EQ Rules of Thumb

[SillyBee]

Yeah, I read that article like about 5 or 6 years ago.

You opinion of it?

 

[Ford Van]

I don't disagree with it. It pretty much expresses what I mean!

You can live in the world with your eyes closed, or , you can accept the fact that EQ is your friend! Friends generally will put up with some abuse from you.

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Ok, first off, anybody here who says that they've found my website is either has an internet access service that caches year-old web pages as current, or they are hallucinating, or just plain lying. I used to have two websites going, on for the studio under the name SouthSIDE Multimedia Productions (it was located at southsidemultimedia.com) and a personal resume/portfolio website for myself (it was located at servername.net/southside/). I have attached archived screenshots from both of them to this message. But considering I let my studio web page expire a about a year ago (long before I even joined this board) and took my personal site down not too long after that, anybody claiming to have seen "my website" since this thread started and claims that I am "hiding it" from this board is just being slanderous. And besides, if they actually went to either one of these websites as they existed, they would have been able to hear plenty of samples of both my mixing and my restoration work, both downloadable and interactive, and they wouldn't need to ask for them here. I took the sites down because frankly I didn't and don't need them, and found the money could better be used for other purposes. I am fairly well networked in a particular corner of the music community here, and most of the people I work with already know me and couldn't care less about a web site, or have been referred to me by those people and use a new invention called the telephone to contact me.

Second off, I work with many musicians who aren't interested in websites either. These guys (and girls) have been playing for a looong time (some of them even longer than I have been recording, and I have been doing that for 25 years). Many of them are regularly *turning down work* because they have solid rep and cred in the community and are already booked solid and/or on the speed dial of dozens of bands and studios when needed for session work. I've tried talking several of them into letting me do their websites for them, sometimes even offering my work gratis just as a favor to them, but they are either just not interested, or at least not interested enough to bump it up off the bottom of their to-do lists (yet), because they just don't need it that badly or at all. So when someone asks me "where are all the band websites that have my work on them" - which, frankly hasn't happened to me in 20 years until now - I have to reply "they exist only in the Internet of the mind." These guys just don't need to brag about what albums they have worked on or who thay have played with, and they find such flag-waving a bit showboat-y, not to mention unnecessary. I guess part of this culture and and attitude have rubbed off on me a bit as well. These guys let their playing speak for them, and I here on the board I let my posts speak for me.

That said, someone has called me to the carpet is a way that won't allow me to ignore it. Even though he is a known goof with a track record of getting himself and his posts booted off this board, he has managed to besmirch my character among those who are not regulars of this board and who just don't know me and my track record well enough. He has managed to raise enough curiosity amongst the good people here about my work where I have been forced to respond.

Therefore, while I have no websites to "reveal" to this board, and haven't since before I even joined this board, I have attached screenshots of a sample page from each of my most recent ones in the interest of honest disclosure. In addition I have posted three tracks to the Internet from a guerilla mixing project I am currently working on for which I was able to secure permission to do so from the artist yesterday.

Who is the artist? Nobody famous, at least not outside the Chicago musician scene. But he has a reputation as one of the great go-to guitarists in the city. His name is Jim Patriarca. He is a quiet guy, definitely not a grandstander, and he has no website. Yet he currently plays in two bands full-time, just left a third band he was playing with simultaneously only because that band broke up because the leader had other interests. Probably Jim's biggest claim to national fame is as a former guitarist for American English, but has also played with such more local mainstays as Duke Tomato and Stevie Starlite. He has played regularly over the years at such venues as Bourbon Street, House of Blues, Navy Pier, Buddy Guy's Legends, and the Museum of Science and Industry. Jimbo has played from Chicago to Tennessee to California with The Wombats, a band with whom I have also worked and who's CDs have gotten repeated airplay on both WXRT-FM and Q101-FM here in the Second City. Jim currently plays lead git for The Little Big Men as well as another band with whom I regularly work, American Slang (no relation to American English, just a coincidence.)

