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Post by mrholmes on May 7, 2019 10:17:56 GMT -6
Intresting read on GS. I just ask myself is he telling the whole story? Sure I have done mixes ITB and they do sound good. To get there was NF for me.
For example. Processing a Base and or Kick with the SPL Charisma is easy as hell and it always fits in the mix in seconds. No fumbling with the mouse no nothing.
I ask myself why should someone like AS do not process a file with HW and mix on ITB? Its easy, one I/O plug in away and reprinting the file... even easier for him - his assistant takes care for it - before the ITB mix starts.
That would be the way I would do it and I am not a pro AE mixing geek....
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Post by theshea on May 7, 2019 10:25:41 GMT -6
I ask myself why should someone like AS do not process a file with HW and mix on ITB? time, recall, money.
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Post by mrholmes on May 7, 2019 10:41:51 GMT -6
I ask myself why should someone like AS do not process a file with HW and mix on ITB? time, recall, money. Time?? Processing a 3 or 4 minute file and tracking back in the daw - really there is no time for this??? You believe that yourself?
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ericn
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Balance Engineer
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Post by ericn on May 7, 2019 11:05:24 GMT -6
Time?? Processing a 3 or 4 minute file and tracking back in the daw - really there is no time for this??? You believe that yourself? Time, speed of recall in the age calls for quick changes, no need to book outside studio time or get ones head around a room again.
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Post by mrholmes on May 7, 2019 11:17:08 GMT -6
Time?? Processing a 3 or 4 minute file and tracking back in the daw - really there is no time for this??? You believe that yourself? Time, speed of recall in the age calls for quick changes, no need to book outside studio time or get ones head around a room again. In other words keeping costs down?
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Post by nobtwiddler on May 7, 2019 11:20:29 GMT -6
The answer is TIME, and the ability to recall instantly. Time = $$$ No one, literally NO ONE wants to pay anymore.
No Assistant required either!
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Post by drbill on May 7, 2019 11:35:03 GMT -6
^^^ Ditto to most of the above. There are a few advantages to being 100% ITB, but the disadvantages far outweigh the advantages for me. A Hybrid approach makes mixing so much easier, faster and sonically better for me. Andrew has his own reasons, and he is certainly earned a right to those opinions. But I feel sorry for those young guys who end up feeling that hardware is essentially useless for mixing because AS dosen't use it.
Everyone has to find their own way. For me, it will be hybrid the rest of my career....
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Post by Blackdawg on May 7, 2019 12:24:56 GMT -6
Time?? Processing a 3 or 4 minute file and tracking back in the daw - really there is no time for this??? You believe that yourself? Well..yeah. I mean if your reprinting multiple files through different gear all the time..that 3-4 minutes becomes an hour or two in a hurry. Like if you only have 1 LA2A or 1 1176 but want to use it on the vocals..and the guitars. Snare too..ect ect. You have to print every time. This is why using a true hybrid system can be better. however, finding the balance of streamlining the ITB workflow with the OTB workflow takes some thought and effort in itself. And its expensive which can be hard for a lot of people by itself. Then picking the right gear to make recall effective can be hard too, figuring out your signal flow so it is easy, all of that. Its not for everyone. Really most just can't afford it.
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Post by seawell on May 7, 2019 13:36:34 GMT -6
^^^ Ditto to most of the above. There are a few advantages to being ITB, but the disadvantages far outweigh the advantages for me. A Hybrid approach makes mixing so much easier, faster and sonically better for me. Andrew has his own reasons, and he is certainly earned a right to those opinions. But I feel sorry for those young guys who end up feeling that hardware is essentially useless for mixing because AS dosen't use it. Everyone has to find their own way. For me, it will be hybrid the rest of my career.... Couldn't agree more. A hybrid set up actually makes me work much faster! On a side note, are there any all ITB mixers that truly inspire anyone here as a mixer? I know there is a lot of ITB stuff that's popular and certainly "pro" but I'm talking about that stuff that sounds so good, you want to study it and try and figure out what all is going on. I'm certainly not trying to knock anyone because I understand the economics of it but I just haven't heard anyone that has fully figured it out ITB(if that's even possible). Anyway...not trying to get too far off track, end of rant haha.
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Post by theshea on May 7, 2019 13:51:49 GMT -6
Time?? Processing a 3 or 4 minute file and tracking back in the daw - really there is no time for this??? You believe that yourself? yes, i am shure. as said by someone else: time=money. and bands and A&R request instant recall all the time ... itb is by far the best method if you're doing like 2 songs from 2 bands a day all week/month/year long.
