This is the rough mix I'll be working from, done on a fake SSL (Waves G-Channel). https://dl.dropbox.com/u/13184331/Knives_Rough_3_20.mp3

Pictures and a detailed rundown will follow afterward. And, with luck, a new glossier shinier mix with better punch/clarity/separation and all that bullshit.

I do like this fakey-analog stuff though. It's pretty quick to dial in stuff to sound decent. It might just be the user interface. Or that the EQ curves and the way the dynamics section react are patterned after proven-real world pieces of kit instead of my relying on my puny little artist brain to draw them in.

Anyhow, we'll see how this one works out.

Awesome, i look forward to hearing the IRL version as well.

This sounds great, but judging by the last round, it is going to sound even better soon.

Thank you thank you. This stuff is totally cool to work with, even if we do have to pay up the buttocks (comparatively) for it.

Quick breakdown, I guess, of what, exactly was recorded and with what as I don't know what all is gonna be on the back end yet (though I have a guess or two):

Clean guitars are Strat --> old Fender Super with THD 10s. Spring 'verb from the amp blended with an EXH Cathedral, Eventide Timefactor. Shure condenser and the Nady RSM-4 with the internal windscreen removed. Rode NT5s for room mics.
My rhythm (right) and solo guitars are the Strat into the AC30, turned way up with the OCD for a bit of a boost. Timefactor again. Same mics.
Mr. Chris's guitar is a PRS Custom 24 into the Herbert/Mills setup with his TC G-Major 2 for that nasty pitchshifted delay thing he has going on. Also same mics. Some of the feedback is his.
My feedback guitar during the verses is the Tele into the AC30 up, like, all the way with the Cathedral on it. And a pitch corrector.
Ken the 's bass is... not a bass. He's playing the Kurzweil K2000. The rest of his synths are the DSI Prophet.
Vocal chain is the Shure --> ART DMPA with Mullards, FMR RNLA. Same as always.
Drum programming is from the sample set I uploaded.
Real drums are from that session I did in the old bank vault and are awesome. The distortotom during the verse is a sample I threw a bitcrusher on and blended with the real tom. Cymbal bleed into the LDC we stuck on the tom was fucking with it no matter how I gated the thing, so I programmed it in there.

Neato. So how many songs are you guys going to do like this?

Well, we have a tracking session there after our next round of shows; the drum room is to die for. It is seriously amazing. You would not think it was as reverberant as it is just standing in there talking. All the wall panels can be rotated to either be hardwood or broadband diffusers. There's so much clarity to everything in that room it's nuts- the cymbals are never washy, the kick is never boomy, and it flatters the hell out of a snare drum.

That being said, I'm going to try and get this uploaded later today after work. It's... interesting.

Sorry for the delay; I am IRL busy as all get-out these days.

https://dl-web.dropbox.com/get/Public/01%20Knives.mp3?w=a1ba1b8b

Mixed on an SSL 4040G. They have Flying Faders automation, but it's down, so this is non-recallable. Tracked in Logic 8, mixed from PTHD 8 as "smart tape machine". Mostly, we monitored through NS10s with a sub. Their alt monitors are KRK somethingerother 8s. The Augspurger mains are probably the best sounding dual 15" box I've ever heard- I suggested Ken The get some for his bass rig!

Anyhoo, all EQ was from the SSL desk save for the mixdown, where we used Mercury Pultec clones. The dynamics section came into play as well, pacifically for the expander/gate on the drums. I don't recall how much of the desk comp we used.

Re: outboard- from memory, main kick and snare are through Distressors. We used the Soviet tank compressor on something, but I forget what. Outside kick again? Main kick and snare are gated pretty hard off the desk. Drum machine went through a Neve 33609. SPL transient designer hardware unit on the toms. Expander from the desk there. I forget what for the comp, 1176 maybe? I should have taken notes. Room got some lovin' from an Alan Smart SSL mixbus compressor clone rackmount unit.

The bass- which is a synth- we kept stereo even though I'd mixed the thing in mono. It got the RCA BA-6A on one side and a similar sounding ginormous old Collins tube compressor to beat it down on the other and add some grit. The main synth, which is the Prophet, got hit with some Retro 176s for the A layer (arpeggiator) and some Retro Sta-Levels for the B layer, which brought out the swirly phasey synthyness of it versus the kinda Hammond organ-ish sound it has normally. There are no other synths on this! Guitars got the Chris Lord-Alge LA-3A treatment, which is subtle, but adds some girth.

