"Just don't over-think this beeps....a little compressor and a device that gets you to -6dB are the necessities in my opinion"
 
This right here is exactly why I think the ART MP/C dealie might be exactly what I'm needing to push my signal. As you noted the sims and crud in the box does soooooo much and I'm doing rather well with it so far but I'm having to do TOO much I think to get the initial signal evened out and crispied up before I can actually start going into "sparkle" mode. SO it's like two in the box stages... dealing with the raw signal THEN screwing with it to make it sound how I like.
 
That is one step too many. That little box has the compressor and the tube and the routing (I'm talking the MP/C... not the cheaper versions that lack the compressor). The tube can be completely bypassed and SUPPOSEDLY it can be transparent if you do that and still access the compressor.
 
I think really, even though perhaps inadvertantly, you've given me moer encouragment into snagging that box. Really if it ends up being only useful as a mic pre for voice overs so I can use dynamic mics (which I kind of prefer) instead of my crummy condensers then I don't think it will be a waste of money. If it gets my guit and bass input a little better so I can solely focus on the mix sound (instead of treating the signal with digital gain automation/limiting/compression/etc) THEN doing the tone chasing... well that's what I want.
 
As always I appreciate all the info you provide. I may have cherry picked what I wanted to hear there but that one little tidbit does seem to jibe with my needs. I cannot think of anything else I own, outboard gear wise, that can accomplish that input condition aside from screwing around with nutty (and noisy) chains of pedals and frankly (now that I've tested them) inferior line outputs on my amps.
 
I'd rather just go the more direct route and fiddle with crap on the computer. Just need a beefier and more even signal really.
 
Cheers and thanks.

Great thread - thanks Beepster, and Danny, great comments.
 
I learn from some of these videos, but what I seek is mostly things about proper gain staging, setting up additional buses to group things like toms, cymbals, and vocals, mostly the mechanical side of things.  I'll also review tips on mic placement, and things like notching frequencies and such - again really the concepts and mechanics of techniques more than anything else.
 
There are indeed some really good videos and documents out there, and there are some truly bad ones too.  I try to use common sense and my own experimentation to come up with what seems to sound right to me.
 
Bob Bone
 

So as I had been checking out some of the vids in the OP for some reason a vid in the sidebar caught my eye so I opened it in my browser and left it there until I could check it out. Glad I did.
 
If you can get over the ridiculous cheesiness of the video production and presentation the info is freaking brilliant...
 
Art of Mixing - David Gibson
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEjOdqZFvhY
 
The first ten minutes and even the first chapter are almost unwatchable because of all the silly characters and silly graphic effects (someone must have bought a Video Toaster card and went apedoodles with it... lol) but he chills out on that stuff and gets to the meat of it.
 
It's about all that crazy 3D "spatial" type stuff I keep seeing referred to and KIND of understood but this really brought it home. Since it's a little older (I honestly thought it was from the early to mid 80's because of how bad the production is but as it progressed it's clear it's likely from the early 90's) it covers the REAL fundamentals well without getting nutsoid on all the newfangled crap we have now which to me honestly confuses most discussions on audio production.
 
So if you can get through the first ten minutes without losing an eyeball from rolling them too hard this is probably worth watching. He veers of into some kind of flaky philosophy stuff too but he's enthusiastic which is cool I guess. Reminds me of the art teachers in school who were ultra cheesy but were REALLY good at showing you how to do stuff (if you actually listened).
 
I'm guessing some of the older dudes might be familiar with this guy and maybe even the vid itself but one thing I would be really interested in is some kind of online resource or book that has diagrams for the mix styles he talks about.
 
He shows various standard styles of mixes in that 3D diagram thing and I think having that type of reference would be very helpful to me. I know "paint by numbers" style mixing is lame and I don't intend to really do that but I'm a firm believer of knowing the "rules" so you can break them more effectively. So any recommendations on that would be great.
 
Anyhoo... I actually did not intend to watch a 2.5+ hour vid today but got sucked in so I should probably get to other projects I've got going on.
 
Cheers.

There's also an accompanying book full of pretty abstractions, which I've seen on the half-price rack at the bookstore. I didn't buy it, even at a discount, not because the concept isn't good but because a) I got the idea by just thumbing through the pictures, and b) the visualizations don't match my own mind's eye.
 
Reactions to Gibson's approach vary from "you gotta be kiddin' me" to "finally! somebody explains it in a way I can understand". It all depends on how you visualize a mix in your head. Some people are naturally visual (all musicians have a little synaesthesia), while others just don't correlate sound to colors and shapes.
 
I'm somewhere in the middle. I do "see" frequencies in my mind as being colored, but it's not analogous to light wavelengths (1KHz is white, 2KHz is light blue, 3KHz is yellow, 4KHz is red, 5KHz is dark blue) so my internalized color coding bears no relation to Gibson's. I visualize pan positions as linear projections on a curved screen, not spheres and ovals.

As a guitar player I've always "visualized" stuff as patterns on the fretboard/strings which is kind of 2d. Like I would have my "fallback" parts as the strongest visualization. That would be the written parts and I could play those and know it just works... so first tier stuff. Then, and this expanded as I learned theory more or just got comfortable noodling around the compositions, there would be second tier things I could see on the fretboard. Essentially possble variations that I KNEW would work. As an arsehole who liked to twist things up then I would visualize the "nasty" notes that I knew I could potentially deviate to to... well make things nasty for a second or two before scrambling back to the straight/sweet stuff. This was particularly useful in the high speed punk/hardcore stuff. It was the art of playing the WRONG notes or the RIGHT notes in the wrong way (one of my favorite albums is DRI Live at CBGBs and if you listen to how NASTY but tight those guit parts are... well to me that's golden). From there it was all a matter of right hand force and loudness or slides, scrapes, bends, plam mutes and other less definable things. I guess those would mostly get visualized as little swells, explosions and movement on the fretboard and over my picking hand.
 