The LBM are fronted by Jim's bass-playing brother Gordon, who is known from Chicago to Minneapolis to New Orleans to Memphis to Austin to L.A. as a veteran and professional session musician who has also played or plays with bands such as The Funky Meters, The Remainders, and Brother John's Band. I have known and worked with Jim and Gordon for years and am slated to do some re-mix and pre-master work for Gordon a little later this year.

Jim's other current band, American Slang, whom I work with an average of once a month, showcases Jerry Frank at the drums. Jerry is one of those veteran musicians that's been everywhere, done everything, and been on countless commercial CDs, yet nobody has heard of him (again, except those with ties to the veteran Chicago music scene). Such is the life of gunslinger musicians and session drummers. He has toured Europe playing with Stevie Wonder and played with John Hiatt I believe back here in the States. Besides his current duties with the Slang, he currently plays or is on call, studio and live, for something on the order of thirty(!) different bands.

And, no, none of these guys have or need websites. The only current band that has one is American Slang, who has just a campy one-page web treatment used to announce live club dates, and includes no recordings of the band's music (www.americanslangrocks.com).

Enough history and geneology fluff stuff. I'm hopefully through running names and credentials up flag ploes, because I just find that vain and distasteful. Maybe it's different in other musical orbits - and that's fine, I'm not dissing that - but where I cut my teeth that's just how it goes. So sue me for not waxing braggadocious and waving my MP3s, gear list, or any other penis extenders around this board just to get attention.

About my posted tracks... These tracks are part of an ongoing project between Jim and I, where he lays down his tracks as they come to him, and then he passes them to me for mixing and editing. Sometimes he has complete song arrangements in mind, other times he just lays down heavy carpets of instrument tracks as the muse hits him and hands the pile to me and has me work out the arrangement and play producer with it.

The posted tracks are just a few samples of about fifteen or so guerilla tracks done this way. All the tracking was done direct, no live miking, no expensive gear, and I mixed them all strictly ITB; I left all my outboard stuff out of the chain, including all my mixer, reverb, compression, EQ, and limiting iron. Strictly ITB with standard NLE software and plugs (no DSP-based stuff, even.) We wanted to see just what we could do basic the hard way and how it would come out.

These tracks are raw mixdowns, sometimes incomplete (one is even missing the vocal tracks, which have yet to be recorded.), always not mastered or polished at all - with the one exception that I aplied a little compression and gain to a couple of the tracks just to even out their apparent volume. As the resulting RMS levels are hovering somewhere in the -15 to -16dBRMS range, the processing was minimal. I just wanted to have them at more or less the same relative volume, not necessarily loud. I'll leave that for the mastering, when it comes.

Anyway, I posted these guerilla tracks to SoundClick. You can find them as 128k MP3s (sorry, they won't take higher bitrates unless I give them money) at

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/pagemusic.cfm?bandID=462941

This is not even close to Grammy stuff, I'll be the first to admit. It sounds like cheap gear because it was done on cheap gear. And they are unfinished. The current drums and bass in "In Like A Lion" are being replaced by better quality loops and re-tracks. There is a nasty click in "In Like A Lion" at about 0:44, if I remember, that I still have to go back and remove, and "Memorial Day" is still missing several tracks of vocals that I'm waiting to get from Jim; when those arrive obviously a degree of re-mix will be in order. And so on. Sorry, but it's what I have legally available to me. But you should get the idea that I can put more than a handful of tracks together, get the tracks to sit in the mix well together in a way that isn't "purist" or "documentarian", and do it without extreme gear settings or even gear. And if I can do it, anybody can. Except maybe those who lean on their gear to do their mixing for them.

So fire those flaming arrows at me for posting such horseshat MP3s. I can take it. But I don't bullshit people, I correct myself when I'm wrong or when someone points it out for me, and when I take a strong stand on something, you can bet damn well that I make sure I have a firm footing in first-hand knowledge an/or experience before I stick my neck out on that stand. Just don't ever accuse me of my word not being worth anything.