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Post by svart on May 7, 2019 13:55:23 GMT -6
^^^ Ditto to most of the above. There are a few advantages to being ITB, but the disadvantages far outweigh the advantages for me. A Hybrid approach makes mixing so much easier, faster and sonically better for me. Andrew has his own reasons, and he is certainly earned a right to those opinions. But I feel sorry for those young guys who end up feeling that hardware is essentially useless for mixing because AS dosen't use it. Everyone has to find their own way. For me, it will be hybrid the rest of my career.... Couldn't agree more. A hybrid set up actually makes me work much faster! On a side note, are there any all ITB mixers that truly inspire anyone here as a mixer? I know there is a lot of ITB stuff that's popular and certainly "pro" but I'm talking about that stuff that sounds so good, you want to study it and try and figure out what all is going on. I'm certainly not trying to knock anyone because I understand the economics of it but I just haven't heard anyone that has fully figured it out ITB(if that's even possible). Anyway...not trying to get too far off track, end of rant haha. Actually yeah, there are a few that constantly inspire me and keep me learning. For me, it's much less of them being ITB, but more about how they work. Of course, they work differently than I'm used to, so it gives me more ideas about how I should apply the things I'm doing. Sometimes it's as simple as my being used to having all kinds of limitations on patch points, etc that these guys don't have and don't even consider. They just route things willy-nilly and it makes me reconsider how I've developed my workflow. I've certainly changed my way of doing things after seeing some things they've done. But then again, I've also worked out what is better ITB and what is better OTB for me and I've been very happy as a hybrid mixer. However, even being a diehard analog guy, I think I could work completely ITB and still do good work, I just choose not to at this point.
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Post by brenta on May 7, 2019 14:00:18 GMT -6
^^^ Ditto to most of the above. There are a few advantages to being ITB, but the disadvantages far outweigh the advantages for me. A Hybrid approach makes mixing so much easier, faster and sonically better for me. Andrew has his own reasons, and he is certainly earned a right to those opinions. But I feel sorry for those young guys who end up feeling that hardware is essentially useless for mixing because AS dosen't use it. Everyone has to find their own way. For me, it will be hybrid the rest of my career.... On a side note, are there any all ITB mixers that truly inspire anyone here as a mixer? Tchad Blake is 100% ITB and I hear a lot of engineers say they are inspired by his work. I think there are a lot more big time mixing and mastering engineers working 100% ITB than many people realize. These days artists feel like they NEED to ask for revisions. Sometimes they ask for changes just because they want to experiment. For me spending even 10 minutes on recall is too much.
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Post by ragan on May 7, 2019 14:03:54 GMT -6
^^^ beat me to it.
Tchad Blake is someone I really look up to, mix and approach wise.
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Post by mrholmes on May 7, 2019 14:14:28 GMT -6
On a side note, are there any all ITB mixers that truly inspire anyone here as a mixer? Tchad Blake is 100% ITB and I hear a lot of engineers say they are inspired by his work. I think there are a lot more big time mixing and mastering engineers working 100% ITB than many people realize. These days artists feel like they NEED to ask for revisions. Sometimes they ask for changes just because they want to experiment. For me spending even 10 minutes on recall is too much. In find that very intresting. I just watched a few interviews on YT with Andrew and he has some good points why working ITB can free creativity. But the strongest point is, his clients never complaind about the ITB mixes. I would love to see him mix ITB. Saw CLA doing it in a video, this was intresting too. It taught me that he knows shit in and out. An hour and the mix was done, some automation - ready. To me it sounded like on of his overprocessed mixes done just ITB.
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Post by Guitar on May 7, 2019 14:20:55 GMT -6
Andrew is no longer tied to a physical space. He can work anywhere with his laptop and some shitty headphones.
He's a busy guy doing interviews, promoting Omni Channel, and so on, and he can work whenever he wants/needs to, and wherever his body may be.
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Post by pope on May 7, 2019 14:42:36 GMT -6
These days artists feel like they NEED to ask for revisions. Sometimes they ask for changes just because they want to experiment. For me spending even 10 minutes on recall is too much. It should be fine as long as you charge for your time?
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Post by sirthought on May 7, 2019 14:44:23 GMT -6
Lots of threads on GS talk about who is mixing ITB and many Grammy nominated people are more in the box than out. There is nothing today about doing a mix ITB that prevents you from having a great mix. Well recorded source material, a good set of speakers or headphones in a treated room, and practice are the main things you need beyond any well stocked DAW package.
And other than a personal belief than running signal through tubes, transformers, and op amps distinguishes the sound in a way that makes things that much better, all the software today is still compressing, saturating and EQing, which is essentially what 90% of boxes are doing in some variation. What matters is if you like the end result or not. You might like the sound you get from those boxes, but that doesn't mean someone's ITB mix is not worthy. (And I'm not saying that gear you own isn't helpful, just not essential.)
Most of the interviews I've seen with modern well known mix engineers talk about the same principles that Scheps spends so much time on...mostly several layers of parallel compression via aux sends to tackle different issues. I just watched a Q&A with Reid Shippen and many of the solutions he mentions involve parallel work. PLUS, he says if you are working at home that there is really no need to get a console or all kinds of analog gear, rather it's smarter to spend your time getting better at mixing a ton using easy affordable tools that you can take anywhere.
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Post by pope on May 7, 2019 14:50:03 GMT -6
Am I the only one finding that mixing OTB is so much faster? And so much more fun!
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Post by sirthought on May 7, 2019 14:52:29 GMT -6
I think another point that Scheps seems to make in all this is that he still believes in nice OTB gear for tracking. He just doesn't focus most of his work on that side of things.
