Today, when I sat down in my home studio listening to my latest mix, I decided to expirimentally hit the 'E' key and toggle all FX. And today, I realized something:
I have not yet, to this date, done a mix where I FIRST throw down all of the basic settings for JUST levels and panning /before/ I move to EQ'ing and effects.
I realize that this isn't a *fatal* flaw in my mixing process, but I do feel it might take a lot of work off of my hands later in the process if I get it as clean an pure as possible prior to FX. (And of course, I tend to use a high ratio of virtual instruments to recorded audio, so that can be factored in.)
But what do you guys think? Do any of you also fall to this issue?

the ideal....
 
is to have perfect tracks first.
 
so that, in a perfect world, you would simply bring all your faders up, at about the same levels, and the eq of each track...
room sound....
performance.....
levels......
 
all at mono, would just sound perfect.
 
then
 
begin to pan the mono tracks (and select TRUE stereo tracks) to get the soundstage you want.
 
 
all without any eq, compression, limiting, reverbs or other time delays.
 
of course, pink floyd's dark side of the moon would have sucked this way!!
LOL
 
 
 
garbage in = garbage out.
 
so, always try to get the very best capture you can, with the source creating all the lows, mids, highs and clarity, room sound and performance VIBE you can get.
 
you can really run down the rabbit hole if you don't get the basics down first.
 

this is why knowing how to capture killer individual tracks and takes, is imperative.
 
and why having one really good mic, one really good mic preamp, a GOOD sounding room, and knowing how to use them, is the most important thing in sound recording.
IMHO
 
 
 

Agree Bat. The more time I spend on getting really good sounding captures and the best performance I can do, the better my mixes are sounding.

It depends on your workflow and the kind of music you are making. If you're recording audio parts and you pretty much have the arrangement down before you start recording, then by all means work on getting everything recorded as well as possible before you start inserting effects. But if you mainly work with synths and MIDI, the arrangement process is likely to be a little more organic, ie it comes about through a lot of experimentation and fiddling and synth sound shaping and moving parts around. In this case, the way the arrangement goes is very much inspired by the sound you're creating, and you might very well start playing with effects from an early stage in order to get a rough "sound" that's going to move the track in a certain direction.

You might, for instance, use effects to see if two particular synth parts are going to work together. I recently had a couple of sounds that were clashing because they were in the same pitch range, but adding a little chorus to one of them created separation and gave them their own space so that they didn't clash. I was then inspired to keep the sounds rather than write them off as incompatible, which I would have done had I followed a "no effects till mixdown" philosophy.

Similarly, if you're making a thumping dance track, having the kick drive some gentle master bus compression creates a little inspirational "bounce" to the rhythm which makes you feel totally different about the tune and influences your subsequent sound shaping/arrangement decisions.

However it works both ways - if two synth sounds are clashing, it's often better to tweak them at the source, ie the synths themselves. You might change the filter settings or the attack and decay times to make them sit better in the track. Once you've done your best at the synth end, then you can make them even more compatible with each other with EQ etc.

Overall I would say just go with whatever works best for your workflow, but don't get too obsessed with tweaking effects in the arrangement stages. You might end up getting obsessed and chasing your tail for weeks getting nowhere. And after all, when the arrangement is finished and it's time for mixdown, you may find yourself totally rethinking your effects chains.

Bingo on workflow, and to a lesser degree musical style dictating that workflow.

30 years ago we printed everything when we tracked - how's that for a nightmare???<G>
 
Not in any way, shape or form looking to go back to that... but it did teach me to think things through, and try to have a good idea of what I was trying to accomplish before I started. I LOVE the ability to revisit my original idea, but I still like having the original idea... if that makes sense.

But really, the most important thing, whether you are printing effects or not, is to make sure that you get the best possible performance on the best possible instrument in the best possible space and capture it as best you can.

Yeah, no pressure there!

I can definitely agree with you veterans. I like your points, sharke, I'm a guy who uses a lot of synths early on and really only mic for vocals and go direct for guitars and when you think about it, doing the settings on a synth is basically the same 'set-up' process as micing a guitar or a drumkit or whatever... trying to get the best sound there.
Although not committed, like a mic'd instrument might be :S
 
And in another sense, I have always just sort of found it difficult *not* to get things mic'd right... maybe I don't mic things enough. I don't record enough stuff!

Once you've worked enough you develop your own system and refine that.  Skipping the recording part, once you have your tracks, levels are the first thing to work on.  At least for me.  General levels so the elements are in the right spot.  Then I move on to general panning.  It is amazing how much separation you can achieve just through that.  Guitars that are clashing open up when panned opposite.  Once I have the basic soundscape in place, then EQ and then effects.  Finally, level automation.
 
Of course, some of this stuff happens almost simultaneously, esp. as one finds what works for you.  If I'm mucking around with the guitars, I'll go ahead and engage the high pass filter and roll a bit off since I'm pretty sure I'll be using that later.  I love Breverb since I can go ahead of use a preset to get into the ballpark on vocal verb.  I used to use Perfect Space but wouldn't use it early incase I had to do some overdubs and latency was a problem.  Now I don't have to switch a demo verb out, unless I do decide to use PS in the mix.  Once you gain enough experience, you can apply your general rules as you go through the steps above, working on several things at once.  Still, that mental checklist of what needs to be worked on should be with you.  As you curry-comb the song, you might find that you don't use the EQ on all the channels you did before since it doesn't need it.  Or a comp.  And time-based effects get used only where it is necessary, rather than par for the course.
 
This is also true as your recording chops get better.  One should never give up experimenting, but you spend less time on things that haven't worked for you more often than not.  This also applies to using better hardware.  If you can't get a good sound with what is available in the garden-variety interface these days, better hardware ain't going to help that much.  In fact, it is a little easier to hear mistakes w/ lessor hardware, especially driving stuff hard.  The interface preamp will crap out much sooner than a good preamp.  So you back off.  Then if you do start using a nice, high-end transformer based preamp you'll find you can add some hair to a sound when you drive said preamp, rather than just hash.  And if it is the lead guitar or vocal on a song such saturation will help the line stand out.  Then you discover that backing off the saturation can differentiate the rhythm guitar (even tho it is electric w/ some distortion) better than driving everything.  It is a game of inches once you develop decent recording, arranging and mixing habits, and that only comes about through practice.  And the sad thing is, most of the audience can't hear these subtleties we can spend so much time on.  But you tell yourself they can "feel" the difference, as a host of little details add up. 
 
@

I can't add much to what AT and Bat have said, but I will say that the longer I am involved with making recordings the more I'm realizing that simple is usually better. Complexity in recording is best mastered by the masters. Laying huge numbers of plug-ins and automation into something won't guarantee it will sound better unless each thing is done properly and in my case I have learned that I'm not always doing it properly. It takes time to get to the point where you know what something needs without a lot of home work...I don't claim to be there yet entirely either. If the recording sounds better with all FX removed something is surely wrong.
 
One of the mistakes I have been known to make is to take a dry track...say a guitar, and try to dress it up with fixins'...if it didn't sound good before the fixins' it isn't likely to sound better after. In hindsight...if I have a mix with 8 tracks and each track seems  dry sometimes we need to wait until the mix has grown some because the cumulative tracks make the whole and the whole is what you're after, so after you get a decent sound with dry tracks,then you can start to actually mix, and in that case when adding anything, less is usually better. a pinch of compression, just a light addition of reverb. Anything can cloud your mix and become a liability if used too much. In some rare instances you might need a slammin' limiter to get what you're after but this is usually the exception. Limiting in master is pretty common but even that has it's limits