What is it about tracks recorded through high-end equipment???

Hey guys, so I recently got my hands on some guitar tracks recorded from a top-end studio (Westlake studios) to mix.

Now, normally, when I'm mixing guitars recorded through mediocre stuff, I have to jump through hoops to get the guitars to sit in the mix right. I'll spend -forever- on them.

But I've really come to notice that every time I get my hands on raw tracks recorded through really high-end stuff, I barely have to do anything, at least when it comes to getting them to sit nicely in the mix. I mean, some basic EQ (lo and hi pass), panning and what have you, but nothing major and really time consuming. They just.... fit.

I've noticed the same thing with vocals.

Again, I'm not talking about how GOOD the tracks sound, I'm talking about how well and effortlessly they sit in the mix. What exactly is that? What is different in the sound data that makes it "automatically" behave better?

The right mixer....???

I'm trying to insert a picture but not having much success.

Oh well...thought I'd insert a picture of an old radio shack 6 channel mixer...

Could it be psycoacoustic?  If you had thought they came from some guys appartment, would they have "fit in the mix" as well?

I'll jump on up on Bit and say it is probably a good - really good - musician.  Not just technically, but one that "imagines"  how the part will work.  Arrangement, if you will, but including tone (esp. for guitarists, esp with an amp).  Then the engineer.  Then the room.

Good equipment, mic, preamp etc. make it easier since the music and engineer doesn't have to compensate for those.  It is much easier to work with good hardware, which is a good reason why one should start on crappier stuff.  Learn how to get solid sound from bottom dwelling equipment makes working with the good stuff easy.  Good equipment is the icing on the cake, but if the cake itself is bad, no slathering on icy goodness will make a mud pie taste better.

But a great guitarist putting down two rhythm lines, he'll (or she will) make them work but each differently.  Alike so they sound like one piece, but different enough so that they augement the other.  That ain't something you can EQ or throw an effect on to achieve.

@

My guess would be all of the above.  Plus, a studio that takes the time/effort/money to research and purchase high-end equipment are usually experienced and familiar with the equipment.  They have also taken the time/effort/money to get the room acoustics right as well. 

Of course a studio like this is going to charge more.  They're also going attract more serious musician who are willing to invest the money in a big-time studio. 

That's not to say that quality music doesn't come out of project studios.  Magic can happen there, too--and often does.  It just takes less effort in the expensive studio, but you have to deal with the pressure of time and cost of the expensive place. 

I would think that engineer's ears, use of gain staging, mic placement and expertise in general are the most important factors.

And please, don't forget the ultra importance of a good song with a good arrangement.

You can have all of the above, but if the songs sucks, it will ALWAYS suck.

Having assisted in a mix at Westlake I will say this, 95% of everything you read about on the internet talks about gear to make things sound better in the mix, or techniques in the mix, or ways to glue the mix. Mix, mix, mix, mix, mix. Tracking is where the magic starts.

The reality regarding great recordings, given that the talent is adequate and interesting, possibly unique, is that the room, mic, preamp, compressor run through decent speakers in (and here is one of the primary keys) real-time by an experienced tracking engineer is the what truly separates the men from the boys.

One person cannot perform the art and adjust the gear in real-time to make the EQ, compression, mic technique changes, possibly room location changes required. It takes two to tango and one of them needs to have a range of experience in exploring mic placement strategies and room location in a room that has a variety of dry, ambient options. Or at least the patience to experiment if knowledge is lacking. This is why professionally recorded tracks are easier to mix.

Everything you read on almost every site focuses on the mix and trying to get things to sound like the pros. The fact is, the pros generally start with a better sounding set of wave files. What is lacking are websites that focus on recording, EQ approaches using microphones first and then using hardware for sonically adjusting the sound. There are approaches to radio ready sound that start in the tracking. The easiest and most reliable is getting all of the musicians in the same sonic space and then using gobos and other sound absorbing or reflecting devices to create a balance among the instruments.

Unfortunately, today a lot of musicians/recording types work in a vacuum of a single small room with prosumer gear and by themselves. All of which create a huge barrier to creating reasonable sounding tracks and an even larger barrier to try and blend a series of tracks into something sonically pleasing to people outside their immediate family. Not to rant here but what is needed are sites that don't cater to the latest and greatest but share and talk about creating decent sounding tracks. In the tracking process, and the decisions made while tracking in realtime, is where the real "Secrets of the Pros" resides.

batsbrew

how many pro studios have you ever been in, that use consumer level gear? now, ask yourself, how come stuff in there, sounds better than stuff done at home... there is a correlation.

 
 
More to the point though, "correlation doesn't necessarily imply causation". There's a very high correlation between good sounding tracks and very high end equipment, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the equipment is the cause. A large part of it will be that those folks blessed to work with very high end equipment, generally, are the folks who have proven themselves over long periods of time. So they probably both know how to record things very well, but also how to get tones that work well together. And they often have very nice sounding rooms, which is a big thing that many of us self/home recordist can only dream of.
 
