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Post by Shadowk on Apr 20, 2024 5:55:45 GMT -6
I think it’s in the hands of the mixer. As I said the mix engineers I admire have nearly all gone ITB and if I’m honest they’re mixes sound as dynamic as ever. For me yes, I find hardware easier to get great sounds, but my ITB mixes continue to improve. I’m the limitation in this scenario, not the gear. It's all subjective opinions and for you to ratify my opinion you'd have to use my studio because my chain differs from most people's here. I've done several recordings at this stage, invited engineering friends around, done comparisons and we all agree on one thing. It sounds very different and the methodology to create a finished track is again very different.
That being said there are positives and negatives for sure, as vicious bliss mentioned everything is rather dynamic. I'm doing nearly 20dB's of compression on bass and it's still a bit wild, I'll have to go back and drop the "twang" of the bass by changing the settings on the fender & recording it again or use a Tokyo Dawn plug to properly smash it. I've done DI ITB tracks with wild bass and some plugs are just better than HW for really cranking down. I've had comments that it's too wide sounding, a bit raw in places etc. although I won't deny that I kinda dig it. Very natural sounding, it's kinda like System of a Down's toxicity but slightly more raucous which is kinda cool I guess if I'm going for different.
One of the positives is everything sounds extremely high fidelity with minimal effort, don't get me wrong this is mainly due to the KM184 (yes I do hate yet love that mic) but it does remind me of the SSL console days where everything was really just an "expander".
It's certainly not easier for me to create a better translative mix / track with HW but it does fill in a lot of gaps already like saturation etc. the issue with going direct to interface is you start with a clean canvas, what you do from there is up to you and that's either a good or a bad thing. Although, I don't like how every piece of HW in the market sounds and especially the HW I bought very much imprints its own sound, I did that on purpose because awesome clean ITB plugs are ten a penny but you've got to really like the HW.
The other issue is to fit this "inline" I might end up approaching it like a live drum recording, by the time you've finished cleaning one of them up they don't sound all that different to some of the best modern VSTI's in places. The approach can be similar with OTB if the intent is not to have an Iron Maiden live recording, if I just say screw it though and try to retain most of what it is or use a mix of both ITB and OTB to meet in the middle then sure. I'd say the advantage of this setup is options I guess but not everybody who listened to this setup loved it, I noticed the classic metal / rock engineers like me were far more into this setup than the modern pop mixers who ended up using mainly plugs and a few pieces of HW comp.
So again, ultimately I can't say which is better and even within a group we couldn't agree on this stuff which is nothing new. All I do know is again it does sound very different, I couldn't recreate the sound of my setup using UA plugins and vice versa.
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Post by thehightenor on Apr 20, 2024 9:00:09 GMT -6
I think it’s in the hands of the mixer. As I said the mix engineers I admire have nearly all gone ITB and if I’m honest they’re mixes sound as dynamic as ever. For me yes, I find hardware easier to get great sounds, but my ITB mixes continue to improve. I’m the limitation in this scenario, not the gear. It's all subjective opinions and for you to ratify my opinion you'd have to use my studio because my chain differs from most people's here. I've done several recordings at this stage, invited engineering friends around, done comparisons and we all agree on one thing. It sounds very different and the methodology to create a finished track is again very different.
That being said there are positives and negatives for sure, as vicious bliss mentioned everything is rather dynamic. I'm doing nearly 20dB's of compression on bass and it's still a bit wild, I'll have to go back and drop the "twang" of the bass by changing the settings on the fender & recording it again or use a Tokyo Dawn plug to properly smash it. I've done DI ITB tracks with wild bass and some plugs are just better than HW for really cranking down. I've had comments that it's too wide sounding, a bit raw in places etc. although I won't deny that I kinda dig it. Very natural sounding, it's kinda like System of a Down's toxicity but slightly more raucous which is kinda cool I guess if I'm going for different.
One of the positives is everything sounds extremely high fidelity with minimal effort, don't get me wrong this is mainly due to the KM184 (yes I do hate yet love that mic) but it does remind me of the SSL console days where everything was really just an "expander".
It's certainly not easier for me to create a better translative mix / track with HW but it does fill in a lot of gaps already like saturation etc. the issue with going direct to interface is you start with a clean canvas, what you do from there is up to you and that's either a good or a bad thing. Although, I don't like how every piece of HW in the market sounds and especially the HW I bought very much imprints its own sound, I did that on purpose because awesome clean ITB plugs are ten a penny but you've got to really like the HW.