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ericn
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Balance Engineer
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Post by ericn on May 7, 2019 14:54:28 GMT -6
This is a buisness, at the end of the day this is about somebody paying somebody’s bills. For most feeding the family, keeping a roof over their head take precedent over art. Today the recording gear market is just like guitar market, dominated by those with big bucks over professionals.
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Post by 000 on May 7, 2019 14:57:11 GMT -6
Mixing and tracking are two completely different things. I’m sure Andrew is being sent some of the best tracked records in the world using incredible “vintage” this or that hardware in the process. Same thing for Tchad Blake - that Black Keys album was tracked on some gnarly hardware.
The biggest difference hardware has always made for me in mixing - was taking mediocre sounding recordings made on cheap interfaces and taking them up another league.
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Post by brenta on May 7, 2019 15:03:02 GMT -6
These days artists feel like they NEED to ask for revisions. Sometimes they ask for changes just because they want to experiment. For me spending even 10 minutes on recall is too much. It should be fine as long as you charge for your time? Sure. But for someone like Andrew Scheps he’s talked about how that’s not an option. It’s impossible for him to get a perfect recall so he would have to leave the mix up on his Neve, sometimes for a week or more while he waits for te mix to be approved. He can’t start other projects while he is waiting. And he can’t bill for the week of studio time. For me I just find recalls to be a major pain in the ass. Maybe it’s from my time as an assistant when I had to spend hours documenting settings that usually were never recalled back then. Also I don’t find the sonic improvement to be significant, and blind tests I’ve done on my clients shows that they don’t notice either. Can anybody tell by listening to Scheps mixes from around the time he switched to ITB which ones were done analog and which were done ITB? Workflow is the big thing. If working analog helps you get work done faster or helps you have more fun doing it, that’s significant.
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Post by svart on May 7, 2019 15:05:06 GMT -6
Lots of threads on GS talk about who is mixing ITB and many Grammy nominated people are more in the box than out. There is nothing today about doing a mix ITB that prevents you from having a great mix. Well recorded source material, a good set of speakers or headphones in a treated room, and practice are the main things you need beyond any well stocked DAW package. And other than a personal belief than running signal through tubes, transformers, and op amps distinguishes the sound in a way that makes things that much better, all the software today is still compressing, saturating and EQing, which is essentially what 90% of boxes are doing in some variation. What matters is if you like the end result or not. You might like the sound you get from those boxes, but that doesn't mean someone's ITB mix is not worthy. (And I'm not saying that gear you own isn't helpful, just not essential.) Most of the interviews I've seen with modern well known mix engineers talk about the same principles that Scheps spends so much time on...mostly several layers of parallel compression via aux sends to tackle different issues. I just watched a Q&A with Reid Shippen and many of the solutions he mentions involve parallel work. PLUS, he says if you are working at home that there is really no need to get a console or all kinds of analog gear, rather it's smarter to spend your time getting better at mixing a ton using easy affordable tools that you can take anywhere. One thing worth mentioning is that most of these guys are older and have tons of experience with analog gear before moving to ITB. That's a very important nuance of the discussion that tends to get completely glossed over by folks. These guys are *good* because they have skills that span more than simply ITB work and a suite of plugins and they've worked with the analog gear that most plugins emulate. They didn't start ITB, and they could probably move back to analog if they wanted without really skipping a beat (pun marginally intended). Essentially they had their training *before* using plugins and already knew how things should sound before going ITB. That's quite a bit different from the kiddos today who buy software to emulate the guy who mixed their favorite record from their favorite band and have never touched (and might never) touch a real piece of hardware, and might never step foot in a *real* studio. They tend to miss the natural-selection aspect of engineers displaying decades of experience under the pressure of performance that has weeded out thousands of other lesser engineers, and the ones left are good enough to transcend most any type of process. But there's no marketing decades of proven performance.. There's just marketing for plugins with presets that promise to emulate gear for 1/20th the cost..
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Post by brenta on May 7, 2019 15:07:59 GMT -6
I think another point that Scheps seems to make in all this is that he still believes in nice OTB gear for tracking. He just doesn't focus most of his work on that side of things. That’s a good point. He hasn’t sold his Neve console or outboard gear, he just uses it for tracking now instead of mixing. If you’ve already hit the vocal with hardware 1073’s, 1176’s, and LA2A’s while tracking, is it really going to make a huge difference whether you compress yet again it during mix time using a hardware 1176 or UAD 1176? Not enough to move the needle IMHO. I try to get the hardware on there when I’m tracking, then I’m not really missing out on anything by mixing ITB.
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Post by Guitar on May 7, 2019 15:09:32 GMT -6
Mixing and tracking are two completely different things. I’m sure Andrew is being sent some of the best tracked records in the world using incredible “vintage” this or that hardware in the process. Same thing for Tchad Blake - that Black Keys album was tracked on some gnarly hardware. The biggest difference hardware has always made for me in mixing - was taking mediocre sounding recordings made on cheap interfaces and taking them up another league. He addressed that in the Q and A he did recently as a "misconception." He mixes just as many poorly recorded tracks as some of the rest of us. He just does it in the box, so apparently that is not really a deciding factor in the quality.
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