"Pro" vs "Non-Pro" Sound

So true. I've tracked some very experienced/ talented players who have worked with some of the best in the business and now here I come, setting them up and getting sounds, and they're chill as hell. They do their thing and let me do mine. At most there's a small adjustment and off we go. Part of it is that they'll tell me if they don't like what they're hearing, and the other is that "their sound" is in the playing and a few simple key pieces of gear that they walk in with, if that. 

Slightly off topic, but by chance I've worked with some of the best bass players on the planet back in the day. The most interesting thing was if a band was good and tight, that level bass player instantly brought it to a truly great level. It was like there was no way it could be great without them. You could have a quirky guitarist, but not a half assed bass player.

I played guitar on a project that Tim Lefebvre added bass to. Man, did he up the collective game. What a creative, driving, groovy bass player. In hindsight, I’d have loved to go after him, instead of playing to the scratch tracks as he really brought a lot of excitement to the tunes.

I have not read the entire thread but wanted to contribute this idea…

There is no “pro” sound. More like “pro” results over a body of work.

There are some amateurs whose work is stunning and can rival a professional’s. Likewise there are pros whose output may not be “all that” by some listeners. But, often, the well performing amateur (meant in its best meaning of “love of the craft”) possess good, innate talent and had plenty of time to pull something off that is great.

The (successful) professional must regularly deliver a successful product on deadlines and in budget, day after day, year after year. So when you take a large body of work and evaluate the stats, they more often than not provide a return on investment for both the artists, labels, and record buyers alike.

Pros do it every day and make consistent, commercial impressions.
An amateur will sometimes outperform a pro engineer, but probably not with material consistency, again and again and again and…

If they do, then they are a pro whether they like it or not 😊

As an inexperienced songwriter, all I have are friends of dubious talent, as I can't really afford the ones with "session player" skiils. Its not that they lack talent, its that they aren't session musicians. 

For me, I have a mostly clear idea in my head of what I want a song to be - I can hear it in my head and I know when I hear it through the monitors, I'll know thats it. But getting to that point where I can print the idea in my head is a real struggle right now, for so many reasons. Its all a massive learning experience. While I have played semi-pro trumpet for a number of years, none of that helps with guitar, keys, mando, etc. I think my musical ideas are sound, but getting them out is the present challenge. 

I totally get why something would be "non-pro" as there is so much to this whole process. 

This is still one of my fav threads on this forum and I'm happy when it gets reactivated.

I just did four mixes this morning of a little reggae EP I tracked with my band down in my basement studio last year. I kept expecting to either find all sorts of fault with the tracks, but everything sounded right and made sense. Not like this was ever going to be a hi-fi scene, but I was impressed with how much I DIDN'T have to do. I barely touched the drum sounds... the drums sound like drums played by drummer. Add some spring reverb to the snare and instant Ras! It was too easy, but that was the key. The tracking last year was equally easy. We never did more than two takes per song. My guys are great players and although we'd not played these songs in a reggae stylee before recording, we knew we were working with songs of mine that could make the jump without effort.

My point in saying all of this is that sometimes my own image of sonic perfection, of a "professional standard," can be tossed out the window for the sake of the task at hand. These songs sound RIGHT recorded and mixed as they are. They serve the style, and the songs hold up. No listener is going to ask "96 or 48?"

The "real" album I'm currently making, also recorded in my home studios, is more sonically ambitious... I'm trying, with every other track I record, to improve, to discover something I didn't know previously. I want it to show development and to have a distinctive sound. Still, it's being recorded in a basement by me, a learn-as-I-go-and-forget-half-of-what-I've-learned musician. My next big purchase will be a Tascam Model 2400, not an Avalon pre. (That's no diss, by the way... if I had a comfy budget, I'd always aim for better/best gear. I just know what works for me in my current situation...)

Consistency mainly, sometimes I think a few forget that sound engineering is a technical endeavour, even if you got there by trial & error. The main point is to avoid ruining recordings as best you can by whichever methodology works for a track, balance a song and add some mirrors plus a dash of smoke to translate audio to multiple mediums, mastering is the last dash of salt & pepper (in today's view anyway, it used to be a very different career). If there's issues with phase, balance (as in EQ), compression, noise in various guises, signal degradation etc. etc. in play then it ends up being an unprofessional track.

The key difference between today vs. yesteryear is everything was done by trained professionals from the ground up. You'd never have a recording engineer hitting a converter at +100dB (exaggeration there but you get my point), or massively beyond the headroom of a desk. I'm not saying there isn't artistry involved, for example soundscaping with verbs (before it turns into a decayed mess), delay's etc. although IME every major professional is again pretty consistent. There's a Wheezer song which both TLA and Serban did a mix of the track, I did prefer the mainly HW version that TLA did for that specific track but there wasn't much in it, certainly not enough to detract from the track, hurt it's sales prospects or anything really. It could have been artistic choices, the chain used etc. but again there's not enough difference to really care.

IMO i believe a solid grasp on the physics of sound is the diff between pro and not so much, mixing in simple form is a technical exercise in creating a multi source audio image within a limited window(2 speakers), and when that tech becomes second nature understood it free's you up to create art beyond just technique, like drum rudiments.
This video is a recent example that should lead to a much deeper rabbit hole that every audio engineer should happily dive way down, the section on bass harmonics alone is an invaluable lesson on getting bass out of small speakers all by itself

I have heard countless recordings made in commercial studios that had zero vibe. All of the components were audible and there was separation but the recordings had zero life to them. In most of those cases the engineer doubled as the producer and was probably more concerned with getting the job done and the next client in through the doors. I'm sure budgets, or lack of them, played a big part in that. Most were demo projects and not for release although some of the ones I heard were on vinyl.

A lot of that may have to do with the artist. Even one with a lot of live playing experience may not have a clue about production in the studio. That's when a dedicated producer is paramount. Someone in the business of making records. It takes quite a bit of experience to reach that level of expertise. To be able to hear a song and know how to translate that into a good performance and a recording with the right vibe isn't easy, but I don't need to tell you guys that.

Oneiro walking away from the computer after typing this:


👏👏👏Imbalance Engineers👏👏👏

I think another aspect is having time, or devoting and prioritizing time to learn your tools. Like the time I bought a used Akai sampler and realized I had no time to actually learn it deeply enough to be creative with it. Sure, cool sounds had been done with it but I did not have the time to learn it enough to get there.

So much of the music I have liked has been done by that approach of knowing the tools well enough to know that doing messed up routing or plugging this into that will get a unique sound and for some reason those efforts mostly pay off in grabbing the ear in the right way. Of course then you have to be able to present them all together cohesively.

Even Brittanic