When I record, I have a choice. I have an input fader and strip, and by default, a channel strip. I monitor what comes out, for headphone and speaker feeds. I usually need two things for my type of music. I need reverb, because for some sounds that benefit from it, the reverb has an effect on how I play it. One of my favourite sounds at the moment is a felt treated piano. Tiny digs at the keyboard with a very short note length, with BIG reverb. My favourite bass is quite an old one and has great tone but with fingers, not a pick, it’s sustain ability is poor. I slap on a compressor. Nothing clever, the Cubase stock one. I pop this onto the channel strip again and then play. Quite often, the song’s have direction changes and there’s too much reverb once other instruments have been added, or another bass sound from a synth means I knock the compression off the bass so it has the attack job, but the sustain isn’t needed.
It’s s how I work. I could have put the exact same processing on the input strip, but that has zero benefits and loads of issues. As the sound is exactly the same why would anyone want to take the path of no changes?
we could do all sorts pre-record but it’s like buying ingredients before you’ve picked today’s meal to cook. As there is NO need to do it pre-record, there are zero benefits. Hell, with huge dynamic range, I don’t even tweak the preamp gain knob much nowadays. I look at the channel strip and it’s a tad lower than optimum, I spin the chair and look at the interface in the rack. I think about my bad back, and I say bugger it, I’ll recover that gain later.
My favourite felt piano yesterday in one piece was very exposed and I was listening quite loud, to look for something I could hear and couldn’t work out where it was. I could hear hiss? Delving into the piano program, I found a hidden menu and one setting I’d never seen before had a drop down where the setting was “15 IPS Tape”. It was actually adding tape hiss as a feature!!!!!!!!