to fix all the Sound track first and tackle vocals last to fit within the head room I leave for vocals. Then the levels set "live" differ from the head set ones or the settings done using the pre-amp. All of a sudden in the pre-amp everything is out. The lead will take your ears off
if you know what I mean.
Then live you cannot hear the lead or something else.
What I find is some software changes the settings in various tracks. In some it never changes. Sometimes the plug in stop working on a particular track too and you don't notice. Sometimes something will be out but you hear it Tomorrow because you have heard it to much so you are death to the process. Once you master your craft you will know what to do so there is hope.
NEED STUDIO EXPENSIVE MONITIOS AND GOOD AMP. .
Sorry to get into all of that but that is the sort of things that bother me. I plan to make better mixes and learn to be really good at it. One things for sure "hiss" especially in the drum tracks makes the acoustic gtr's messy. It causes masking of the instruments or vocals sometimes.
For me I need better, more pro-gear but that's not all. Sometimes eq'ng something that has already been eq'd naturally makes it sound terrible.
I am aware of the downfalls of headphone monitoring/mixing. One thing though I have noticed is that after an extended time of using the same headphones on the mixing/monitoring end I can get a pretty decent idea of the mix by now, just because I am accustomed to it. I do have a pretty decent pair of studio monitors too.... but all hell breaks loose (I think they call that a wife) when I use the studio monitors for any length of time
I agree. I have studio head sets too. And I agree with what you said. But a balance of pre-amp plug in, stereo amp plug in and live all helps makes the mix better. I will say I don't have expensive studio monitors because, I did not need them before but I "DO KNOW" the difference of bad speakers verses good ones.
I had both and they are not comparable. As I was telling a friend it's like listening to
AM verses FM radio. The funny thing is too once things are compressed a number of times things can change. Seems like when I mix your temporary drums mix wave you upload it here it sounds sort of better than the separates. May be a technical issue. Even though lossless software is said to be "lossless". I feel it is not totally. Each time you give a little and a little more.
That is my thought on that. I am starting to zip
the wave's and not compress them any more in most cases.
Jman Said
This is one of the earliest songs I worked on with you and Kelly.... It is also still one of the favorites to me.... Love this song. Jerry
Same here Jman. I will see if I can better the mix here. I agree it's one of my favs too. Over all I think in the second mix I got the balance sort of into prospective. Will see if I can make it more like the ambience floating out of the working demo.
Tubes
To Mix or Not To Mix. Since we love music. TO MIX. has won.
