Discuss here mixing and mastering

Agreed I've found that there's no substitute for listening on a bunch of systems. One revelation is that my little Anker bluetooth speaker has been one of the best references, it's revealed some things that I didn't catch in the car or on other speakers/headphones. There's no depth at all and it can make classic records sound like demos, so if a track sounds like music on it and the bass is legible, then I know I've cracked it.

I do need to listen to more reference tracks. I've been doing it when checking mixes on other systems, like to compare the general frequency spread and bass levels and what not. But I never take the step of actually pulling reference tracks into my DAW and listening on my mixing headphones. Actually just watched another youtube vid that rightfully called me out for being too afraid to compare, lol.

fgti that track sounds amazing. Ugh, like so much from that era the instrumentation is so perfect for mixing, a place for everything and everything in its place. Especially dead drums and a huge, clean electric bass. You really think it wouldn't be mixed like that today though (maybe not in terms of recording quality, but approach)? If you have two rhythm guitar tracks it seems pretty natural to pan them L/R. A lot of the James Brown stuff is like that, with one strummed part and one picked line?

Thanks Jordan, that sounds like a cool approach... and turns out it's already in my bandcamp wishlist, looking forward to giving it a listen...

Oh dang, thank you!

Speaking of 'Billie Jean', I read last night that the drums are actually 3db louder in the intro, and then Bruce Swedien does a slow fade down to tuck them in by the time the vocals come in. It's so obvious now but I never thought about it (or assumed it was due to mastering compression), it's so simple and brilliant. You get hit with "wow these drums bang" at a level that wouldn't be sustainable over the whole song.

I read ages ago that Quincy/the engineer on that album would use fresh tape for the drum beds, immediately bounce them to work tape, build the song on the work tape, and then only use the original drum bed tape when it was mix time, "so frequent replay doesn't deteriorate the transients on the drums", iirc

Regardless of the truthiness of the story, this isn't a lesson to me about "good usage of tape", more that it brought transients and their importance to my attention, I suppose

Totallyyyy. I also read someone theorizing that Thriller was engineered to overemphasize transients because they would be rounded out on cassette (and probably vinyl too), and that they're overly spiky today on digital. Interesting theory, but I don't really buy it (especially in today's world of super punchy transients).

Transients have a big Goldilocks factor for me lately, trying to find that perfect middle ground. I've mostly been guilty of ignoring them in the past (especially in search of super compressed and saturated tones), so now I'm trying to pay attention to them without overcorrecting hopefully. Or maybe I wasn't ignoring them, I just didn't know what I was doing and would solve problems by adding more layers with samples etc. The parallel processing thing has been helpful in certain instances, when it's hard to get it dialed in just right through compression though. Awhile back I heard someone say that they realized that one thing all their favorite records had in common was how the transients come across and that's haunted me ever since.

can someone here give this noob a working definition of "transients"? I do know my audio tech and sound physics fwiw

this revive reminds me of a recent interview I saw with James McNew of Yo La Tengo, talking about how they recorded the new album on their own, but sent it off for mastering "because that is something that can only be done by wizards"

Basically it's the attack at the beginning of a sound, like the stick striking a drumhead or a pick hitting a string. As opposed to the sustained tone that comes after. So sometimes you want to tame that with compression for a more even sound, but you also need them eg for drums that should 'hit' viscerally and not stroke your ears like a feather.

got it, thanks - the only other thing I knew was "that's what Rush fucked up on that album that people hated"

Haha, oh really?

https://gearspace.com/board/mastering-forum/736700-cant-stand-new-rush-album.html

Vapor Trails, I think