What seperates a great recording from a decent one?

  • Thread starter Thread starter twoeyes
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It has to start with the talent - they have to be able to play it well. Whether or not the song is shite is irrelevant here, because we're talking about making a good recording, not a good song. Also, a competent engineer is a must because a little polish never hurts.

And I don't mean having an engineer from Poland working on your mix.
 
Talent can be synthesized these days. Max Headroom anyone? ;) Milli Vanilli?

It looks like that acoustic song was speechless, not jar of hearts. But it's quite a contrast given that it's the same artist. Just a different recording chain and a bit less production value.

I guess it depends on how you define talent these days. Anyone getting discovered these days by radio play only? Or do we know / care what they look like before we ever hear them sing / play a note? Would Taylor Swift be so mainstream if she was a not so hot, over 40, over weight, and/or black? Or just dressed in clothes that looked like they were hand sewn from old curtains, by someone not that good at sewing? Do you even click on youtube videos that are just songs to a blank image? There's just a lot more factors than talent alone. $0.25 vinyl record (gag gift) of 2 def dames for an old band director BITD. Did they make it because they had a record? And sold at least one? (not the belgium def dames group either)

Basically you have to be able to listen to it at least once all the way through. And not just because you're the engineer that's being paid to record it. Or just too lazy to change the channel.
 
A great recording is when you've performed the music as well as you hoped you would, recorded it as cleanly as you imagined hearing it, and then mixed and tweaked it to the point that when you hear it you think, "Damn! I'm a friggin' rock star!" :drunk:
 
Two seconds is the standard pause between tracks in track at once (tao) mode. Disk at once mode (dao), also called session at once (sao) is a variant that plays straight through without pause between tracks. For those of us who still burn optical discs.

I like that answer. Most commercial CDs I've bought always seem to make the worst recording / song as track number two. Not all, but most. With track one being the one that the disc/album was named after.
 
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