Do you "print" hardware inserts during mix?

Yes, ssl clone on 2 bus

Do you print it during mix down or before mix down? If it’s the last thing on your mix why bother printing it before mixing down?

Never the last, always the first, mix into the compression, sticking it on at end makes no sense to me !

Oh I totally agree, I mix into bus compression too. But I meant last in your signal chain. I guess I'm asking when you print the bus compressor? Like at what phase in the process?

So you pretty much do what I do on that. You leave it on and then print it at the end.

I'm wondering about the folks that have, say, a compressor on the bass or an EQ on the snare drum. Many of them print that effect before mix down either for recall purposes or so they can reuse that hardware piece somewhere else.

I've never done that because it's always seemed like a hassle with not enough reward for the effort. But I feel like I'm in am minority on that, maybe not.

Cool thread - I've been thinking about doing this.

I'm only hybrid in terms of hardware on my stereo bus (I mix into a Roll Music RMS755 VCA > Thermionic Phoenix MP > Thermionic Swift EQ > HEDD 192 FX) 

My only quality conversion is a HEDD 192 and as I don't record real drums I only ever need two channels max I/P and O/P

My channel mixing is ITB and to do proper hybrid I'd need a 8 or 16 channel ADA and one of a quality even approaching that of the HEDD 192
would be very expensive and frankly unjustifiable.

So I'm thinking once I've set my mix up with plugins on key channels perhaps I should replace them some of my hardware doing a print through,
it will be time consuming but sonically there of course will be some advantages.

The only other option would be to go hybrid with something like a Ferrofish 16 channel unit which is very sensibly priced, but would I loose the advantage
of going hardware with "average" quality ADA's?

And then there's the issue of a patchbay to enable all this - a 48 way with DB25 to XLR quality looms is going to cost about $2K to do it right.

I'm hearring too many fantastic ITB mixes recently to justify in my mind spening literally thousands of dollars on ADA and patchbay systems
when I'm no longer earning money for hiring myself out.

There's no cheap solution to all this other than printing hardware - is there?

I print as much as possible. Usually this means printing Chanel inserts while leaving buss inserts for manual recall. I find it helps a LOT with consistency of recall when it comes time for revisions. Also helps mitigate my cats’ insistence on moving some knob settings around when I’ve been mixing at home. 😂

Storage cost isn't really a problem anymore. If time spent doing it is minimal, why not? The ways I've had to do it in the past were time intensive, and non-billable. Inserts would seem to speed things up a good bit. I would always print things to new tracks down at the bottom so they were visually separate, if you do something like that and stay on top of grouping you could probably manage original versus processed pretty easily, versus gettin things lost in take layers.

I had a brief period when I printed frozen tracks for everything, so a flat fader mix from that would = final mix on any system.  I could kill a day doing that, so I quit.  

This is always my fear. Adding more random takes and things to further confuse me. But if the value was there I could build a system I'm sure.


You do what (I think) most people do and what I'm considering. What is the advantage to this approach? drsax

My new "instant hardware recall" paradigm, which is still in a bit of metamorphosis, that has taken me years to realize.

This is kinda the first time I've shared it publicly. It is 100% recallable, quite elegant, and requires 5 "sets" of tracks to accomplish. The template gets set up before I even start into the writing / production stage, and I'm only looking at ONE of the sets of 5 at any point in time. The rest of the tracks are hidden. All the hidden tracks are pre-bussed and on "input" and "solo safe'd" the entire time.

Once you move past say, stage 1, you deactivate and hide stage1, and move to stage 2. Once you're mixed, if you need recall to push up the volume of a vocal, or tweak the bass - you ignore stage 1 and stage 2 and accomplish the remix tweak on stage 3 which is all at unity with no plugins or automation or hardware (it's all printed) - and you make your tweak. If you need serious gutting of the mix, you need to go back to stage 2 which is really more of a "remix" and not a recall tweak. Stage 4 - the stems.....they are a complication to be sure, but more and more clients are asking for it, so I put it in the template. I'm not sure if I will keep it in my final template - I'll see how things progress. There is zero doubt - this is a PITA to setup, but ironically, very simple once you get it dialed :

- 1. Midi, and Cut up production tracks > into :
- 2. Raw Mix tracks with Automation, EQ, Compression, etc. > into :
- 3. Print Tracks (the same number as Raw Mix Tracks) - @ Unity printed with automation, and all FX > into :
- 4. Stem Tracks (reduced from the Print Tracks in logical configuration) @ Unity > into :
- 5. Stereo Mix Bus Track @ Unity

This situation will allow for a global tweak (stems), a 100% recall tweak (print tracks), a serious fix or redo of something that is not a 100% recall (raw mix tracks), or more of a re-write fix (midi and production tracks). You can literally back up from final 2 buss mix in steps as far back as you need to go. With the first few steps literally being "instant" recall, and being able to go beyond "instant" recall to really redoing the mix with ease.

When mixing, Print tracks, Stem tracks, and Stereo mix bus are all on "input". This method chews up a LOT of busses internally (can easily get into the hundreds), but offers me a 100% recall of everything. The one thing that I'm still getting used to is not using Aux sends to hit the verbs. Each raw mix track gets it's own reverb (or for me, reverbS) so that it prints with automated raw material to the Print tracks.

This 100% solves the "I can't mix hybrid, cause I need instant and 100% recall". It also allows for significant "changes" on individual tracks easily. Honestly, after dealing with all the setup and bussing issues, it becomes as easy as a 100% ITB recalled mix - ONLY WITH HARDWARE. And I don't need to take snapshots, make notes, or remember anything. If I do have to go back to stage 2 - I do not need any hardware notes cause if I have to go that far back, I'm seriously changing something. Otherwise, I make it happen on stage 3.  Its rare that I have to go back beyond stage 3 to tweak anything - but it's there if I need to....

I need to install the latest PT version so that I can put each "group of tracks" into nested folders so that I'm not looking at hundreds of tracks. BTW, HDX might be mandatory for this style of mixing due to serious power requirements and latency, but I suppose it depends on your computer and its power. This approach uses a lot of busses and mixing juice to make it work - HDX easily handles it, but other DAWs may work as well. At least for me, HDX is a Godsend with this.

This is also how I do it. Print the track with hardware inserts and leave the original track in the session but keep it muted (and usually hidden) so I can go back if needed. For hardware processing on the mix bus I take notes.

This approach is actually not that far off from what I do with a couple key differences. The first is that I do it in multiple projects (I like your approach better, just handle that with different sets of mutes/hidden tracks... keep everything wired up if you need to recall it thus removing the need to juggle endless files) and the second is that you print FX on each track. Works in this setup. Appealing.

However... I'm not sure I understand the section I quoted above. The rest makes total sense to me, but are you saying you're doing 'verbs on each individual track instead of on a send? Is that so that you can print the track with spatial effects? This seems difficult to me from a mixing perspective not to mention resource intensive. Also, I have a couple HW verbs I like to use that I bus. 

Can you elaborate?