ok, how about some geeky details....
let's see, details.......
that'd be mostly from memory, and my memory is not the best these days..
ok, round one.
mixing-
routing, i typically don't send anything to the 'MASTER' buss, i create new stereo sub mix busses, and break everything out to those, and those get routed to the MASTER, and the MASTER gets routed to the MAINS.
reason:
i do all my automation on mixdown (every track gets a volume envelope, plus i do moving pans, so i place pan envelopes on key tracks, such as electric solos and keyboard solos).
if i paint myself in a corner with levels, and don't want to go back to edit 28 volume envelopes (!!!! LOL, it happens)--
then i can go to my sub mix busses, apply grouping control, and pull the whole lot down fractions of DB's, til i get my master level where i want it (typically -5db max on peaks) very easily, without changing the mix very much at all.
it's so nice, to have the guys come in near the end, listen to my mix, say 'not enough drums', and i just pull all the submixes down except the drums, and have instant mix fixes!
in general, overheads getted their own buss, the rest of the drums get routed to a buss, acoustic guitars to a buss, vox to a buss, bass and electric guitars and keys (and anything else i need) to a single 'music' buss, then there are typically 3 effects busses, one for drums, one for vox, one for guitars. all these busses, are routed to the mains.
each buss except effects busses, gets a compressor, settings vary wildly, but typically, it's subtle.
effects are always send/return for reverbs and delays, and get routed to a individualized effects buss.
individual channels get appropriate EQ, ala sonitus, compression if required, in the effects bin (again, i favor the sonitus effects), and effects sends for reverb/delay/whatever to the effects busses. i blend in what i need from there.
DRUMS:
i can say that, in general, after the first session, and getting drum tracks, i spent quite a bit of time 'cleaning up' the drum tracks for bleed thru-
it made a HUGE improvement in the sound, getting rid of ambient bleed off the tracks.
all drums, get routed to a DRUM BUSS.
the two overheads, got routed to their very own OVERHEAD BUSS, as well, so i could compress it seperately of the rest of the kit.
since we didn't have any gates available when capturing the raw tracks, we relied on close micing, and low signals, to reduce the bleed thru...
i used the noise removal processing from the track menu in sonar, to get rid of a lot of the obvious bleed-thru between hits on the snare, kick, and toms, but left the overheads and hi hats alone.
i did spot removal on those tracks where it was appropriate, but it becomes obvious when you cut audio out of the overheads and hi hats, because you hear the drop out of the noise floor, it's just weird sounding.
in noisy sections, i could pull certain things out, and you wouldn't notice, i did that on a situation by situation decision.
on mixdown, i applied gating, compression, eq, sometimes reverb on the snare, sometimes dry, sometimes reverb on the overheads, and almost always compression on the overheads.
panning was typically closer to center with the left to right toms and overheads, than hard left and right, tho on a couple of songs, i spread it out quite a bit.
ACOUSTICS:
i ran two acoustic tracks for each performance:
one direct via LL Baggs bridge pickup, and one live mic (at4033).
i blended these different on every song-
typically i throw them both either left or right, but sometimes spread them out left and right.
effects varied from song to song. the DI track was eq'd heavily to get rid of the Piezo quack, and the live mic eq'd to get rid of boom.
Electrics:
variation here, but primarily a Epiphone Les Paul or a USACG custom TELE into a Fender Supersonic combo, or my own rig, a Mesa Boogie mark2b thru a Avatar vintage 112 cab.
the Fender was miced at volume, using a 57, and also a Palmer PDI-09 was used to capture a direct line as well.
those two tracks were blended together at mixdown, sometimes paired up, sometimes panned opposite.
Bass:
Fender jazz active 5 string, thru a sansamp bass di, split to a Boss Bass pedal, one of those GT varieties, and those two were blended and centered.
lots of eq and compression schemes were used on these tracks, it varied from song to song.
the strange vocodor effect on "One Horse Town", all came directly from the bass pedal, driven by the bass track.
Keys-
these were recorded direct, at the keyboard player's studio, so i wasn't really involved in any of those 'captures'.
i had to do significant eq on these tracks, they came to me 'dark', and not very hot.
i re-gained a few of these tracks, and brightened them up a bit. on certain synth parts, i doubled the tracks, split them left and right, pulled the cloned track off a few milliseconds, just to fatten them up. i did this sparingly.
vox-
ok, we auditioned 6 microphones on vox, and the one we ended up using was the Shure KSM44.
excellent mic, especially since the singer Chad, can peel paint off the wall with his voice. ::
we built a vocal booth out of 4" polyiso, lined it with auralex panels, and stuck a lava lamp in there for good measure!
LOL
vox mic was run into several preamps, including the A Designs Audio MP-1, ART DPS, and
MAudio ProjectMix I/O.
a dbx compressor was used to gently color the tracking input.
on mixdown, i used the VC-64 on all vocal tracks, and used parallel compression, and parallel eq.
effects varied from song to song.
