Q*A with Andrew Scheps on GS

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?

In other words keeping costs down?

^^^ 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....

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.

^^^ beat me to it.

Tchad Blake is someone I really look up to, mix and approach wise.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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..