Lead vocals got a Purple Audio MC77, which is a straight-up 1176 D revision if I'm recalling right? That into a Gates Level Devil, which is an old broadcast limiter. I forget what the backing vocals got, probably an 1176 or just the desk comp.

'Verbs and delays were an Eventide H3000 and a pair of Lexicon PCM42s. The synthy-sounding delay on the clean guitar in the intro we created with Line 6 Echo Farm and I think just the stock EQ in PT.

Thoughts?

Looks like mayhap badlinky?

It works for me, and if I delete the stupid bit after ".mp3" I get a 403 error message. I think Dropbox did something dumb to their formatting as I uploaded it in the normal fashion. I will put it on Sendspace, because the only person who had a problem with that is Mike.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/qorkfw

This should work?

Yup, that did the trick.

It is really interesting the kind of differences that come across. Vocal is wayyy more up front. The little flits and plops of the rest just come out more detailed, crisper. It sounds like a shit ton of conflicting lower mids have been excised.

I continue to dislike your drummer's kit, but i can really get behind this IRL/hardware mixing thing. The differences are somehow subtle, but not subtle. The mix is just clear.

What was the thinking behind pushing the backing vocals so far back compared to the last software mix?

I don't think it was so much pushing the backing vocal back versus bringing the lead vocal forward; the vocals are kinda buried in a wash of 'verb and delay on my last mix. (When mixing, the staff engineer was singing "too much delay for my taste" to the chorus melody. )

There are a few balance things I'd like to mess with, and tones I'd like to change... which is the sort of thing that makes me have really terrible thoughts about how to put together this whole studio thing. I'm not totally happy with either, to be honest- they both have their charms, and are both good- and really the only solution to this problem is basically to throw money at it.

I suppose there are worse problems to have.

Oh, and master bus chain was SSL master bus compressor (big surprise!), Mercury Pultec clones and Crane Song HEDD on Pentode mode with Tape Saturation up halfway.

Full disclosure, my original software mix- the one I posted in this thread, at any rate- I hit with some stereo widening, software-fake Pultecs and a Waves L3.

I admit that i did rather like the extremely verby vocal(particularly the backing one) on the softmix.

But you probably know by now that my tastes generally lean somewhat towards an Albinist vocal burial approach anyhow.

But overall, what has been cut out of the mix, does improve it from a clarity standpoint, quite a fair bit.

Was there a bunch of EQ involved to remove the unnecessary?

Or is that clarity, in your estimation, more due to the re-arrangement of parts in their individual volume/level spectrums, or indeed, due largely to the hardware's charms itself?

I could always blend in a vocal stem. I tend to like my vocals on the reverberant side. We decided we wanted to push the vocals up a bit and the lead guitars down before we printed the final mix.

Re: EQ- it's the fun goodies, really. Both were EQed pretty severely in parts- the keyboard bass and Mr. Chris's guitar (inappropriate mic choices there on my part- he gets a fucking 57 on the fucking Diezel next time and call it a day.) I'm actually surprised the hardmix would be clearer as there's way more bottom end happening and the softmix is scoopier/brighter. The balance isn't too far off, and the hardmix actually has more bass.

What's missing sounds more like low mids really. It isn't so much the tightness of bass, but the missing lower middle resonance. Comparatively, the softmix sounds like how it would sound in a car with really nice speakers. But there are still those EQ hints that remind you you are in a car, but they only really become apparent when compared to the hard mix. And then the hardmix sounds more like you are in a living room with the hi-fi. There is some kind of extra clearspace. My brain interprets that clearspace, correctly or not, who knows, as the removal of conflicting mids and lowmids.

One thing that might be interesting (though perhaps tedious for you) for the novelty of it, would be to re-enter the softmix, and try to build as close to the hardmix in there yourself. Meaning, a lot of the differences seem to be coming from a second set of ears mixing and offering new means of accomplishing various mix tasks. I wonder how it would come out if the software mix was approached in the same manner as the hardware one wound up being executed.

I don't know if i am putting that quite clearly myself. But basically, i am curious as to how important the hardware *really* is. And if having a mix engineer's suggestions and techniques applied within the software realm, might not yield similar gains in clarity.





Anyhoo. What was the diezel mic'ed with?

I tried to approach the rough mix- which was meant as such and not a releaseable thing- with the techniques and workflow our engineer uses on software emulations of the same equipment and the sort of settings he'd use that I wouldn't necessarily go for if I was the only set of ears behind the board. I wouldn't mind doing it, actually; I've been doing that with Graphite as well as mix experiments of a sort. I'm really not used to other people putting a different spin on my work, even if I'm there doing my thing on the other end of the desk or on the equipment rack or behind the board on my lonesome or whatnot.