In that whole scenario the only things aside from my own parts that I really payed attention to were the crack of the snare and the vocals so I could keep time and make sure I was complimenting the vox instead of being some oblivious lamo guitar cocker. So I would be visualizing more little explosions and trying time them/tonally sync them up from what my amp was throwing in comparison to the snare and vox and then letting the bass or other components swell in to the picture when those elements were carrying the riffs/became the focal point of the music.
 
When I was singing and playing priority 1 went to visualizing my throat, tongue and the words... then (and almost as importantly) my picking hand as it strummed the chords and then the snare and kick (and sometimes the bass if they were solid) so I could keep the right hand going. Since when I sang I made sure my left hand was ultra conditioned to the chords so it was mindless I knew I could find my vocal tonality by tuning my ear to what I was doing (but I would always prefer to lean on the bass but damn... those guys tend to go off sometimes and it is very distracting).
 
This was all very two dimensional I think and very limited. I was not listening to the whole band. I was plucking out what I NEEDED to do my parts then blocking out everything else. I had to trust the band to do what they were supposed to and if they fracked up rely on them to get caught up (but as soon as they did I would definitely hear it and not leave them hanging... I'd give a cue or a look or even alter my performance).
 
That's all live stuff though which is what I did... for years. Tours, weekly house gigs, at least 6 rehearsals a week with up to 4 bands per week... whatever. It was like crack to me.
 
So trying to view things from an engineers perspective is very different because you are focusing on EVERYTHING and trying to balance it. Like the old jokes of "Don't send a guitar player in to mix an album because all you'll hear is the guit". Totally true. Same could be said the opposite for other performers who will turn themselves DOWN more than they should be (like freakwad bass players or nervous/shy vocalists).
 
When I REALLY started listening to the WHOLE band was when I started playing drums. Being behind the kit and usually having the band surrounding you and having to take cues from all the various elements of the band at differeing point but still having them all looking YOU to keep the meter you start becoming WAY more aware of what's going on in the band room (on stage half the time you can't hear squat behind the drums because house sound is garbage in 90% of time so you gotta hope you learned your parts well and that the other members can hear YOU).
 
Behind the drums really was more like a 3d environment now that I think about it because I was always "reaching out with my ears" to pull out the elements I needed to keep me on track. I never played my drums straight. I'm huge Moon fan so I liked that rolling chaos feel and if someone fracked up I always tried to cover it and just keep pushing everything forward. I was not the greatest player by any means but it was damned fun and gave me such a great new perspective on band dynamics.
 
Anyway... I think after watching Mr Gibson's video and seeing your comments on this, bitflipper, perhaps that is at least one perspective I should be considering while I mix. The thing I liked about the Gibson visualization method was the three dimensional space where you can almost reach out, touch and move certain elements. It does make a lot of sense to me. I certainly don't think I few it all as colors or spheres or specific shapes but maybe more ragged objects of varying sizes popping in and out of view. So the depth, width and height thing is cool but only for the virtual room he creates. The sounds themselves would be so much more textured in my mind and not necessarily be 2d in that 3d space. Like they flow from front to back and maybe are round at the front but jagged at the back or vice versa or streak and pulse in bizarre way.
 
Whatever... I thought it was a cool concept but I do appreciate that it is only one way to look at it. That's kind of why I want to just dig and dig and dig and watch and learn and listen to as much as possible based on how various producers hear and do things.
 
Relly I just needed to get the basics of operating a DAW and all the fundementals of tracking in the digital age totally sorted out before putting my mind toward mixing... and now that's what I'm gonna do. So I expect to spend 20 years before I get REALLY good at it but WTF else am I gonna do? lol
 
One guy I kind of want to learn how to mix/think like... well at least for the ONE epic release he worked on, is Butch Vig. I don't care what anyone thinks about Nirvana... that is a brilliantly engineered album and I would LOVE to be able to take sloppy arsed insaneoids like Cobain and turn their raw energy into... well THAT. You listen to the early stuff and it's great but it's raw. You listen to In Utero... it's alright but Cobain got a bug up his dill about overproduction and churned out something that was overproduced while at the same time being UNDER produced.
 
Mr Vig seemed to really get something magic going on. Of course it could hav ebeen a complete and utter fluke... which is of course known to happen.
 
Anyhooo...
 
blah dee freaking blah... eh?
 
;-)

Hi Beepster,
 
Just want to say a simple thank you for posting the links to the beginner mixing tutorials.  I've watched some of the videos and visited the wilkimedia website.  I've found the videos to be informative and the site has some interesting pdf reference sheets available.

Hi, Jim. Glad you bumped this beacause I've been casually working through some more of those vids myself and they really are answering a lot of lingering questions.
 
I did try to snag those pdf's but they require a login which... well it's not a big deal (just need an email) but I didn't bother and hunted down that other interactive frequency chart. These vids are good enough though that I might sign up for buddy's site just to get his fancy take.
 
Cheers.

Is a whack more or less than a bushel? Or is it like an acre?

charlyg
Is a whack more or less than a bushel? Or is it like an acre?

Hextare if you ask me.

I'm not one to judge but I would appreciate if people refrained from whackin' it to my threads.
 
friggen internet...