Favorite gear for "fixing it in the mix"?

- UAD C-Vox for tracks recorded with too much room noise or echo in the room
- SPL transient designer as well.
- OEK Soothe 2 plug-in to tame upper & upper mid harshness
- Izotope RX pack for pops, clicks, clipping, the wrong kind of distortion, etc.
- UAD Oxford Dynamic EQ
- Slate Trigger 2 for blending better kick, snare and tom sounds with the original drum tracks, or in a worst-case scenario, replacing terrible sounding kicks, snares and toms
- in the hardware world, the Handsome Audio Zulu has also saved some harsh or overly thin tracks that needed help.

These are some that get frequent use around here. Not perfect solutions, but they have rescued some fairly awful tracks that I’ve recieved. And most importantly, they keep me on schedule working and getting projects delivered and getting paid - instead of telling clients something sucks and then having to wait for a week to get a revised track (with a multitude of extra phone calls during that time seeking advice, approval, and other unpaid consultations).

Oh, and of course, well recorded tracks are better than any of these solutions

Admittedly had never heard of Acon stuff. How does it compare to izotope?

Sound Radix, Tokyo Dawn, and the MDWEQ6 for sharp cuts.

Bricasti.

I have both RX and Acon Digital Acoustica.
Izotope RX is a bit deeper but I can work very fast in Acoustica. I tend to start with that and only use RX when I run into something I can't fix with the Acon stuff, which is basically never. Granted, the only thing I typically have to use any spectral editing for is upright bass. Those are noise machines. creaks and groans....
I think the Acon plugins are well worth looking at. I also use Acon Acoustica for editing much more often than I use Wavelab. It's quicker and let cluttered. Somewhere around version 8 or so, Wavelab got really messy looking and I just never felt like relearning it. I still have the latest version, but usually, Acoustica is all I need.

On individual sources or on the 2-bus?

I use it in both places, but on the 2bus - Studio A - mixed in judiciously.  For a lot of mixes, it imparts a definite "something I can't put my finger on" for clients that they really love.

My favorite thing for stuff that I know is impossible to re-record, I put a mic up to the monitor’s woofer and re-record it. I don’t know if it’s just bias or what, but I don’t hate it as bad afterwards. Maybe it enables me using a dynamic or tube mic when they probably should have?

On a 2-buss or 'souping up' someone else's mix... Focusrite red 2, red 3 OR... a pair of EQP re-creations and a buss comp. (yes, I'm fond of a particular BRAND)

Otherwise I yield to the gentleman from Colorado drsax

As long as you only have to push a couple!

For me it started out before the reverbs had the IR’s for control room and booth, I would enjoy getting a little 3D life with a mic setup, sometimes even XY or MS if easy. It helped make things 3D, I didn’t care about great tone so I’d use often use a dynamic for the mid mic and LDC for fig8. Then delete one if MS wasn’t worth it. Quick and simple. So the troubled stuff, I’d try everything like room reverb and it wouldn't work, so I’d get angry at it and just move one mic to the woofer, like a guitar cab. Surprisingly, it helped a lot. I guess the cone being like a filtered response, and the mic having a certain color.. I dunno? I did try guitar amps too, but they have a lot of noise and take time to dial.

Edit: 🤔as I think more on it I had seen a picture of some engineer doing it in the 90s, and most of my BIG problems were bass- usually DI with extra clanky strings slightly out of tune, and me trying to get usable lows while demolishing all highs and mids.. that’s where reamp on the monitor worked pretty good. Also if there was no outer kick mic and I didn’t want to use a sample. Something about the natural limits of the speaker can give a good compressed low and low mid range iirc?