My apologies for adding one last horrid post to a horrid thread that was mercifully dying while I was gone that past couple of days. I'll be happy to let it die again.

G.

 

[Ford Van]

Come now, you MUST have some finished product available somewhere!

I smell a cop out!

 

[Ford Van]

You are right. None of that soundclick stuff is going to challenge for a grammy. Would you like some eq/compression suggestions? LOL

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Come now, you MUST have some finished product available somewhere!

I smell a cop out!

I explained everything truthfully to every last detail already. I don't keep stuff around for long. I give it to my client along with the archives, they pay me money and I move on. If you refuse to believe that, then you are the one with the eyes closed, not me. I'm not going to lie just to patronize you and give you an answer that you want to hear and that will get me off the hook.

If you smell something, it ain't coming fom this side of the conversation. Pointing the nose at the guy who makes it a hobby to get booted off of message boards might just be a good place to start sniffing.

And that same guy who honestly thinks that what 90% of the rookies on this board with project studio plugins need to be told as good advice is that they need to EQ the f*ck out of their mixes - regardless of what you ro your buddy do with your thousands of dollars in EQ alone at your studios - is the very last person from whom I would be willing to take EQ and compression advice from. Especially since you never heard the raw tracks.

Look, Sonus, you have made some good posts in other threads the past few days. You are not an idiot when it comes to this business, by a long shot. It's a mystery to me how you can know so much about some things and be so ignorant about others, and why you need to lie about stuff to force people into positions for your own edification.

At this point I couldn't give a rat's ass what your personal opinion is of me or my work. I stuck my neck out putting unfinished and unpublished work out there, having to hand in a marker to one of my good friends and associates by asking him to stick his neck out too by releasing something that's not ready to be released yet, and taking the chance of jeopardizing money down the road by doing it. If that - along with common sense knowledge that shared by most of the truely experienced people in this racket - isn't good enough for you, I guess we'll just have to live with that.

G.

 

[SonicAlbert]

These tracks are raw mixdowns, sometimes incomplete (one is even missing the vocal tracks, which have yet to be recorded.), always not mastered or polished at all - with the one exception that I aplied a little compression and gain to a couple of the tracks just to even out their apparent volume. As the resulting RMS levels are hovering somewhere in the -15 to -16dBRMS range, the processing was minimal. I just wanted to have them at more or less the same relative volume, not necessarily loud.

SouthSIDE Glen,

You don't have to do this. Really you don't. You've got nothing to prove to this guy and you *know* he's going to be a smart ass about it because that's what he does. A talented smart ass perhaps, but why open yourself up to ridicule when it is unnecessary?

Also, as a general rule, *never* release unfinished work unless your reasons for doing it are to get genuine suggestions from others. Posting links to unifinished work is not going to do anything good for you in my opinion. Even though you have added disclaimers, you are only as good as what people can hear, and they will assume that what you've posted is the best you can do.

I do think that Ford Van has done some nice mixing work, and I have listened to a bunch of his files that he linked to. However, I still have a major problem with this concept of "no rules".

There are rules, and there are exceptions to every one of those rules. But the exceptions to the rules doesn't mean there are no rules.

"Don't step in front of a speeding car". Okay, that's a rule. "There are no rules" means go ahead and step in front of a speeding car. But what does that get you? Dead.

 

[easychair]

I stuck my neck out putting unfinished and unpublished work out there, having to hand in a marker to one of my good friends and associates by asking him to stick his neck out too by releasing something that's not ready to be released yet, and taking the chance of jeopardizing money down the road by doing it.
G.

That seems kind of silly, no offense.

You both have good points. Good practices and knowledge are great goals, and you should always try your best to capture good sounds. You both agree on that. And no, the BBE Sonic Maximizer or HF knob on a Mackie on the stereo bus probably isn't the best way to go in any case.

But telling a guy who is tracking a Pearl Export kick with a Pro25 he shouldn't need to use more than a sprinkle of eq or a soupcon of compression isn't really helpful either.

