Opinions on this image, please.

IMHO, farview, the opposite would be the case. Encouraged by having a direction in which to move, noobs would quickly lose that title and in the process find their own way, confident that they haven't left out entire aspects of sound production. But, I could be wrong.
 
I have never once used stereo enhancement on a mix. Sometime bass management - monoize the low end - but if I wanted the unpredictable effect of phase-fuckery I'd have put it in the mix.

I do sometimes add reverb at the master stage. It's one way of setting the whole album in a common space. It's also the easiest way I know of to make sure the reverb can tail out after the fade or stop. This would usually come before all of the master processing, though, and he treated mostly as part of the mix. .

It was years ago now that some relatively famous mix engineer posted over on the TapeOp forum about how he always lowpasses his digital stuff. His basic reasoning was that most of what bugs people about the "sound of digital" comes from the fact that analog usually rolls off before 20K. That and it helps the anti-alias filter (22.05K for CD quality) not have to do so much. My default preset for ReaEQ is called "bookend". It has an HPF at 20Hz and LPF at about 19K, though I will sometimes adjust that, and of course I can use other bands for other things. This goes all over the place in my mixes - I'm always protecting the sub and ultra sonics - and also at the end of my master chain. It has to come before the final clipper, though, because you can never predict the output of a filter - they can (and do) cause overshoots if you put them after your "absolute limit".
 
Listen to what you have-->envision what you want it to be---> do they match?---> ifyes, you are done, if no, use whatever equipment and technique necessary to bring what you have closer to what you want. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Farview speaks words of wisdom. Those words underpin any recording activity.

However, to be able to "use whatever equipment and technique necessary to bring what you have closer to what you want" you need to have the techniques and equipment (and what they do) at your finger tips. A checklist is simply another way of reminding yourself what could be done.
 
I guess the checklist could be ok, as long as you add a question before every process. The question is "does the need (name of process/technique)

Most of the problem I have with that flow chart is that, while it does say something about some of the processes being optional, it's too easy to miss that point. AND it sort of suggests that the processes should be done in that order. (Which I disagree with a lot of)

So if it isn't a chart of things you must do and the order is meaningless, then it should just be a list of possible things that can be done, and not a flow chart.
 
Again, since it was many posts ago, I just cut and pasted the image and I don't really have any context regarding its creation. For all I know it is a chart to do voice-overs or industrial training films. So, don't take that example as gospel about what I'm asking.
 
Well to me, while it can be argued differently, if something helps you, do it. Empirical logic. I would like to add that to get "good" results from a process, it's underlying function should be basically understood. Point being in this case first we learn how to HEAR what a process does before we apply. Which takes practice and ear training and critical listening most of all. I don't know anyone who could "hear" a compressor with minimal reduction at first listen. Hearing the subtle stuff and knowing what it is and how to reproduce comes from doing it over and over and over. And trying every knob on everything you own until you can hear what they do to a signal/sound.
 
Again, since it was many posts ago, I just cut and pasted the image and I don't really have any context regarding its creation. For all I know it is a chart to do voice-overs or industrial training films. So, don't take that example as gospel about what I'm asking.
I do understand that. I'm not attacking that chart specifically, but that format.
Eq doesn't always come before compression, reverb could/should be first, not last, etc...

What order you do things is just as important as what things you do.

It shouldn't be a flow chart, it should be a list.
 
If it's music you're recording, that way seems to be way to structured.Just use your ears.

To be able to use one's ears and to be able to pick a particular tool that's right for the job you need to know what needs to be done to the music to get the sound you want, and what tool is going to do it for you. 'Just use your ears' collapses the whole of the learning required to be able to do this into a slogan, and is really not helpful to anyone. Critical listening is the key to good recordings, but it's a skill that requires experience, knowledge and technical competence, and if you are starting out, checklists and flowcharts are handy.


When you first learned to drive, you would have been given a similar checklist: i.e. "handbrake on, clutch in, shift to neutral, start engine, . . . . ."etc.

When you've been driving for many years, the process becomes embedded in your subconscious and you hardly realise what you are doing. If someone were to ask you then, "is there a good checklist for driving?" you can see that an answer of "just drive" is not much help.
 
I've come back to this topic to see how it's been going and something struck me. I think that only a couple of things stuck in my head from my teacher training and if you removed the 'music' bit of the topic you'd be left with the evidence to support the big arguments on how people learn best. We've got every different approach covered here, and every reaction to it from people in the different groups. If you're interest Google Kolb - he did loads of stuff on learning styles and which one works best - there are four. Rose belongs firmly in one group, I only work in a different one - and other participants here for the others. It has nothing really to do with intelligence, or experience - just what works best for us individually. I NEVER read instruction books or manuals. I would never do a check list, I usually blunder through experimenting and eventually get there. Others cannot do this - they need to know what happens before they do something. I just do it and work out what happens. Other people like to have the processes explained to them. This also makes taking advice from people in the different 'camps' difficult, because what they suggest is uncomfortable. Sometimes we get forced to use systems we don't like - Pilots, for example work on check lists, not memory. When your own and other people's lives depend on you - check lists are great. They're also produced by people who you can rely on. Getting a flowchart from the net could be great if the guys at Abbey Road produced it, but what if it was from a small bedroom studio belonging to a college student - who liked checklists? I suspect some of the clues to it being a dodgy one come from people's questions about some of it?

I ried to produce one for how I do things, and came to the conclusion I can't as I seem to take different journeys to the same end destination each time - depending on what it is?

Ironically - a flow chart could have been really useful - I've been away two months, and go home in a couple of weeks, straight back into the second half of producing a series of music products, and I cannot remember exactly the process I used - so I bet all the stuff I produce when I restart sounds different. Maybe the flow chart would have been a better move!

Happy New Year everyone!
 
Great comments, aylestone. I recently watched a documentary about the Doors. Some of their albums were cut in a week. I don't know how long post-production took but it can't have been too long. So, the engineers doing their stuff had to have, in their heads, a definite way of doing things. They weren't hunting around for processes.

I'm with you about manuals. In the Reaper guide for instance there is too much info that is, without at least some experience, useless to read.

Regardless, I'm learning.
 
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