Carving space in your mix

[johnS]

With 24 tracks seeming quaint by today's standards, finding a special little home for every element in your mix can be pretty darn frustrating, given the inherent zoning limitations of the 20Hz-20KHz neighborhood. Usually, the answer is to slap EQs all over the place and start clear-cutting.

Could something like this make life easier?

http://www.paulrharvey.co.uk/elevayta/product4.htm

[smopo24]

this reminds me of that new device i heard about from a friend that went to namm, it provided a "scratch mix" for you. all you do is identify the files, and it spits out an approximation of a decent mix for you. you can also subscribe to a service that will send the files to someone 24/7 and they will "supervise" the mix.

[dagosto]

I've used that. It can help if you don't already know the spectrum but for me it was doing things I didn't want it to do. Plus you have to do a bit of routing before it actually starts working. Ultimately it is just a side chained dynamic eq. Some of the other plugins from the site are nice and pretty cheap.

[johnS]

I wonder if these sorts of tools will get better over time? So much of mixing just seems like tedious grunt work . . . and just think how far say, synth and amp models have come in the past five years. . .

Someday will we spend our time doing more creative things than tweaking EQs until we develop OCD? Or will mixing tools always stay brutish and stupid?

[dagosto]

Originally Posted by johnS

I wonder if these sorts of tools will get better over time? So much of mixing just seems like tedious grunt work . . . and just think how far say, synth and amp models have come in the past five years. . .

Someday will we spend our time doing more creative things than tweaking EQs until we develop OCD? Or will mixing tools always stay brutish and stupid?

I cringe at the thought of auto tweaking. Part of the magic is the interaction of the recordist with the gear. I'm for tools that draw you deaper other than push you out.

[smopo24]

Originally Posted by dagosto

I cringe at the thought of auto tweaking. Part of the magic is the interaction of the recordist with the gear. I'm for tools that draw you deaper other than push you out.

i agree somewhat; while the personal aspect and craft of mixing lies in the human factor (good and bad mixes alike), studio time is expensive. and for home use and scratch mixing in a hurry, this isn't such a bad route to go.

[dagosto]

Originally Posted by smopo24

i agree somewhat; while the personal aspect and craft of mixing lies in the human factor (good and bad mixes alike), studio time is expensive. and for home use and scratch mixing in a hurry, this isn't such a bad route to go.

I think all these things could be very useful in the worlds of post-production when deadlines are strict and the budget is tight. The reason I cringe is that these are the stuffs that stifle creativity and breed cookie cutter tactics.

[Nubus]

I personally don't want anything to be automatically done for me. I remember having a hard time figuring out how to get Mac OS 9 NOT to start playing a CD anytime I put one in the drive. The autorough mix would be great for some people with deadlines though, I can see that.
On a side note, I'd like my beard to automatically shave itself.

[johnS]

I think it would be cool to get some suggestions on mix options that have some shot at being successful. Like a spectrum analyzer across the stereo bus that would show which tracks are hogging which parts of the 20-20K spectrum relative to each other, and what sorts of cuts or boosts would get you to a musical result. Wave PAZ plug kind of shows this type of info (at least my 3.0 version) with phase conflicts. But it doesn't show you which tracks are creating the problems. It would be cool to get more holistic info about your mix, with some suggested solutions. Or even just a big red "easy" button for trying out different combos of boosts and cuts--all suggested by the software to arrive at a musical result. (Maybe it could learn what "musical result" means to you by listening to mixes you like.) You could tweak from there, of course, but it would be nice to hear radically different solutions compared to each other.

Right now getting a radically different version of a 24-track mix takes a lot of time and effort--grunt work basically. I'd rather let the machine get me into the ballpark and then I take over to put the spitshine on the mix--that's the fun/creative part.

[lukedavo]

I really do not agree with John S on this one, maybe I'm not understanding what hes trying to get across, but it doesnt make sense from an engineers perspective.

"Or will mixing tools always stay brutish and stupid?"
What, what, what? Well if thats the stuff that sounds good, I'm all for it! Brutish or stupid, I deffintley dont want some machine doing the mixing for me, does anyones else think that once this is perfected, the mixing engineer will be extinct? NOT GOOD! I say mixing engineers unite, destroy the tyranical programmers.

"Like a spectrum analyzer across the stereo bus that would show which tracks are hogging which parts of the 20-20K spectrum relative to each other, and what sorts of cuts or boosts would get you to a musical result."
I think we were all born with one of these on either side of our head. We have them to use them, if they're trained, thats what sets you aside from a machine, and therefore pays your bills.

"grunt work basically"
Thats about 90% of what I do, very little has to do with finesse from my experience.

just my opinion, sorry about the rant.