Home Recording, baby. That's where we are.

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

You don't have to do this. Really you don't. You've got nothing to prove to this guy.

I know that, Al, and I appreciate your support, along with all the support I have gotten from everybody in PMs and e-mails.

Sometimes when a guy calls you outside the saloon, you gotta go outside, even if he's not giving you a chance to put bullets in your six shooter. Rightly or wrongly, I felt that's what I had to do. Sometimes it's not a matter of proving it to him, but to yourself.

If I get shot down because of it, so be it. But I'll at least die knowing that there are literally hundreds of people on this board who know far better than Sonus just what life, this board, SouthSIDE, and music in general are all about.

G.

 

[easychair]

I know that, Al, and I appreciate your support, along with all the support I have gotten from everybody in PMs and e-mails.

Sometimes when a guy calls you outside the saloon, you gotta go outside, even if he's not giving you a chance to put bullets in your six shooter. Rightly or wrongly, I felt that's what I had to do. Sometimes it's not a matter of proving it to him, but to yourself.

If I get shot down because of it, so be it. But I'll at least die knowing that there are literally hundreds of people on this board who know far better than Sonus just what life, this board, SouthSIDE, and music in general are all about.

G.

Oh, please, my God, the drama. Get me a tissue.

After your posting of those clips, I kinda think you are as disconnected from reality as you think Ed is. What the hell were you thinking?

Personally, I wouldn't hire either of you to wrap cables, unless I could tape your mouths shut. My gear couldn't handle that much hot air.

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Alright, I stuck my neck out and made Sonus happy by giving him more grist for his mill, Now that he's had his fun, I've removed the link.

G.

 

[Ford Van]

What a bunch of crap.

Regardless of how you try to fluffy up your position on things, you stated that instead of eq'ing, you should retrack. It was PROVEN that there are production goals that you cannot achieve UNLESS you use gobs of EQ. Some guys with BIG RECORD LABEL experience chimed in with their agreement to that.

So, then you take the approach that it is somehow "ignorant" (those are the words you keep using about my advice to eq to taste!) to tell "newbies" (your words again) that they can eq to their hearts desire!

LOL....This is rich! The fucking eq knobs are there to be used! If extreme settings do the job, there is NO rule saying you "CAN'T USE GOBS OF EQ" to make something sound good.

There is a whole reality you refuse to deal with Southside. That reality is that many people are NOT going to go back and retrack, unless they have extinquished all other possibilities to make their track work. Gobs of eq is a very legit action that they can take.

Nobody learns anything with people like you making up "rules" that don't even exist. I keep asking for examples of your finished work because it IS pertinent to the quality of your "advice". If you can truthfully say that you reach all your production goals using less than 6dB of eq EVER, and you have some work that illustrates that anything I am doing WITH eq can be done with the mysterious "better tracking" methods that guys like you seem to alwasy push, then I would really love to hear it!

Also, the fact remains that people STILL will not resort to retracking possibly one of their best performances unless they have tried ANY other approach.

You talk about "standards" and "common practices" and all that crap, so I have to assume that you have a resume that clearly shows that you have produced audio that lives up to these lofty standards that you keep preaching.

I have posted my work. Some of my work sounds outstanding. Some less so. It is all there for the person to listen to, ask me questions about what I did, and there for "redicule" even by you. You have chosen to not comment on it for the most part.

Go down to the mix clinic and take a listen to the mix me and xfinsterx are working on. I don't think the mix is finished, but it is maybe 90% there. You tell me how you would have tracked a fucking kick drum to sound like the one in that song! Tell me how you would have tracked that bass to get it nasty like that.

Go listen to the Heavy Brother stuff I have on my site. Or even the Porterhouse stuff. I can tell that that MANY of those tracks have some fairly extreme eq settings.

I guess maybe I don't have big budgets and clients that can deliver their best performance every time they play like you do. I certainly don't have the pompous attitude that somehow "newbies" cannot figure out when EQ just isn't doing the trick either!