I get what you're saying, actually- and it's something I'm trying to school myself on hearing these- there's qualities I really like, especially in the drums. It's a spatial relationships thing.

Oh, and it was the KSM27 and the slightly-dicked with RSM-4 ribbon. Part of it too is that damn Mills cab. The grill's like a mile thick and the cab itself makes a Mesa Oversized look small. It sounds all big and tough in the room, but capturing it is not quite as easy as something like the Fender or AC30.

So basically you wound up with not enough teef for the amp?

I definitely envy your position of being able to have the mix engineer input, and to do the hardware/software comparisons. That strikes me as being one of those profoundly helpful-for-the-process sort of situations to be exposed to.

And that is like, totally aside from the fact, that you get to play with all kinds of totally sweet studio gear in a totally sweet studio as part of it.

Basically, yes. It needed a brighter, more cutting sound than what was recorded- which sounded plenty big, but against the Prophet and the AC30 is not holding its own without receiving some lovin'. ...And I'd still probably stick a condenser on there anyhow, but the ribbon is a bit much.

This is making some severe changes to the way I work. I've done the Big Studio Thing before, but it was mostly all in PT with my own outboard from my guitar rig patched in, save for a handful of cool compressors (1176, Distressor...) and whatnot. Just being able to ask "how would you do it?" with a bigass console and killer outboard available is pretty invaluable.

You would love the place. The drum room rules and they have lots of compressors. I know you like compressors. They have, like, a fucking lot of compressors.

Yeah, of all the hardware, compressors seem to be where the biz is at.

Like mic preamps, eh, they seem to make a difference in a mix, but like A/Bing them, it really seems more of a hairsplitting thing. Unless they are tubey and overdriven some i think. I would be happy enough with ones that simply didn't overload in an ugly fashion and/or sound harsh and nasty all the time. Even if the things themselves did no coloration whatsoever. I could work with that.

Compressors act funky though, they can make funky things happen. I would love to be able to track though some nice comps.

If i had nicer shit that i felt comfortable writing eq "to tape" i would be interested in some hardware EQ too, but as it stands, compressors are what really draw my attention.

Of course, a lot of that probably has to do with the fact that in the crappy space i have for a 'drum room', a fair bit of compression is going to be, well, required. I wish this was not such a hobbit's house. Some fucking ceiling height, like *anywhere*, would be really quite pleasanter for recoarding porpoises.

As an aside, i always find it kind of hilarious when i read an Albini interview and he is all blankety statements like "compression is largely unnecessary" and "reverb is generally superfluous" style. Like, errr. yeah, i have seen the illustrations of the construction details at Electrical Audio. Maybe, just maybe sooomething of that attitude has to do with the adobe walls and floating floor joists, the air chambers under the floors? Uh, the huge, tuned, spaces?

Rather something that imparts no character to the sound than something that imparts a shitty character to the sound, y'know?

One of the coolest uses for a compressor isn't loudermaking, it's fucking with the envelope of a sound, changing the attack/decay response and really dicking with the character of something. I'm liking this stepping-on-drums-with-a-limiter thing, too.

Part of it- the Albini thing- I think is Steve Albini playing the character of Steve Albini, playing up the "I am an iconoclastic asshole" image. Even Steve Albini has an image, after all. Part of it, too, is I think legitimately him making records in his awesomespace with whomever he feels like making records with and doing 'em his way.

Re: Albini-ism, the next Garda single we're planning on cutting live basics in ze bigroom at GCR. It's never been demo-ed, but it goes over well live. I am going to ask if we can get a 24-track 2" machine in there for this. I am not kidding. Ken the generally pays for the studio shit. I will cough up the buxx for the tape machine if we can get one in there. We have actually discussed a couple times going out to Chicago and working at Electrical, but it's not practical. As glossy and overdubbed as this stuff is, it's at its core a live band. Just, with extrabits.

As an aside, I was gonna use a Dual Rec for the drop-D riffing guitar overdubs, but if I do 'em there, I'll use the 101B instead, I think. If not, the Rec is fine. I actually want to layer up a modern-ish gain sound for the post-chorus and bridge. Big Dumb Riff stuff. But I digress.

I am working on some mastering whatnot for the song this thread is for at the moment. It is to be released on Tooseday.