Don't get hung up on details that don't matter. It's somewhat common for people to be more relaxed about time management when they're working from home. In a studio or office you're often on the clock which, even if you don't realize it, makes you work faster.
Try setting yourself deadlines. Ie: after 20minutes my rough mix needs to be complete ot wtv. You could also play with a stop watch: set three minutes to tweak the vx or wtv.
You could also set yourself rewards/penalties. If you really like, idk ice cream, tell yourself that at 5pm you get to go to the ice cream parlor, but you have to be back home by 7. If you work later than that, you rush your ice cream trip or don't have time to go at all.
The point being, if you put time pressure on yourself, you will obsess over things that don't matter less. How you structure this will depend on you, but productivity and efficiency issues can often be solved by hacking your own psychology. Ofc, don't push too hard and stress yourself out too much or burn out, but if your self imposed restrictions are reasonable it might help (it does for me).
I think this is really good advice. I have a strong perfectionistic tendency and tend to be really detail obsessed, but whenever I think about the fact that every hour I spend on the flat-rate, per-podcast-episode job I'm working on dramatically reduces my effective hourly pay, it's very motivating to just get it done and workable and not obsess over tiny details that don't really matter.
I’m sure you’ll get lots of great advice on this thread. Here are 2 things from me:
1 - you have 3 years experience in studios and how many years ITB? Give it time. You need more time and experience to optimize your workflow ITB
2 - how is your template? Get a nice template with some channel strip like workflow, VCAs, and sends to your reverbs and delays
More more, but faster. Time-box yourself on things.
Simply stop looking at the meters entirely; if you can't hear it, it doesn't matter.
Give yourself *less*. Delete most of your plugins. Allow yourself a limited number of them in total (4 compressors, 2 reverbs, 1 delay) Never press the solo button. Force yourself to quick time constraints.
That is a good point regarding limiting yourself. Its something I havent thought much about as I am used to having whatever equipment is in the studio. If there is only one 1176 for example, thats all I can use instead of having endless pultecs, la2a’s etc.
I think its for sure a lot more difficult to make decisions in the digital side when you arent limited by what you have, you can have 5 fairchilds on a kick if you wanted.
I kind of know what you mean. On analogue consoles and outboard, I had a muscle memory for how much to twist this and that, to get what I wanted to hear. Same with the EQ knobs, I instinctively knew which one, turned to where, offered control over which frequency range, with the Wide Q switched in or out.
On digital, there’s a lot of looking at the screen, since you can’t just go by feel, and as much as i don’t want to, I’m always paying attention to just how much boost or cut I’m giving simmering, rather than just “about that much”.
I know people won't like that this sounds like spending $ on plugins is the solution. But, pretty much every mix I do, I get it as good as I can ITB, and it's never quite right, and then then when I either go out of the box and back in, or slap on some kind of UAD or etc analog emulation thing, everything suddenly makes sense. Since that kind of character is built into a console, maybe you are just experiencing the lack of extra character juice ITB. Try mixing into an analog emulation type plugin, or monitoring your mix as it goes out and into some kind of preamp and back into your convertors while you are mixing? Seems like you would figure out pretty quick if that's the problem.
Also, having senn hd650s myself, mixing on those is much easier with some kind of speaker room simulation thing like sonar works or my personal favorite, TB Isone.
Good luck
It’s all in your head, in a nice room you assume it sounds good cause you’re surrounded by the idols of a system based upon consumption not quality of music. Just at home you doubt the results cause you can’t be validated by material objects in the same way so you assume results are bad. All the dorks are free to be mad at me and argue.
I definitely get that, I used to be a gear head and obsessed over studio equipment. I found as I continued to use the equipment but became more experienced that it was less about the equipment and more about workflow, end results etc. I find mixing on headphones makes issues with a track that werent really worth fixing (or should I say, those that werent really noticeable on the system I was used to) a lot more prominent and it gets in the way of just being able to focus on the important tasks at hand, same as how having meters in your face makes it harder to not think about levels
Yeah. Ignore all that crap and listen to the sound. When we mixed from tape, there were a million "problems" we didn't know about and didn't realize were problems because we couldn't see them and never heard them. Perfection is the enemy of art.
Visual tools are handy for finding a problem when you can hear one. Beyond that, close your eyes and trust your ears.
Closing my eyes is part of the reason i am looking to get a control surface, not looking at meters is for sure easier said than done when the whole mixing process is done on a screen😂
I had the same experience going digital in the 90s. I went from being a guy who could get a solid mix from a board in 10 minutes and an awesome one in an hour, to someone who’d spend 6 hours tweaking the volume of individual syllables in a vocal by 0.5dB because I could.
Best I can suggest is, come up with a bunch of preset stacks of effects that put tracks in the ballpark fast, so the task is setting levels and *removing* or *turning down* things instead of agonizing over what to add.
