So tone...

Gear will get you there part of the way
But a lot of it is in the hands
It's why everyone sounds different.
That's the beauty of it.

 

I got a chance to listen this morning to both @Cerb and @fezz parka's mixes, and it's obvious that Chris's mix is superior. Just some notes:

The original mix sounds flat and "bunched up:" I hear a whole lot of the same frequencies crammed together in the center of the stereo image. So what Fezz did was to separate the voices, both sonically and in the physical "space," so you can hear everything better.

In my experience, most home mixers are afraid of extreme pan positions, but they shouldn't be. Panning and EQ is how you keep everything from trying to occupy the same space at once.

 

Exactly. Since I was working with the guitar part and the backing, in order to get that separation I had to use the backing on two tracks and the guitar part on two tracks. You can see that in the mixer screen shot. Then the API 560 on 1 and 4 to dial in/out some parts. Gives the illusion that the keys and acoustic guitar are panned harder.

 

Now, that’s a neat trick.

 

Learned it from Dan Wallin. Dan was the mixer/recordist BITD.
I asked him how he got mono to sound so big (I was working on the first real release of Bernstein's Magnificent Seven). He was the engineer at Goldwyn in West Hollywood.

He said "Mono sound is front to back and up and down. Front to back is ambience: room mics and reverb. Placement in the sound field. Up and down is EQ. Frequencies. It's part of the performance when going to tape. Pultecs...Ba6a's...660's...And a good crew to turn the knobs while going to tape. In those days, we really were part of the orchestra, except our instruments were the gear, and our hands, eyes and ears."

My method is derived from the method of making Elvis Presley Sun recordings 5.1. Making mono into LCRS. And it's all about what Dan said above: Placement and frequencies.

 

Use reverb room emulation on a buss, not on individual tracks or the master. Send to that buss at different levels. Small amount = close to the front. Large amount = pushes it to the back.

Check the screen shot I posted.


Overall loudness is the L1 Ultramaximizer on the master.

 

The L1 is a bit of both. Level maximizer and peak limiter.

Its the only insert I'll put on the master. Repost of mixer pic:

 

That sounds much better.

One more thing...

Stereo...isn't two channels.

It's 3. Left....Center....Right.

Stereo mixes also contain mono mixes. Some things are in the center. Mostly the kick and the bass. Lead vocals too. Then other things move out from the center to the left and the right.

So with Dan's up and down and front to back...you now have L-C-R. Side to side and in the middle.

 

Now you're getting it.

 

Say what?

 

A question regarding putting reverb on a bus...I understand the concept of applying the same reverb to each item in the mix and varying how much of it to give each instrument a different position in the room. Would the same thing be accomplished by using the same reverb plugin on each instrument configured for the same same parameters but adjusting the amount of reverb for each differently?

 

Sure....but it would eat up memory and processor power. You'd be running multiple instances of the same plugin. Why not run it once and send?

 

OK, that makes sense. I'm typically working with 4, maybe 5 tracks so the computer resource thing hasn't been an issue.

I asked to see if going back and reconfiguring my projects this way would magically make them sound better. I will keep this idea in mind with my next project.