How much EQ on Initial Recording VS Mixdown

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Brian01

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We are recording ourselves (we have good mics nice recording space etc), and planing on going to a pro for the mix down and mastering. The question, is when to add what? Do we get the drums and everything compressed right on the inital recording, or leave most of it to the mix down?

How much eq on the first go round? Should it be "pretty close" on our multi track tape (2 adat xt20s) before the mix down, or do we leave it pretty open ended? We have an ok board (I think high, 2 mids, and a low for each eq) and some good rack compression units etc. Our drummer does the sound so Idont know the specifics, but its decent stuff. Just wondering how much time to spend on the inital sound. I assumed we would get it pretty raw and loud, and save the tweaking for mix down. Any experience would help us. Thanks!
 
Yikes!!!

Maybe you should just have the "pro" studio record you too!

These questions are so freakin' loaded that they are ready to burst!!!!!:eek:

Since you are having to ask the question, I would suspect a lack of experience in tracking. In this case, I would advise you to REALLY taking a close listen to how your tracks sound going to tape.

The best advice I can give you that will keep you from messing up your original tracks too much is this:

When you "think" you have the sound you want, record a take without much regards to performance issues. Instantly do a mix of ALL tracks with no applied eq, compression, etc....while mixing. I would strongly advise mixing it to some type of digital format. Make a CDR of it. Play that CDR on a variety of different systems.

If all the tracks are not fitting together reasonably without ANYTHING more that just some volume adjustment, then you have a major issue with some, or all of the sounds you have on tape.

Mixing is about doing MINOR adjustment to the sounds to make them fit A BIT better together. It is NOT about "fixing bad tracking". If you track with eq, and find that you didn't need the applied eq, you are going to have to cut that eq later on. You MAY have to cut that eq A LOT later on!!!

There are sooooooooooooo many issues at work here. Your monitoring room could be severely flawed in it's acoustical design that you may make eq adjustments to compensate for things that have to do with the ROOM rather than how the track actually sounds on tape!

You MAY not even KNOW WHAT ACTUALLY SOUNDS GOOD!!! (don't believe me...just wait...;))

What I prescibe to do above is about the only way you can assure yourself that your original tracks are in the ball park. I can tell you that the best mixes I have done were mixes that needed the least amount of EQ on the tracks.

Now, there IS another side to all this too. Sometimes, some tracks MIGHT sound good in different ways at mix time. If I am unsure while tracking, then I make sure that while tracking that I get a well balanced sound overall, then make the decision at mix time as to what frequencies and dynamics may need to be reduced. This is the prudent approach to tracking, BUT, if you did this for ALL your tracks, you may be hard pressed at mix time to have enough processing to "fix" so many different tracks.

So, it really stands to figure that the best approach is to get all tracks WHILE TRACKING as close to the right sound as possible. Spend the good bulk of your time moving mics around til you get EXACTLY the right sound for every instrument IN THE MIX. What they sound like by themselves matters little if they don't work in the context of the mix. You know what I mean?

So, again, mix your tracks together without adding any little tricks, etc...and listen to that "push mix" through several stereo systems. If after that you like how everything sounds, then continue. If something is sounding really funny, THEN you can start playing around with: (this is the order that you should try stuff.

1 - Different micing techniques.

2 - Changing the source sound before the mic.

3 - A different mic....

4 - EQ and/or dynamic processing going to tape.

Trust me. It is no fun to get a bunch of tracks from somebody that didn't know what the hell they were doing while trackng and having the expectation to make it all "work" together. Sometimes, the original tracks just sound to crappy to really work with them, while others just sound really killer!!! In that case, I have to make the better tracks sound WORSE so that they fit better with the crappy tracks that I can only make sound a little better with processing.

So, take your tracking nice and slow, and check your work on many systems. That is NO different than how it is done in the big time studios when the big names record, and certainly it is MORE important that you do it when you lack experience in what sounds good in a studio.

Good luck.

Ed
 
Well, we have recorded before, and it came out not bad, but Im sure it could be better. This is the first time we have gone digital.

We never tried doing a mix down (with no eq) right after the first recording to check sound on different stereos. Thats a good idea. (We waited until mix down to burn a cd, checking each time we changed stuff. That was not so fun).

Are you saying we should use 0 eq on everything (even drums?) I am the guitar player, so i always want to get my amp to sound how it should, and then have them mic it with no EQ.

I think the problem is our sound guy/drummer does sound for a living, but he does live theater/band sound, not recording sound so Im thinking hes EQ happy.
 
Well, first off we have a drummer running the show! That in itself means certain doom!!! ;) (heard my drummer joke before? I will tell it till drummers learn to be on time!!! hehe)

What I am trying to say is that I doubt you guys have a gear setup, room acoustics in the control, nor experience to make critical assessments about the sound at tracking time without REALLY checking out how those decisions will sound down the road. Ultimately, when it is done and average John Doe and his wife Jane play it in some cheese ass AIWA bookshelf stereo system that enjoys a VERY different response curve, in yet another room that is just shitty for sound. You get what I am saying?

So, lacking the knowledge of just HOW your stuff should sound to tape, don't you think it would be a shame to spend a bunch of time doing all these potential eq tweeks, only to find later that they don't sound worth a shit in the real world, and that they might have actually made the sound worse rather than better? Not EVERYTHING can be fixed with eq at mix time, and a bad sounding track with eq applied just sounds like a bad sounding track with eq applied.