NEVER have a said that retracking isn't a good idea. But you have stated again and again that EQ isn't a good idea. While I take the approach that my suggestion will bring the person a step closer to realizing that they have to have something worth eq'ing, you advice would hold people back from trying anything other than another take. THAT my friend is POOR ADVICE.

Get real Southside. This is HOMRECORDING.COM . Some of these guys CAN'T get any better sounding out of the crap they are using, and EQ is quite possibly the only way they can compansate. I find it amusing that you seem so against it, yet, SO MANY members here appreciate my advice that they give it a go. I TOO have many PM's and emails surrounding this whole thread.

Earlier in this thread, a like to an article written by Lionel Dumond. I suggest you read it and open your mind a bit. Since you don't seem willing to share your work, I will continue that assume that you don't really have work worth sharing, and illustrates the logic of your advice. I will assume that you just don't know HOW to use eq to further your production along. I won't hold my breath that you will ASK how to use it effectively, because you have made it known that if you have to use more than 6dB of it, you are going to retrack the part.

I can tell you, if I was producing a project, and you were the engineer, and we got done getting THE take on something, but there was a tonal problem with it, and I asked you "Glen, what can you do with that track?", and your suggestion was to retrack it, I would hire another engineer! Seriously! If that is the best you can come up with for a solution, you ain't that right guy for ANYTHING I would be working on.

 

[Ford Van]

Personally, I wouldn't hire either of you to wrap cables, unless I could tape your mouths shut. My gear couldn't handle that much hot air.

I seriously doubt you could afford me to wrap cables!

 

[easychair]

I seriously doubt you could afford me to wrap cables!

Happens a lot with the people I hire. If you practice, you'll get faster. Give me a call when you get your speed up.

 

[Ford Van]

Happens a lot with the people I hire. If you practice, you'll get faster. Give me a call when you get your speed up.

Haha! Good one!

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

I'm not sure which thread you're reading, Sonus, buut you are accusing me of saying all sorts of crap I never said. I rarely use the word "newbie", never referred to "standards" or "common practices, and definitely never referred to "rules" (that whole "rules" thing was your jag, not mine.)

I'll say it one more time. My point was the problem with most rookies is not that they are using not enough EQ, but that they are using too much of it and using it on EQ plugs that just don't sound good when pushed like a Pultec or an Oxford or any other of the fancy crap you love to make a point out of your using does. And that they are using it to try to fix serious problems or deficiencies in their tracking technique, not to get a special effect sound out of an already halfway decent tracking.

This somehow turned into a debate between purism and mangling. That was NEVER, EVER, what I was referring to, a point I've been trying to make all the way through. Of COURSE many of The Big Boys use lots of stuff to get special sounds (though not all of them, but you keep ignoring that fact too.). And if I were engineering for you and you told me to fix it, of COURSE I would. I'd also get the tracking right to begin with so the number of times you had to ask me to fix something would be minimized and the cost in studio time would go down.

All that is so besides the point as to be in a different zip code. I am not a purist or documentarian (except when it calls for it). The point is that the problem with 90% of the rookie posts is that their tracking is way off and they're trying to fix it with low-grade signal processors, and telling them that their problem is they are not cranking their processors far enough is teaching them that they should fix bad technique by throwing hardware at it and not to worry about the technique part of it.

There is a difference between being a good engineer and a good teacher. There are brain surgeons in this world who couldn't teach a med class to save their lives. Hell, Isaac Newton was famous for being the world's worst physics teacher, he often taught classses with no students because they never bothered to show up after the first one. You may be a perfectly fine engineer, but - in this thread, anyway - you dropped the ball, teacher-wise. You have given some good answers in other threads, I give you credit for that. But in this one I called you on it and actually gave the guy some answers he could use (and DID, if you read his followup posts). And you lit into me like I cut your balls off. God forbid that anybody ever say you were ever wrong.