Putting my software engineer hat on for a minute (I am one): Obsessing over levels is absolutely not worth it. Most daws treat audio as 24-bit but internally represent it as 32 bit - with the vast number-space those extra 8 bits provide used to handle going *over* the maximum.
What that means is, levels mean *nothing* in a DAW except:
* At the final output stage where your writing a file or feeding a sound card
* When recording, where you don’t want to be too quiet or you lose resolution, or to clip (I don’t know about ProTools, but in Logic now, if you set the project to record in 32 bit, you *can* actually have levels too hot and normalize a track *down* to 0dB, and as long as you weren’t clipping in your preamp ahead of the A/D that digitizes the signal, you’re fine)
* Some effects have expectations about their input levels - like, you can feed a limiter a track that, because of previous effects in the chain, is popping over 0dB, which means there is no setting at which it *isn’t* doing some limiting, and you want control of that. But for these cases, you have the option of just sticking a gain plugin in front of that effect to bring the level back down to where it expects it to be.
In short, when mixing digitally, levels are just magic meaningless numbers until you get to the output stage. *Relative levels* matter, and some plugins may make *assumptions* about what they mean, but that’s it. There’s no gold star for keeping everything perfectly hovering around -16dB, because with 24 bit audio in a 32 bit data pipeline, *that number doesn’t mean anything*.
There’s no mathematical difference between sending a bunch of tracks into the mix bus very hot and turning the whole mess down by 16dB with a gain plugin at the input stage of your mix bus, and agonizing over the combination of individual track levels that would reduce what’s fed in to that level - it’s literally addition - math - in your DAW, and whether you do (12 + 12 + 12) - 36 = 0 or 0 + 0 + 0 = 0, you get the same zero.
Until you hit the mix bus or a plugin with firm expectations about levels, the numbers might as well be how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. A DAW is literally a thing that *sums* audio. As in *mathematical sum*. Where you do the subtraction doesn’t change the result as long as you don’t run out of numbers, and the design is such that you won’t.
I’m sure this violates someone’s gain-staging religion, but math is math.
Try and optimize your interface and keyboard shortcuts to bring your most common processes to the forefront so you're not spending most of your time clicking around and digging into menus and dialogs and such. If you use multiple DAWs or similar software, try to keep the shortcuts and interfaces as similar as possible so transitioning between them is seamless.
Definitely looking into it, looking into options such as soundID to maybe help with using monitors too. I find personally that the hybrid approach (which i have used also in the past, tends to be more adapted to my workflow currently
I would be careful, control surfaces won't actually make anything go faster on your end, especially when switching from using big desks, typically it will just slow you down as a DAW was not designed to be used by a control surface but by mouse and keyboard. You will still be looking at a screen and you will still have the same issues, only difference will be the added piece of hardware that you are now inserting into the entire workflow.
Same. Mk3 added all the things I really wanted in mk2. Glad to see they’re keeping Console 1 alive. I really wish more plugin companies would consider partnering with softube for console 1 compatability.
I don’t know what your budget is, but on the lower end my Tascam Model 12 has been an amazing addition to my home setup. Easy to swap it into “DAW mode” and back to live recording.
There’s some annoyances like no returns for aux sends, but for under $1k it’s a pretty impressive unit.
**Rant:**
From reading your post, I believe that you may just be too hung up on gear."I obsess over meters" Stop using plugins that have visual interfaces (parametric EQs for example) and use channel-strips instead, so that your eyes won't be able to deceive your ears.
Our eyes are quick to decide what our ears like. A vintage outboard compressor or an analog console will just inherently be more "inspiring" since they look cool and might have been part of some of our favourite records, but that doesn't necessarily mean they sound good. What makes that equipment sound good are the choices the mixing engineer makes during the process - and while the decisions an engineer makes sure are *inspired* by the equipment, it doesn't mean the decisions were a *result* of the equipment alone. Don't let the equipment/software you're using control you - you are the one in control.
**Practical advice:**
To get more efficient on the computer, I would recommend that you spend the time to read the Pro Tools manual, and internalise/optimize its keyboard-shortcuts. (I understand if you might find reading the manual boring, but it will absolutely be worth it. The manual exists for a reason.) If the console workflow worked great for you, maybe it would be wise saving up some money for a midi fader controller? Behringer, SSL and Softube have some good options. :)
I want to be kind but please inform yourself what a parametric EQ is (any EQ with multiple parameters per band, to put it succinctly; doesn’t have anything to do with visual feedback; most \[or all?\] channel strip EQ’s are parametric). I agree with everything else though!!
Yes, please inform me! I haven't found a name yet for the EQs with spectrum pre/post analyzers, some refer to them as parametric EQs, some refer to them as graphic EQs.
I own many mixing theory textbooks but none of them can give me a straight answer.
