Ok, could someone give me some info on the "why's" of multi-band compression?

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Tom, what is the mixing engineer's job?

G.

 

[Waltz Mastering]

Tom, what is the mixing engineer's job?

G.

Is that a trick question? ; )

The mix engineer balances the individual tracks of a song. (sometimes in less than ideal acoustic environments)

The mastering engineer balances the mixes to have a bit more continuity and cohesion between and within themselves. (usually in an ideal acoustic environment)

Usually, a good ME is working in a ideal monitoring environment with specialized tools, A good ME brings a fresh and experienced ear to the finalization of a project.

ME's, for the most part and when done right, are able to take good or great mixes that have good balance within themselves and tilt them or fine tune them, sometimes by the slightest degree to help them translate better for the wide variety of playback systems. ME's are also responsible for the final assembly and QC for the final delivery medium.

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Is that a trick question? ; )

Not at all! It's just that after reading you're contention that technology changes the roles of each step of the production process (something which I don't quite agree with), I was curious as to just what you felt the "new" role of the mixing engineer was.

The mix engineer balances the individual tracks of a song. (sometimes in less than ideal acoustic environments)

This illustrates exactly what I mean when I express my distress over the huge number of people that frequent this board that really have no idea the extent of what the mixing process entails and what it's meant to do. There is so much more to it than "balancing the individual tracks of the song" that I'm not even sure where to begin.

I agree with the entire rest of your post. To bring this all back to topic, the most relevant part of your description is the idea of "fine tuning" good or great mixes for internal and external continuity. If you find that in any given situation the use of an MBC will help advance towards that goal, then more power to you; I'll support and defend that idea to the last. Again, I (and others who are mysteriously quiet in this thread when usually quite vocal about this subject otherwise) have no problem with the tool itself or with it's proper application.

We've drifted in our thread somewhat in talking about mixing engineers vs. mastering engineers, but really what I'm talking about is more about the *process* and not the personnel. What folks like us disdain is the evolution - and even promotion of - the idea of using such tools in mastering *in lieu* of a full mixing job. Let's remember that this abuse is mostly done and the most indefensible when a home recorder is basically doing everything - tracking, mixing and mastering - themselves, in which case we are no longer talking about mixing engineers and mastering engineers. When such folks consider mixing as little more than an intermediate stage between tracking and mastering, and mastering is where a large chunk of the mixing gets postponed to, they are doing themselves and their project a disservice.

This is where I disagree with the proposition that that technology rightly redefines the roles. The role of the tracking phase, the mixing phase and the mastering phase should always remain basically the same, with a front-loading of the burden whenever possible. The way this has been expressed in the past has been like this:

It's the performer's job to make the tracking engineer's job easy.
It's the tracking engineer's job to make the mixing engineer's job easy.
It's the mixing engineer's job to make the mastering engineer's job easy.
It's the mastering engineer's job to make the listener's job easy.

Stories are legion and many to support this on many levels. Almost to a man, when you ask an experienced mixing engineer (as has been done in dozens of interviews, magazines, books, and innumerable informal green room conversations), they'll tell you that their best mixes come when they have to do the least to the faders-up listen to get to their final mix. And a similar sampling of experienced mastering engineers doesn't take long to show a general consensus that it's in the mixes that need the least amount of mastering work that the mastering job itself really winds up shining.

With that in mind, does it really make sense that whoever is doing the mixing should pass on any more work to whoever is doing the mastering (whether they are doing both themselves or not) than they need to? Or to put it another way, if something can - and by standard definition usually would - be handled in mixing, is it really good form to wait until after the mixdown has been created to handle it?

There are some things that are best left for and should be done after the mixdown, no question. It's not like I'm threatening the definition of your job; there will always be a need for mastering, and I respect and admire all of the really good MEs here. But there is a line between fine-tuning or polishing a mix and purposely postponing until mastering actually finishing the mixing job itself.

Sure there are times when that line might be thin, but when someone consciously decides - as happens with alarming frequency around here - that their mix is just simply not up to snuff (they actually admit themselves that it's a bad mix) so they'll just address that by throwing technology at the 2mix, that line is about as wide as the Pacific Ocean. This was, is, and will remain true regardless of the technology used, because the technology does not change the definition of the process.

G.

 

[Waltz Mastering]

There is so much more to it than "balancing the individual tracks of the song" that I'm not even sure where to begin.

I hear you, now a days there is so much more to mixing. It can take many years to become truly proficient.

I don't know if I really said technology changes the roles of each step of the production process. But I do think technology has changed how people approach each role in the production process.

In the day of Geoff Emerick, mix engineers where known simply as "Balance" engineers because that's all they had to do was basically balance the very limited number of tracks. One fader per.

If they were lucky a engineer would have a fixed high frequency and a fixed low frequency (usually taking 1/2 hour to balance or mix a song),

Today in the true sense of mixing it's still very much about finding balance between everything, only there are so many more variables available to the mix engineer, so many more things to screw up because of the affordable technology. The process is much more involved and complicated and can take much longer.

I am not promoting that any tool (like MBC) should be used or abused in a situation that is not beneficial to the outcome. What I would promote is that ppl that are beginning to take interest in the field of recording really try to understand the very basics of how to capture good sound from the get go, because that makes every other part of the process so much easier...

 

[philbagg]

I've only ever used multi-band compression twice.

Once was doing a mix of my own bands stuff. In the pre-chorus the guitars do
a lot of palm-muted chugging and results in a lot of "woomf woomf", so I set
mb comp to kick in somewhere between 100hz-200hz, worked a charm, without
affecting the rest of the song.

Other time was with my own voice (may use it again on a clients). When I'm
singing in my comfort zone, all sounds well and good (and I say that loosely ),
but when I had to move to a higher register, I was getting a lot of low-mids
jumping out and giving me a very australian-guy sound. Find the frequency with
EQ, put a multi-band on it, sounds a little more consistent.

My two cents

Cheers,
Phil