Pompus is going around dropping names and wagging gear lists like a strutting peacock. Pompus is not one who finds bragging about such things an exercise in vanity.

You assumptions that I don't know anything means you have never bothered to read any of my stuff. Oh I forgot; If I told you that E=mc^2, you'd say that I was wrong because I didn't do graduate work with Albert Einstein, so my posts mean absolutely nothing.

Your habit of lying, like you did about the non-existant website you "visited" apparently has you believing that I lie as well, since you're still insistng I'm lying about my experience. I have no way to confront that idiocy, so I'll just have to let that go. I'll bet you there's a solid pattern of those that agree with you are telling the truth and those that don't are lying.

Easychair was right. I should have just taped my mouth shut after I tried discussing what could have been an interesting issue with you like an adult and you simply responded by saying my words were meaningless. When you dragged it back into the gutter, I should have known this all would lead absolutely nowhere.

You've already made your version of friends with Bruce and me, and Al sounds like he's on the fence. Next you'll be attacking Harvey and Tom and John and Jason and everybody else on this boaard who actually know not only what they're talking about, but knwo how to read posts and respond to them and to understand when they're right and they're wrong without getting their boxers in a bunch.

I hope you're having fun. Because if you're not, that makes nobody.

You can respond to this thread, like I know you will. And that will be it. I'll give you the last word that you so desperately need.

G.

 

[Ford Van]

I'm not sure which thread you're reading, Sonus, buut you are accusing me of saying all sorts of crap I never said. I rarely use the word "newbie", never referred to "standards" or "common practices, and definitely never referred to "rules" (that whole "rules" thing was your jag, not mine.)

Go re-read your posts.

I'll say it one more time. My point was the problem with most rookies is not that they are using not enough EQ, but that they are using too much of it and using it on EQ plugs that just don't sound good when pushed like a Pultec or an Oxford or any other of the fancy crap you love to make a point out of your using does. And that they are using it to try to fix serious problems or deficiencies in their tracking technique, not to get a special effect sound out of an already halfway decent tracking.

Well, you must be listening to different stuff than I. And in addition, there are times when you SHOULD be using lot's of eq! The production dictates what is needed, not your sorry ass advice to not use your tools!

In addition, point me to the threads where I "make a point out of using" "fancy" EQ's like the Pultec and an Oxford! The studio I work out of sometimes has a Pultec on a UAD-1 card. But certainly, when you go to my audio page, almost NOTHING on there uses high quality eq's. More time than not, I am using the stock Sonitus eq's provided with Sonar.

You MUST be way out of touch with modern plugin's. Many are quite capable and sound very good. It isn't the tool, it is how you use it.

This somehow turned into a debate between purism and mangling. That was NEVER, EVER, what I was referring to, a point I've been trying to make all the way through. Of COURSE many of The Big Boys use lots of stuff to get special sounds (though not all of them, but you keep ignoring that fact too.). And if I were engineering for you and you told me to fix it, of COURSE I would. I'd also get the tracking right to begin with so the number of times you had to ask me to fix something would be minimized and the cost in studio time would go down.

Even Mr.Albert has to admit that a certain mix I posted to sounded quite "restrained". Most of the comments I get about my mixes is how they are quite natural sounding. and don't sound over processed! So, even though I may be technically "mangling" the audio with eq sometimes, I do it to achieve what I am after in the mix. Sometimes, the toms mics are less than ideal, and with no eq, there is little attack. Sometimes to make the toms sound right in the production, I might be adding upwards of 12dB of a high shelf eq, and compressing the fuck out of it to make the tom sound like it would if you were standing right next to it. Sorry, but a SM-57 just isn't going to capture the detail like my ear does!

All that is so besides the point as to be in a different zip code. I am not a purist or documentarian (except when it calls for it). The point is that the problem with 90% of the rookie posts is that their tracking is way off and they're trying to fix it with low-grade signal processors, and telling them that their problem is they are not cranking their processors far enough is teaching them that they should fix bad technique by throwing hardware at it and not to worry about the technique part of it.