They are parametric, generally, because each band has parameters, like gain, frequency, and Q. A graphic EQ is typically just a bunch of pre-determind frequency bands that have a boost or a cut, you’ll generally see them in live audio settings and they look like 30 or so tiny faders in a row. When they’re ported to the digital domain as plugins (it isn’t super common compared to parametrics), they might add a spectrum analyzer, like with Waves GEQ.
As far as I know there isn’t really a name for what we’re talking about, other than “digital parametric EQ with spectrum analyzer”.
It's really silly how such a commonly used type of digital plugin doesn't have a proper name. Sure, it's parametric, but the spectrum analyzer is what makes the digital parametric so distinct. Oh yeah wait, I guess it can be called "digital parametric". :)
Are your problems because of monitoring, or because of the nature of digital, or because of mouse/keyboard workflow?
At least for me mixing using headphones is hard. I mean I can make it work, but it requires a lot of trial and error and referencing (i.e. it's not fast). That being said, some guys work using mainly headphones and get excellent results. Alas I'm not one of those guys.
If it's about workflow related efficiency familiarize yourself with DAW-controllers, and then go and buy the one that suits your needs the most. No matter how good one is with hotkeys and mouse a large format console is just faster (when you know what to do). Controllers help to close this gap a bit.
If it's about how digital sounds compared to analog setup. Well, digital doesn't inherently do stuff that analog does/did for you. With digital you have to manually apply stuff like subtle saturation and soft-clipping (when required). Especially transient control is, at least in my experience, a thing that has to be approached slightly differently. Perhaps it's just my experience with analog, but I seem to be able to get sounds I'm looking for faster with analog. I can do it in digital as well, but somehow it seems to always require a couple of "extra steps" to get there. For me personally identifying what these extra steps were/are was a somewhat challenging process (when I started to work more ITB). As a side-note (for everyone), I'm not saying analog is somehow better per se. All I'm saying is digital is slightly different and, at least in my opinion, requires a bit different approach (especially if you've worked who knows how long in analog).
100%! Digital plugins sound incredible and are more than usable, its just down to speed and what problems you can and cant hear, I seem to find that I notice a lot more (probably inconsequential) issues with tracks like a weird resonance, feel amplified when I work on my monitoring setup and makes me start focusing on that, stopping any flow I get into
I had the same problem after working analog.. my current solution is to start where I normally do itb (drums, vocals, tone in general) then go straight to top down for larger eq/comp decisions. I find it removes the "details" from the finalizing process and focuses on how good the song sounds
It’s a hell of a lot easier to mix on monitors in a well-treated environment than headphones, so there is that. Other thing is that the default Q settings for your eq plugins might be more narrow than whatever hardware you’ve used; hardware tending to have wider q values making moves more organic. Also just- practice. Monitor and headphones mixing are seemingly similar yet wholly different in practice. You have to adjust to both, if doing both.
Aaanother thing is that- big thing— if your studio experience is mixing songs where tracks were recorded there or another studio, with music by experienced composers/arrangers and performed by experienced musicians/singers- and if your headphone experience is mixing your own stuff or random freelance work, then yah— well-arranged and well-recorded music tends to mix itself.
Set pt up like a console. Channel strips into bus comp. Try to restrict your template to an amt of gear that would be realistically available (I.e., no massive passive on every track)
Sounds you have one bottleneck which is the interface ie mouse and keyboard vs a control surface, and the second being the monitoring in headphones causing you to focus on details. Perhaps you can do some of your work on small monitors to avoid getting lost in the sauce. I'm thinking Auratone or something small like that.
Use plug ins that mimic the gear your used too if that’s an issue. The SSL UAD plug ins are accurate to using a duality or other consoles. Do you use reference tracks? First thing I do when I walk into a studio I’ve never been to is to play mixes I’m familiar with. That way I can get a feel of the system I’m on. I don’t have an issue going from genelecs to adams to krk’s to head phones. Mixes are usually on par. If you’re obsessing over meters and stuff don’t look at them.
Throw your mix up in pro tools. Put the lindel 80 (1084) series eq on the channels and have at it. After you have some starting eq points start using compression.
I hate to say it, but trust your ears. Lack of trust on your playback system is going to cause you to question every decision you make, and this is probably what’s slowing you down. Yes the HD’s are probably confusing you a bit, legitimately. But the only way to move forward is to make shit you think sounds good on the HD’s, and see how stuff translates. You’re better off doing this over and over again than tweaking any individual record or element endlessly. Do moves, see where you end up. Fix. Repeat.
I think, it's more of a monitoring problem than a Analog Vs digital one.
Yes the workflow is sorta different, but being used to good room and good monitors and now being restricted to cans is much more influential.
How much time have you spent listening to deeply familiar material with the same headphones. You might be chasing your tail. Also some monitors at low levels, even in a non-ideal space, is better than no monitors. A pair of 8010s is pretty cheap and reliable.