And of course they probably are often working with a higher calibre of musician. SO much of it is in getting the tone on the way in, and no amount of high end equipment will make a bad source or performance sound great. Good players can mix themselves by continually adjusting their picking style, hand position, what notes and how many notes to play at a given time, etc... And good rooms lend themselves to getting great tones through mic and source placement.
 
Add all that up, and most really high end studios kind of exist to add all of that up, and the result can be pretty amazing. But, having said that, if you took those same people and put them in a considerably more modest studio, and they'd almost certainly still get very good results. Great performers playing great songs is at least 75% of it, if not more. And the experience to capture that performance well is a large part of the remainder. The equipment is the smallest piece of that puzzle. 

I'll give you my take, wayofmind. As a guy who has used both crap gear and some of the best in the business, guess what....the difference is what you know and how you go about capturing the print. There are some mics that will just make a guitar sound bad no matter how great the sound may be that's coming out of the cab.

Other times, because most people in home studio's do not have tuned rooms or monitor correction, you are fooled by what you THINK you hear as a good sound. I don't believe in mic pre's of any kind other than when you cannot get something up to line level. Don't buy into the myths. I assure you, with the right techniques, monitors, ears and know-how, a person can make incredible recordings using Sonar and a stock Realtek soundcard if you have your stuff down. Trust me on this.

I've been a part of A/B tests with some of the best mic pre's vs. some of the cheapest mic pre's out there...and just about no one can tell the difference. When you CAN tell a difference, it's so subtle it's not worth the extra money. Though to some extent we can mention how important rooms are as well as the techniques involved with capturing the room properly. However, if you listen to recordings of today, it's rare you hear ANYTHING being launched in a room to where you hear the effects of that room. Nothing today's impulses can't cop. But most of the stuff recorded today is up close, personal and in your face. When was the last time we heard a guitar that sounded like you could literally hear the room behind it and how do you know it wasn't an impulse? When was the last time we heard a drum kit like John Bonham's? Right...no one is using rooms to that extent any longer, so in my opinion, the room sound that you CAN'T hear is only being used for slight ambiance enhancement and isn't totally the reason why something sounds good or doesn't.

I've been at this for many many years. I've talked to and worked with some of the best guys in the business. The main thing is the sound itself as an entity. Anyone who is a pro will not even print a sound unless that sound is something grand. They don't record something and work on it for hours to make it sound good. That's called "polishing a turd" and it's time consuming and only good if you are limited on gear resources or you're trying to create some sort of effect from a sound. Other than that, it is every day practice for me to print something that works every time with minimal eq. When I record my guitars, all they need is a slight high pass at about 80 Hz, I control how much mids I need when they are in the mix, and it's rare I ever have to touch my high end on my guitars other than when I may need a slight 4k sizzle or maybe a bit of what we call "the air frequencies" from 10k on up. I slap a compressor on it, take out about -2dB of gain at about 4:1 and I let it roll. Other times I'll create a room atmosphere with an impulse and then compress and eq the impulse bus to make the guitar appear to be a bit bigger than it is...but most times, we want up front and present...at least for rock or metal guitars.

With cleaner guitars used in country, jazz and some blues, the sound will naturally be bigger due to extreme distortion NOT being used. Distortion/over-drive and extreme gain will shrink a guitar down to size in a heart-beat if you are not careful. Special care needs to be given to guitars of this nature due to what gain physically does to a guitar. It can be too sizzly to where it sounds like bees swarming your mix...and the worst offender of all, too much low end. See, many guitarists are sold on their sound. The reason being, they spend countless hours creating this tone and then they find out it sounds horrible in a mix. They use way too much low end and walk into bass guitar territory and even kick drums. This is why sometimes you may notice a guitar just will not sit well in a mix.

What they fail to realize is they eq'd this tone all alone, not for a mix. This brings me to another important thing engineers screw up....and that is, soloing tracks and eqing them. Don't EVER do this unless you have an instrument that is a problem area. If we eq each instrument to sound good by itself, it is not going to sound good in the mix of other instruments. Some guys have a knack for this and can solo and eq as they go along, but most do not and it is the reason for their issues and mixes taking longer than a day or 2 to get down. The great sound we create that is all alone will just about always get lost in a mix with other instruments. The reason being, we're not taking into account that there are other frequencies that are going on as well that add to the guitars. If the guitar sound you choose IS a sound that will feature a guitar all by itself, you can do just about anything you want to it. But as soon as that mix comes in, you definitely better automate an eq so that the guitar conforms to the mix because it will need to if it is to be heard properly.

Always high pass your low end and listen for low end air. You'll know when it's gone...it just sounds like whouuu (almost like the sound of the word "would") all over the place and as soon as you remove that, you not only get a more clear guitar, you remove "whooomfing". Another good test when tracking guitars with extreme gain is to only play the chords you will be playing in the song to set up levels and eq's. The reason for this is, if we chug an E chord, our meter will look one way. If we chug a G#, A, Bb or B, the meter changes and you can usually get some whoomfing in those areas. If those chords are not used in a song, don't set up your sound playing them. With extreme gain, you may even need to use a multiband limiter at times to control the exact frequency that is causing problems if dialing it out with an eq doesn't help. But low end in guitars is the worst and if you control it, you'll never have a problem having them sit in your mix again.

