I don't think we disagree;
but I think we are making different assumptions about what is going on and what the question the original poster is asking.
Certainly, if there are audible defects in an individual track, that should be removed "from the get go". I have assumed that is already done, or at least is done by most recording engineers. You seem to be assuming that it has been ignored (but I don't want to be making statements for you; that it just the way I am interpreting your statements.)
Of course I have no way of knowing which is the case in this specific instance. But what I can say with pretty fair confidence - based upon my own experiences talking with budding and even somehat experienced home recordists on the past few years, both in person (as both associates and clients), and on this board - is that there is a pretty strong trend towards a)the belief that sophisticated gear can effectively replace engineering technique, and b)that most rookies just don't grok the idea of frontloadling importance in the process (i.e. that performance trumps tracking, that tracking trumps mixing, and that mixing trumps mastering.)
When I was growing up and cutting my teeth in this racket. the big Bozo-no-no catch phrase was "fix in the mix". You could always tell that when someone said, "We'll fix it in the mix", that it meant one of two things; either the guy was a pro under a time or budget gun and just had no options, or much more often, that it was a rookie that didn't understand the importance of getting it right in the tracking first.
IME, that has now evolved in the past 10 years to not only "we'll fix it in the master", but even "we'll MIX it in the master." If I had a buck for every time in the last two years on this board I saw or heard someone who basically phoned in the mixing by compressing every track flat, layering them like lasagna, and then taking their MBC and kneading the hell out of their 2mix to try and accomplish what they should have accomplished in mixing, I'd be able to buy a new premium gold channel of analog mic and pre for my rig
.
Now I know that's not quite what you're describing with your technique at all, and I never meant to imply that. You're taling about a light sanding, not a complete mangling. And that's not bad. I'm not convinced that it's necessary, for the very reason that it hasn't been necessary for many decades until now, but it's not an awful abuse.
It just amazes me how most of the best-sounding productions in history ever to stick to disc or tape were accomplished without even the invention of MBCs or even the need to so anything other than the actual technical premastering itself in premastering, yet today they are considered a gotta-have go-to device to be used at a point in the production process that used to be considered as downstram of that kind of alteration. We certainly haven't seen an improvement in production value by that change. A change, BTW, that never really came from the pros, but really was started mostly that the grassroots home recording level.
But the situation also occurs that perfectly fine tracks, none of which is really a problem, add together in unpredictable ways to form unexpected phenomenon, such as a period of boominess harshness IN THE MIX. The problem could not be removed on the track, because it simply was no defect in the track.
But the mix is nothing but the results of the mixing process. If the tracks sound fine, but the mix doesn't, that means there's something worng in the mixing process or inthe tracks. You can't blame the 2mix itself, it's the tracks and the process that made the 2mix that are at fault, and it's there where they should be addressed.
A basic tenant - I think you may have actually said it yourself earlier, I'm not sure - is that one should not judge how a track sounds solo, but rather how it sounds in the mix. To say that the individuaal tracks sound "fine" is meaningless when you know they don't sit right in the mix. The mix engineer should have good enough ears and knowledge to know which component tracks are contribution to a problem in the mix, even if they sounds pretty OK solo, From there it's a simple matter of adjusting the mix parameters to account for it.
Usually, IME anyway, it's a case of concurrent peaks on seperate tracks which are fine alone, but when summed are too pronounced. The solution there is simple; manually or via automation, knock down some individual peaks by only a dB or two (high threshold compression or limiting usually doesn work, because the individual peaks are relative harmless and perhaps even invisible until the mix). The real advantage here is that the individual changes to the tracks are virtually inaudible, only changing a peak or two a dB or two, and not targeting any frequencies to change any timbre on the track(s). But the end result is a tamed mix where the harsh frequency is no longer bothersome and no loger requires frequency-based dynamics on the overall mix.
Now, you might say that your way is a little less time consuming and a bit easier. And you might even be right. But it also is a lot less skillful. I don;t mean that in a negative way specifically agianst your technique; what I mean is that it requires less ear, less intimacy with the tracks and less mixing skill. All of which, IMHO, leads to a general degradition in mixing skills altogether. Better to get one's hands and ears and even eyes into the open chest of the mix, than to antiseptically spray the mix's wound with an MBC after it's sewn back up. I may be old school by saying this, by I truely feel that it makes AND keeps one a better engineer AND does a better job on the patient..
But the simple fact is that DVD-A and SACD (superior audio formats) are struggling to find consumers willing to pay, yet MP3 is thriving !
That's because, unfortunately, convenience trumps sound quality...at least for a while. MP3 players are the 8-track tape players of the 21st century, and even moreso when their sound quality is, while still crippled, a couple of magnitudes better than 8track ever was, and when one can hold the equivalent of an entore record store full of 8-tracks (or CDs or SACDs) on one little hard drive the size of a couple of Ritz crackers, people would be foolish to move to the SACD format..
I actually believe that modern audio engineers, in general, have a much deeper understanding of what is really going on than the engineers of prior eras.
That I'm not so sure of. I doubt most of today's engineers could do D2D that sounded half as good as the boys at RCA and the BBC could do with 1/10th the gear. Of course course, it doesn't help that there's no musiciaship anymore either.
Ridgeback said:
I have highlighted and printed your posts into my scrapbook at the studio. Glen we've butted heads a couple of times but your knowledge is [edited out of false modesty
]
Thanks, ridge! Very kind of you.
And I hope you realize that if we did butt heads (I honestly don't recall), I am usually doing it as a terse method of trying to figure out what the real deal is, and not out of any kind of animosity. Sometimes I learn things best from debate.
Ahhh, I know you're just keeping that at your studio so you can blame me when something goes awry: "Hey, it's all Glen's fault!" At least that's what everyone else does
G.