Okay, to be fair here bubba, we have NO IDEA what the original posters audio actually sounds like! YOU assumed that he must have tracked everything poorly. I only asserted that IF drastic eq will deliver what he is after, then he should go for it. If I heard something and knew for a fact that it was poor tracking, and knew for a fact that no amount of eq is going to make it sound better, I of course would state that they need to retrack.

The fact is that you recommend to retrack if they have to use more than 6dB cut/boost to "fix" it. I say BULLSHIT! If a 9dB boost of a high shelf gives my tom tracks the type of smack and "air" that sounds good in the mix, there is NOTHING wrong with using that much eq!

What concerns me is that you automatically assume that the person tracked it wrong. I give the benefit of the doubt, and offer some things to try.

I think most people appreciate my effort to help a little more when the option is yours (to retrack), or mine (to try some eq).

There is a difference between being a good engineer and a good teacher. There are brain surgeons in this world who couldn't teach a med class to save their lives. Hell, Isaac Newton was famous for being the world's worst physics teacher, he often taught classses with no students because they never bothered to show up after the first one. You may be a perfectly fine engineer, but - in this thread, anyway - you dropped the ball, teacher-wise. You have given some good answers in other threads, I give you credit for that. But in this one I called you on it and actually gave the guy some answers he could use (and DID, if you read his followup posts). And you lit into me like I cut your balls off. God forbid that anybody ever say you were ever wrong.

IF I was wrong here, I could admit it. The fact is, you just assumed that the original poster tracked his audio poorly.

Not only am I a fine engineer, but I teach audio very damn well. That is why people have followed my posts over the years. That is why websites have asked me to write articles. That is why people have encouraged me to write books. Because I CAN TEACH VERY WELL!

I don't see many offers to extended to you based on your advice. Get a clue.

Pompus is going around dropping names and wagging gear lists like a strutting peacock. Pompus is not one who finds bragging about such things an exercise in vanity.

Indeed! I usually only resort to calling in the people who I know in the industry to silly arguements when some dumbass insists on stating total rubbish is somehow a common practice used on big time records.

I don't have much of a gear list to wag around these days. I have HAD some impressive ones, and I get to work in studios that have some very nice gear, and have had to opportunity to work with some of the finest gear in the world. This is something FEW around here can say. Good for me!

But usually, I "wag" around the gear I have used mostly to point out that after having used the good, the bad, and the ugly, it comes down to KNOWING how to use it. If I insist that an ART works great on guitar, it is usually because I had it sitting next to high end preamps and did a/b's. People kind of would like to know WHAT I compared it to! So, somehow you keep trying to make me out to be a "gear snob", when in reality, I push that people save their money and just learn to use more affordable gear well.

Show me where I drop names! Show me where I boost a top of the line gear list! You AREN'T going to find it bubba. So, your point in this paragraph is pertinent how?

You assumptions that I don't know anything means you have never bothered to read any of my stuff. Oh I forgot; If I told you that E=mc^2, you'd say that I was wrong because I didn't do graduate work with Albert Einstein, so my posts mean absolutely nothing.

I never assumed that you don't know anything. I just don't think you know as much as you would like "rookies" to think, and some of your posts have such glaring holes in them that I am quite sure of that. Take that as you may. You haven't posted any of your work for me to think otherwise. So, some of your advice is contrary to what industry professionals say, and you have no audio to back up your position. What SHOULD I think?

Your habit of lying, like you did about the non-existant website you "visited" apparently has you believing that I lie as well, since you're still insistng I'm lying about my experience. I have no way to confront that idiocy, so I'll just have to let that go. I'll bet you there's a solid pattern of those that agree with you are telling the truth and those that don't are lying.

Well, when I look up your profile on ICQ via the ICQ thingy in your profile here, I find a link to your appearently old website, and I click on that link, and that address pop's up in the address bar, but shows an error message. I don't know, anybody could assume that you do have a website from that eh?