The other issue is to fit this "inline" I might end up approaching it like a live drum recording, by the time you've finished cleaning one of them up they don't sound all that different to some of the best modern VSTI's in places. The approach can be similar with OTB if the intent is not to have an Iron Maiden live recording, if I just say screw it though and try to retain most of what it is or use a mix of both ITB and OTB to meet in the middle then sure. I'd say the advantage of this setup is options I guess but not everybody who listened to this setup loved it, I noticed the classic metal / rock engineers like me were far more into this setup than the modern pop mixers who ended up using mainly plugs and a few pieces of HW comp.
So again, ultimately I can't say which is better and even within a group we couldn't agree on this stuff which is nothing new. All I do know is again it does sound very different, I couldn't recreate the sound of my setup using UA plugins and vice versa.
I track with heaps of full size rack tube hardware (some solid state stuff too) If I start a mix and just push up my faders - nothing else just level the tracks - the song sounds great (great arrangement helps  ) The point being, I've baked in so much tone at the tracking stage I'm only looking to do minimal sweetening. It's funny, years ago I'd of certainly plumbed the channels through my racks of hardware (I did in fact - plus a console) - these days plugins, and I feel my ability to use them, have gotten so good I just can't be motivated to turn my rack gear on at mix down. Well to be fair, I do have a VCA stereo compressor, Thermionic Phoenix MP vari-mu, Thermionic Swift tube EQ and the HEDD 192 saturation FX on my stereo bus. Add in the tracking hardware and that's one big heap of tone! The flexibility, workflow and variety of plugins allows me to be more creative and work faster and on a wider range of projects. I'll occasionally throw a vocal through my STA Level and Millennia tube EQ if it needs it - but that's very rare the days. One area I find having a multichannel interface handy is re-amping and some alternate monitoring channels. Overall -I'm sold on the Tchad Blake work flow .... I'm feeling all modern and in the moment :-) But I should stress, I do understand it's not for everyone and all methods are valid - we're all heading for the same goal - great sounding productions! |
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Post by Shadowk on Apr 21, 2024 9:57:23 GMT -6
That's what I used to do but I got a bit carried away. Hardware is expensive, sometimes unreliable and makes leather chairs interesting in summer but I don't believe it's necessarily slower and it's never had any impact on the range of projects. It just depends on what you have and hey, I'm not trying to convince anyone I've just got my own perspective like everyone else, also this approach might be ideal for some.
I have a Pro Tools template, all the HW is used as an I/O plugin and compressors generally have a sweet spot so nothing really ever changes there. Some will probably disagree but I tend to prefer dynamic ITB EQ's, they sound great and are really flexible so that cuts out pretty much anything in the way of recall for me. I have a mastering EQ but it's primary purpose is a tube boost and a 60Hz correction for the SSL, so that never changes. The Bettermaker is controlled via a plugin anyway and yeah it's a very quick or lazy hybrid setup but at a push I only get a couple of nights a week and maybe a Saturday to do music so it has to be fast.
I guess the only "slow" bit is bouncing, you can't obviously export a mix offline when using HW. Although for the extra couple of minutes it doesn't bother me. Anyway, can't wait to hear what you do with your setup.
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Post by viciousbliss on Apr 23, 2024 4:51:07 GMT -6
Thanks to this thread I just started putting the Green PA Shadow Hills plugin all over everything. Now I'm doing buss compression with it and using it across the whole ITB mix. Compared it against a lot of other plugin compressors like Unisum, Mike-E, SSL Native Compressor 2, the things I used to use a lot. I ended up vastly preferring the Shadow Hills sound. Just the way it smooths things and organizes the stereo image. It's difficult for things to throw it off. The plugin still retains a lot of the characteristics of the hardware, I can largely set it the same way-though I've heard the first 50 serial numbers are much more colored than the production model that this plugin is probably based off of. Being able to switch those output transformers is very helpful too. Lots of people have said the plugin is not so great but I think it's actually very underrated. One of these days I may try running each track through the hardware and see what I think. But I still feel like ITB mixing is a different artform than mixing with hardware on tracks.
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Post by thehightenor on Apr 23, 2024 6:54:39 GMT -6
I just heard a track off the new Crowded House album "Gravity Stairs" and it's been produced and mixed by Steven Schram.
I thought wow this sounds great.
Checked and he mixes ITB.
I started this thread with the idea of going back to sending channels out to my hardware racks (I already have hardware on my stereo mix bus)
but I've really totally lost the motivation.
Every album recently I've liked has been mixed my an engineer I like 100% ITB!
Talk about a direction of travel!
I'll stick with hardware on my stereo mix bus but I'm going to keep developing my skills using plugins as the workflow is brilliant
and I have way more artistic and creative choices ITB from my huge plugin collection.
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