Lower Levels..Better Mixes ??

[James Argo]

A good rule of thumb in recording is do not mess with anything unless it absolutely needs it. Every 'process' that you do to a track can change it in subtle ways that may not be noticeable until the end. If your final mixes sound slightly phasey, weak, thin with subtle, weird digital artifacts you are messing with it too much.

...That's true. And back to the topic, you know that if you know why some instrument has to be recorded, and what does it work on the mix, then you'll probably get much better mix. Some good at high, and some good at low. I always talk with the producer/musician/arranger before rocording, to gain information about what they really want, and why they want to arrange the song that way. Every instrument has to give a good contribution to the whole song. Most of the time, they don't know jack about why should they put this and that in the song. They just think it's a great sound, and they want to put it there, but when they get the final mix, they aren't happy with that. They start to grumble me...
"...Hey, it doesn't sound that great, James must have done sumthin' wrong with the mix..." WTF ?
So I think if we tell 'em first what to consider before making an arrangement, and record it, they should also have a bit knowledge about ...lets say, frequency. If they know how to devide frequency in the mix, if they know what should be in the lower field, what will be on the mid, what's on the high, it will be very helpfull on tracking and mix the rest. Ditto with level. If some particular level gives a better way to capture the character, then set it there.

 

[mixsit]

There was a real interesting post somewhere from Fletcher (the Hall monitor , about how, if forced to mix on a mackie, he would keep track faders down, do things to the gain-setup to keep it clean and tighter in the bass. I wish I could have found the link- sorry..

Juila, I hope you see's texroadkill's post. Looked like skojo2 was trying to put the fear of god out on 'normalizing'. It's just a gain cahnge. Perhaps un-needed, but not worse than a dozen other things we do to the sound. If the songs need volume adjustments to make the sound similar, pull them up as needed. Whatever noise is on the track will be there, but won't change much relative to the music's level.
Wayne

 

[M.Brane]

There was a real interesting post somewhere from Fletcher (the Hall monitor , about how, if forced to mix on a mackie, he would keep track faders down, do things to the gain-setup to keep it clean and tighter in the bass.

That would be because like all cheap mixers the Mackies lack headroom so you really need to watch your levels. You don't even want to get close to clipping unless you like flat, lifeless mixes. Dump too many hot tracks onto the 2-buss and your sound quality is toast.