masteringhouse said:
G. I'm sure that you can create a great mix with compression as well as without. Sounds like you need to have more confidence in your abilities!
Very kind of you to say, Tom. I'm not so sure that I lack confidence in my mixing abilities

. I'm realistic about them, but I also have perhaps more than my rightful share of belief in what I do and can do

.
I'm sitting here having trouble coming up with an honest response to that. I've already typed and deleted a couple of things that I thought might have been at the root. But I think it comes down to process routine.
It's the *routine*, I think, that maybe I'm talking about here more than anything. But it just seems to make sense to me that there is a natural breakpoint in the process where the tracks are summed together into a stereo mix. That breakpoint, it seems to me anyway, is a natural point for saving the progress thus far. One creates a mix, then one works on the resulting mix; in between, a safety copy should (again, just IMHO) be made. the way I see it (again, just IMHO), compressing the stereo mix is part of the second part of that process, coming after the process breakpoint.
And I kinda-sorta take that a bit further. If I'm self-mastering, that's one thing. But if I'm sending the project to someone else's ears, I kinda look at modifying the two mix as the job of the ME, and that my doing it first - even if it is just a little for a sprinkle of sonic glue or tint - as either at worst, hamstringing the ME, or at best, doing something with lesser gear and ears than he has, and therefore doing something that best be left to the ME. Once I have a summed mix that sounds as good as I can get it from within the mix, that's the end of my jurisdiction; I should trust the ME to take it from there. Yes of course I can communicate with him, and possibly - like I said earlier - send him a second copy with an example of the direction I'd like him to take it, but I should in my own best interest leave any processing to the resulting mix to him.
I would, however, like to hear your take on that from the other side as an ME, Tom. I'd of thought you'd want as pristine of a two mix as you could get, no matter how good (or bad) of a MixEng I might be. Maybe you can teach this old dog something different here?
G.