Try updating your profile if you don't want the confusion and accusations.

As far as your experience. Well, we ONLY have your word to take here. In addition, I know of plenty of guys doing sound that SUCK. Making money, or having done it for a long time means little. I mean, if you are such a hotshot, and I base your skills on those rather lame mp3's you linked to, well, I can honestly say that I hear MANY guys here with FAR less experience who don't really need your "advice" because they are doing MUCH better sounding work than you.

Now, if you got something a little more "polished" that we can hear, I could change that opinion. But, as a guy who spent many years in the business, and had a lot of happy clients, I am a little suspect of some of you "advice" and tend to think that you possibly are not that good at production audio. Until you can provide me with links to something that would refute that, I cannot think anything OTHER than you are a blowhard. You will have to excuse my rather primitive way of viewing this. It is just that I have encountered WAY too many guys on hr.com that claim how they are "professional", but can't engineer their way thru a wet paper bag. You appear to be one of them.

Easychair was right. I should have just taped my mouth shut after I tried discussing what could have been an interesting issue with you like an adult and you simply responded by saying my words were meaningless. When you dragged it back into the gutter, I should have known this all would lead absolutely nowhere.

Actually, where it lead was that many guys here are getting the straigh skinny about using EQ. They are learning that it is ok to use it if it does what they need it to do.

It started getting drug into the gutter when you started saying that my posts were "ignorant". You should maybe go back and read what you ACTUALLY posted.

You've already made your version of friends with Bruce and me, and Al sounds like he's on the fence. Next you'll be attacking Harvey and Tom and John and Jason and everybody else on this boaard who actually know not only what they're talking about, but knwo how to read posts and respond to them and to understand when they're right and they're wrong without getting their boxers in a bunch.

It certainly doesn't surprised me that you and Bruce are "buddies", or at least in agreement about audio. It would appear that neither of you have all that much real experience working on great sounding projects. I have heard Bruce's work, and after hearing it, I am not all that terribly impressed with his skills. His skill set CERTAINLY is not at the level of the way he talks here. What little I have heard from you, you are the same way.

I actually talk with Harvey every once in a while on the phone, and chat with him on another website sometimes. He is a great guy. He has worked on projects I have HEARD, so I know where he is coming from. Harvey makes a lot of statements that seem to get lost on people here. You should try reading a little more into his posts. I know for a fact you will find times where Harvey has said something to the effect of "Yeah, that would be ideal if tracks always sounded the way you want them to. But, life isn't ideal.".

I hope you're having fun. Because if you're not, that makes nobody.

You know, comments like that ONLY have the aim of trying to make me believe that everybody is on your side. LOL I KNOW for a fact that isn't true. I have a lot of nice comments from users here talking about how they like that I am putting some of you "pro's" here back in your place.

If would be cool if I could go back and unerase the PM and the comments in rep points and do a screen shot to show you. But, I know they are there. I will get some more probably for this post. But thanks for wishing me well.

You can respond to this thread, like I know you will. And that will be it. I'll give you the last word that you so desperately need.

G.

Thanks. I feel it is important that a rose be called a rose.

$20 says you haven't listened to any of my mixes yet.

 

[noisewreck]

I'll say it one more time. My point was the problem with most rookies is not that they are using not enough EQ, but that they are using too much of it and using it on EQ plugs that just don't sound good when pushed like a Pultec or an Oxford or any other of the fancy crap you love to make a point out of your using does.

Man, the guy did say that he used the Sonitus Multiband and EQ in Sonar. Sure the Sonitus plugs are nice, but they're not Pultec.

Now, both of you, just STFU! Or I'll put some orchestral strings through the WRAP distortion in my Kurzweil and post for your listening pleasure...

 

[pipelineaudio]

Im going to get beaten for this, but as the proud owner of a few choice pultecs over the years, if I could have ONLY either the sony/soundforge stock track eq plugin or pultec's for the rest of my life, Ill take the plugin

pultecs are great when they work, but they aint for surgery!