God, I remember my younger days when I was still pursuing songwriting/performance (you know, a "record deal"...
). I bought my first 4 track cassette. I would spend at least 2-4 hours EVERY night (except weekends...) recording stuff on it. When I felt I needed something to sound better, I could eat up 9-12 hours on a session and when done, wonder where the time went.
I remember when I got unlimited use of the 8 track at the college I went to. Would start after my last class and leave at like 3am!
Live sound was pretty helpful, although I cannot fully explain why. Indeed, when you are trying to mix a loud band, and you can't even fully get rid of an instrument in a mix, you learn about "nuance". I do know that live sound mixing, particularly tuning monitors on stage helped in reconizing frequencies quickly and accurately.
I am betting that I have put in at least 5 years worth of full 8 days worth of engineering in recording environments. That is a safe minimum and might even be more.
riotshield, give yourself a break. And don't take this wrong, but maybe being REALLY GOOD at audio engineering is not in the cards for you. I don't see any reason why it can't be if you were to really apply yourself, but consider the many other obligations you have in life, and your willingness to pursue this to the highest levels, and the time it would take to achieve that. Most guys that get good at it REALLY commit to it and spend obscene hours in practicing it. Here and there a person might pick up on it very fast and somehow just intuitively know just what to do to get great work done, but that is indeed very rare. The rest of us just have to plug away at it and accept getting a little better every time we do something.
A few hints that might help. These may or may not apply to you.
1 - Don't get married to any "stock" or "standard" techniques. I see other engineers that do that same thing every time and blame the gear because they don't get what they are after in the sound. There is an old saying, "If you keep doing what you have been doing, you will keep getting what you have been getting", and in audio, that is certainly the case. Keep trying new approaches. Maybe they don't work so well for the current thing you are working on, but maybe you will discover things that are cool for applying to another project.
Examples are: always using X gear on X instrument, always eqing a certain instrument the same way, always using a certain effect on a certain instrument, always micing something the same way, etc....There are many other examples I could give, but I am sure you get the point.
I used to have a consultant I worked with when I built my first studio and he used to say "Learning good recording is just a matter of trying a lot of things you will never do again". I have found a LOT of truth in that.
2 - Never be "satisfied". Work hard at achieving what is in your head concerning the sound you are after.
3 - Be realistic about the sound you are after. Every instrument is NOT supposed to take up a lot of sonic real estate!!! Some instruments don't require a lot of sonic bredth.
4 - If you are using cheap gear, well, you are using cheap gear. No problem with using that gear to it's fullest potential, but at some point, you have to accept that maybe the gear you use has reached it's limit in delivering what you want to hear.
5 - The quality of your final product has far more to do with the sounds you recorded than anything you did after you record it. Concentrate on getting outstanding sound to tape. You are limited in what you can do to the audio while mixing without creating other problems! Good recordings you have heard were recorded very well, and you would be surprised to hear the "faders up" , or "push" mix of those songs. They more than likely sound almost exactly the way you hear them on the CD.
What goes along with this is being realistic about the qualities of the instruments you record with. An old beat up Tama Rockstar drum kit with bad bearing edges is NEVER going to sound like a Yamaha Mapel Custom Absolute!!! A badly intonated guitar will cause a lot of problems. A bass that used passive pickups will NEVER deliver the sound of active pickups. A solid state guitar amp will not sound like a tube amp. If you are using cheap instruments and amps, you will probably never achieve quality sound to tape. Just because your favorite musician is paid to endorse a certain product line doesn't mean that product line every makes it on a recording. Indeed, if they are endorsing an expensive product, there is a better chance that they actually use it while recording (but don't ASSUME this is true!!!). But if they are endorsing a very cheap product, well, I can almost assure you that they are not using it to record with.
Be realistic about your instruments!!! I know a guy who has a nice custom made telecaster, Marshall JCM900 (I hate these amps...) and a Marshall 1960 4X12" cabinet. He paid a LOT of money for this rig. The thing is, it doesn't work for the type of sound he NEEDS for the type of music he is doing!!! No matter how the amp is set, it will not sound right for his genre of music.
6 - This is a sticky subject, but it MUST be addressed! The quality of your songs and the skill level of your playing comes into play. If your song is not arranged well (when I say arrange, I mean how the individual instrument parts fit together) you will probably have many problems getting a decent sounding recording. If for say that you have the drums riding a crash cymbal, the guitar is playing all chords above the 5 fret, and the bass never plays a not below the 12 fret, and the singer is high pitched, well, you would have a crush of sound in the upper midrange and hi end! That would be VERY difficult to get good seperation of each instrument! There are many arrangement examples I could give, but I won't bother. Either you have a well writting, exciting song or you don't! I have found that most musicians never think their songs stinks!!!
I have never found a way to convince them otherwise.
If you are not a highly skilled player, you will not be able to make the neccesary adjustments in your playing to record effectively. I have had many bands come into the studio where they thought very highly of their prowess on their instrument, but could not ever quite play in time! Too many drummers I see where they can't hit consistently. Too many bass players with a right hand that can't ever seem to pluck the sting with any consistency. Too many flat singers with inappropriate dynamics and horrible tone!
I am not suggesting that you are any of those above musicians! But, maybe you are.
If you have only been recording a damn year and you can do more than figure out how to route signal through your system, you are doing okay!
Most of the major recording/mixing/mastering engineers and producers that are working on the bands that you like have been at this for a long time! What? You think that in a few shorts years you are going to rival their skills? ESPECIALLY since you don't generally have ANY gear in your home setup that your idols would probably ever consider using on a major label band!
I won't get into the gear thing too much. Hell, I have used crap and produced decent results with it. I have worked with great gear and made a mess of the sound too! Great gear is good to have, but great skills is where it is at, and you are not going to get great recording skills in only one year of part time effect friend! So, I guess I am saying that you get NO sympathy from me. If you want the better results, you can make the same effect most every other person has had to make to get those great results. If somehow I ever wrote something that gave you the impression that you could be a good recording engineer in one year, well, I am sorry I mislead you. If somebody wrote or said something to you that suggested that, well, you are least know they don't know crap!!!
Peace and keep at it!
Ed
I think this is a good point, I dunno about exactly the same tho!! but I get the idea. I'd love to chuck away all my eq plugins and work on tracking for a large amount of time. But I'm too scared 
I need my eq!! (I think that's the point 