Most times you can high pass 80 Hz and below with great results. Other times, you may have to high pass at 120 Hz or even 150 Hz. I've gone as high at 200 Hz at times for certain guitar sounds. You'll know when you've removed the right stuff though because the blanket comes off the sound and it instantly becomes audible.

So to sum up the answer your question, though high end gear can help and make a difference, it's the sound itself that will really make the difference. When pro's eq an amp that is to be recorded, they make sure the problem areas are taken care of before the sound is printed. There is no whoomfing, there is no harsh sizzle, there is no mid range congestion that sounds like a blanket was put over top the cab...all this stuff is taken care of. This is why when you get tracks from these guys that nothing much needs to be done. It's done purposely because that's the way it it's supposed to be done ALL the time. If you are not not achieving these results, we need to take a look into why and what we can do to fix this stuff for you. Trust me when I tell you, I can create a mix with a Mackie console and a Dell running Sonar with a stock Realtek and ASIO4ALL drivers that would make you think I went to a pro studio to have done. When you know what you are doing, even not so good gear will work wonders. That said, if I used my REAL recording rig, there would definitely be some difference but not enough to make you say "wow, so that's the difference between a 20k rig and a 1.5k rig....sounds like you may have wasted your money dude!" LOL! :) 

Mike states his case very elegantly.  There is a difference between cheap and expensive preamps - other than the price ;-)  One of the nice things about "pro" preamps is the amount of clear gain one gets so that mic'ing decisions aren't compromised by the need to have to close mic everything.  It makes the process easier, not that you just slap up a mic, but there is more room for error. 

But Danny is onto a point, too, that preamps ain't the first thing you should fix.  If you are just starting recording and getting into it in a more serious way, spending $500 or $5000 on a preamp isn't going to magicially make your recordings better, anymore than handing the keys to a Porche is going to make a 16 year old a better driver.  In fact, learning on budget gear is a great way to learn how to get the best out of stuff, and develop your ears.  When you use bad equipment badly over many tracks/channels and come up with early recording results everyone can hear the problem.  Learning to overcome that and get a good sound, then the high range stuff makes recording easier and quicker and that last few percentage points better.

@

It's pretty much been proven time and again on Gearslutz that people cannot tell the difference reliably between lots of gear, and that pre-amps are some of the least differentiated of the lot as compared to something like a compressor that can purposefully have a pretty distinctive characteristic. And even then as many people get it right as wrong, until the answer is revealed of course then everyone suddenly sees how obvious it is. Ears are really never as golden as their owners think they are.

Obviously some pre-amps can be very characterful if pushed really hard, but you won't record the bulk of stuff that way. My Solo/610 sounds really nice overdriven as a bass DI, so that it starts to get some nice tube distortion. But that's not typically the use of a pre-amp. And of course you could get the same effect various other ways.

Not that you should spend $15 on your pre-amps or anything, but still they are some of the least important bits in the whole equation. There've been lots of 'rate the importance of' type discussions out there, and generally they come out something like:

1. Composition. A well written song trumps all
2. A good performance of that composition
3. Good source sounds, tones that work well together
4. The skill of the person capturing the performance
5. The room (both from a tracking and mixing perspective)
6. Mics and monitors
7. Everything else (pre-amps, outboard gear used on the way in, etc...)

Some folks will argue the relative position of some of those, but pre-amps would likely fall into the everything else category, and even in there probably not at the top of the list.

An hour a day practicing the art of composing nice songs and selecting good tones that work together well will improve your chances of success a thousand times over more than any piece of gear will, and studying why the songs you love work as well as they do.

Not that there's anything wrong with buying nice gear in the meantime if you can afford it, but you won't get good results until you've done it enough to understand how the pieces fit together. I think that many of us have gone through that newbie phase where we buy some equipment, and then our stuff doesn't suddenly sound great. So we figure, oh well, that was a bunch of BS people fed me about that stuff, it's obviously not the magical stuff that makes everything great. So we sold that stuff, at a loss, and bought some other stuff. And that also didn't make our stuff magically great. So we sold that stuff, at a loss, and bought some other stuff.

I went through probably four or five of those phases, until I figured out I would have been just as well off, and have actually more gear by now, if I'd stuck with what I got to begin with, some of which I ended up rebuying. The problem was/is me and my skill level, not the gear.

Yeah...you can collect all the boutique gear you want, but unless your playing and recording chops are up to snuff, it won't matter.
Talent can make average gear sound great...of course, great gear is even better.
The latest Tape OP had an nice quote...something like, "I'd rather have the best drummer in the worst studio than vice versa."

Hmm...  Even though I didn't specifically state it in my reply above, I don't want a mic-pre to color my tone, just to help me send a better, stronger signal to my audio interface.

So, that said, if I don't use any mic-pre, what are some good techniques to achieving this goal anyway?

Danny?

DO RE ME FA SO LA TE DO!