What I am saying is that you should CHECK SOURCE SOUNDS while you are doing them, before you commit to recording an actual take. This way, you can see IF the sound even works at all and make adjustments BEFORE you spend a lot of time going for good performances. Comprende? (sp? LOL)

So, mic up your drums and make then sound what you "think" is the greatest drum sound in the world, then record him playing a bit. Mix that to a CD and play that CD on a car stereo, boom box, home stereo, and even Walkman and hear how it sounds on all of them. If the sound is acceptable, and/or the best you think you can get it, then you can start recording for an actual take of the song.

I just get this funny feeling that if you don't do this that you are going to be sorely disappointed at some point down the road. You will probably post something in the Mixing Clinic here, and I stumble upon it and take a listen, and whamo!!! I tear it apart!!! :D That would be sad wouldn't it? Especially if you could have CHECKED THEM SOUND OUT BEFORE YOU COMMIT TO THEM!!!!

You are going to take those tracks to what I am assuming is a mixing engineer who your feel does KICK ASS mixes (hopefully, you have listened to a BUNCH of his mixes, especially ones that he has done for people who have tracked their own stuff like you guys are doing....I mean, you wanna know if he can handle mixing something he didn't track too right?....;)), and you are going to PAY this guy. Thus, you are going to have EXPECTATIONS that it will sound KILLER. But, you may have tracked it all funky and this poor guy is going to get these tracks and think to himself "Oh boy, what the hell am I going to do with this garbage?".

Now, the above scenario MIGHT not happen. You just MIGHT know what actually sounds good through your studio monitors and will track it really good. If THAT is the case, quit your day job and apply to be an engineer at the Record Plant in LA!!! YOU have arrived as the greatest engineer in the whole world!!! But, I just have this funny feeling that since you are asking about EQ to tape that you might not be too up on micing techniques and what not. You claim your last project come out "okay". Okay for a demo? Okay for a local release? Okay in that it sounded as good as Tool? What do you mean by "okay"? You give the tone that you might not have been all that happy with it last time, yet you are going to go about it the same way as last time?

Tracks mix themselves when they are tracked well. The goal in tracking is to make it so that at mix time you can just turn the fader up and the sound holds it's own in a mix quite well without anything fancy applied to it. Maybe a tad of compression to tame some dynamics, or maybe a slammin' compressor for a certain effect....maybe a bit of eq to make it sit that much better in the mix, or maybe a lot of eq to create a lot of phase distortion in the sound. Maybe a bit of digital reverb to add a bit more ambiance to the sound, or maybe a totally big huge gated reverb like that Phil Collins sound. So many options, but you want to make sure that you track as close to what you want it to sound like in the end as possible! It just works out better that way.

The decision to use EQ can ONLY come after you are SURE you need it or not. Generally, many tracking engineers prefer to move the mic to catch the sound a bit different if they don't like it, or even just try a different mic. Applying EQ while tracking is usually the LAST thing an engineer will try (hehe...even ol' John Sayers will avoid it if he can....sorry John, thought I would bring you up in this you tracking eq fiend you....;)) I often will track with a little eq if I have an eq that is worth while. Usually, this applied eq is in the form of a bass roll off, or maybe just a tad of "top end" to something to make it shimmer a bit more. But it always sounds better if I can find a sound source and/or mic position solution rather than eq. I am betting that you are going to use a low end mixer which probably doesn't have all that great of eq's anyway. And since you are all musicians playing in a band, you are all deaf anyway....:) So, you shouldn't trust your initial impressions of the sounds. Do as I prescribed above and you avoid down the road the heart ache of bad sounding tracks that you worked so hard for.

Good luck.

Ed
 
Ehem...

"Well, first off we have a drummer running the show! That in itself means certain doom!!!"

Peckerhead :)
 
Oh great, the ONE drummer in the whole world who is the exception has to come in calling me names!!!! ;)

Hey Vance, how do they balance a stage at a rock show?














































































They adjust it till drool comes out BOTH sides of the drummers mouth.

hehe

Ed
 
Sonusman, how many words per minute do you type? I type 75wmp but I think you must be faster, you put a lot of info in there, but thats good.

Our last recording was good for a local release. I think its too bass heavy, and the mixing could have been better, (vocals were buried at times) but the sound on the 8track is amazing, so I think he have the inital recording techniques done well, but maybe not as far as knowing how it will sound on a clock radio or walkman. Last time we just mixed it ourself, did no mastering, and sent her off to get duplicated. Still, It sounds better than some so called "studio" cds (we have a fatter, less processed sound) that freinds of ours have had recorded.

We will try what you suggested (seems like doing test strips in photography, rather than printing the whole 8x10) this time around. We're going to try a lot of different micing techniques. The point of doing it at home, is we can spend all the time we need to get it right and not blow thousands of Dollars.
 
I try to get the sound (going to tape/HDD etc) as close to what I am hearing in the room as possible and EQ either for clarity or to compliment the instrument or voice. I try not to add more that 3-6db of cut/boost, if there is a need for more then I must be using the wrong mic or wrong placement. If you cut too much you will "thin" the sound and lose the warm beefy sound. As far as compression goes I usually only knock off 2 or 3 db just to tame the level (bass guitar might need a little more depending on the string balance) Always adjusting for clarity and control unless you are trying to create a specific effect. Try to A/B some of your recordings to your favorite CD's and you may find that their sounds are probably a little bit thicker and rounder with good clarity.
 
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