I have ran into Dave Fiedlander a few times and Tim Ellis here and there. Used to have a girlfriend that was the receptionist there when it was Spectrum Studios way back when (showing my age?
) I also occasionally go out and get drunk with Ryan Foster (Freq's co-owner/lead engineer). The likes of Tim Ellis is getting out of my realm. I like to deal on the edge a bit....
Not too down with Hubers really. The brewpubs are sort of boring too. I am thinking someplace like Kelly's Olympian as a meet up! Now THAT is a drinking establishment with some history....
I think a mini-convertion later this summer would be cool.
If you all are not doing anything on Friday June 1st, head down to the Fun Center and check out the band I am working with, The Red Sector. They go on at 7:30pm. I will be at the console mixing, and then off to the Paris Theatre for my regular sound job right after that. Come by the KNRK stage and say hi and check out the band.
bevins, I am sure Freq's Sadie system has plenty of plug in's available for spacial effects if they were needed. Although, I would have to say that if you tracks are too flat with little life, NO plug in is going to help that much. Mastering is best done with doing as little as possible. I just spent 14 hours mastering a rap CD today for a local band. I used just a touch of EQ, then
the Maxx Bass plug in by Waves to get the bottom really big (mind you, there was already a tight good sounding bottom on the mixes, so the Maxx Bass was used sparingly to "help out" a bit more) then a bit of Limiting with the Waves L1, then the producer liked the effect of the Steinberg Loudness Maximizer, so that was used to increase most of the gain. I would say I never did any more than 3dB cut/boost on no more than 2 bands of EQ, and the gain increase was overall about 3 to 4 dB on the mix. The main difference that was heard when all the effects were turned off was that with them, the mix was slightly louder with a fuller bottom. Not as drastic of a thing as you might think.
I have heard the results of people trying to "expand" their mixes with Spectral effects and usually a lot of garbage and a very cold sound is introduced from them. Unless you REALLY know what you are doing, and just HAVE to have the limited, and potentially damaging effects they produce re-mixing is usually a better way to go to achieve more "life" in the sound.
There is no part of recording that is easy to learn. I feel that effective engineering comes from having competent tools to work with, being well read on signal path, and enough experience to know when you are hearing a good sound. I have found that inexperienced people don't usually know when they have a sound on something that is really good. They seem to concentrate on the wrong things. I don't know, it is hard to explain really. I just find myself more and more leaving things alone and the results come out much better. Track it well and the mixing will go well, which makes the mastering very easy to do (provided that you know when enough is enough...a hard thing to learn).
Don't underestimate having good tools. Not all the gear out there is very forgiving to inexperienced users.
Ed
How 'bout some Hair of the Dog?