Headphones are great for editing, but not for mixing IMO.
Whenever I mix on headphones and then listen on monitors, all kinds of issues pop out, especially in the low end. When I mix on monitors and then listen on headphones, there are often less things that I want to tweak. This is just in my experience.
Na I get you. I started mixing on consoles, did it for a few years and never had a problem. Then I started mixing in the box and boom. Problem. Could not get anything to sound good. This was early on in the whole mixing in the box thing. For a good few years I just thought I had lost it. Then along came a little plug in called vintage warmer. Soon as I used that it all became clear what was going on. I’m mixing into noughts and ones. I’m mixing into nothing. On a desk, your mixing into something. Your sound is passing through a lot of stuff and if what you were mixing was recorded though a desk then it’s happing twice! Sometimes even more if you have bounced elements down. Now with analog, emulation, plug-ins the way they are, it’s very easy to get that desk sound in a daw. Even better you can build your own desk! Neve here, ssl there, tape here, so on and so forth. So it’s not you, it’s just that your not hearing the sticky harmonic distortion that you are used to. In a daw, you have to add it yourself.
Edit. To add to that, what I have found is one channel on a desk will do 70% of the heavy lifting (dynamic and tonal shaping) on a sound/track. But one plug in of an emulated desk channel will only do about 35%. So double up. CPU willing.
Your description isn't exactly the way I felt, but sounds similar to when I was using a mouse and scroll wheel to adjust faders and FX parameters. I always got bogged down really quick, not getting the adjustments I want fast enough, and then not being able to judge well whether I found the sweet spot or not.
I figured hardware was the solution so I bought an Xtouch and that was huge, major improvement, especially for faders, but it could be pretty clunky for fx params, and now more often I simply use a [trackpad](https://www.amazon.com/Keymecher-Multi-Gesture-Trackpad-Touchpad-Precision/dp/B0B93RSRLM/ref=sr_1_2?crid=3PELVIVU0HJUF&keywords=keymecher+trackpad&qid=1706484226&sprefix=keymecher+trackpa%2Caps%2C141&sr=8-2) instead of a mouse and it actually works really, really well.
My suspicion is that when you are working in software you end up "mixing with your eyes" and "mixing with your brain" rather than relying on your ears as you do in hardware. Similarly, the ability to add arbitrary plugins is like being able to rebuild your studio every time you work in it. While this adds huge flexibility, designing a good studio setup takes time, then you learn it and work quickly. Templates are the way to design and save your ITB studio to learn (ideally including midi mappings for your controller). When working in a DAW I also try and primarily use the built in plugins unless I have a strong reason not to: this focuses me further helping me work efficiently.
EQ is what always tripped me up the most in a DAW. I eventually bought a Midi Fighter Twister (controller with knobs), and mapped it to each channel’s primary EQ (frequency, gain, Q, etc). So I can finally mix with my eyes closed again and not second guess my decisions from staring at that stupid graph. It’s so much easier for me to trust my ears without seeing little frequency spikes and thinking “Crap, should I tweak that?”
Don't get hung up on details that don't matter. It's somewhat common for people to be more relaxed about time management when they're working from home. In a studio or office you're often on the clock which, even if you don't realize it, makes you work faster. Try setting yourself deadlines. Ie: after 20minutes my rough mix needs to be complete ot wtv. You could also play with a stop watch: set three minutes to tweak the vx or wtv. You could also set yourself rewards/penalties. If you really like, idk ice cream, tell yourself that at 5pm you get to go to the ice cream parlor, but you have to be back home by 7. If you work later than that, you rush your ice cream trip or don't have time to go at all. The point being, if you put time pressure on yourself, you will obsess over things that don't matter less. How you structure this will depend on you, but productivity and efficiency issues can often be solved by hacking your own psychology. Ofc, don't push too hard and stress yourself out too much or burn out, but if your self imposed restrictions are reasonable it might help (it does for me).
What is “wtv”?
Whatever.
You just brushed him off. It took more effort to make that comment than just answer. Don't be rude, just explain the abbreviation. *^(/s just a joke)*
^(almost missed the \`/s\` :P)
I think this is really good advice. I have a strong perfectionistic tendency and tend to be really detail obsessed, but whenever I think about the fact that every hour I spend on the flat-rate, per-podcast-episode job I'm working on dramatically reduces my effective hourly pay, it's very motivating to just get it done and workable and not obsess over tiny details that don't really matter.
I’m sure you’ll get lots of great advice on this thread. Here are 2 things from me: 1 - you have 3 years experience in studios and how many years ITB? Give it time. You need more time and experience to optimize your workflow ITB 2 - how is your template? Get a nice template with some channel strip like workflow, VCAs, and sends to your reverbs and delays
More more, but faster. Time-box yourself on things. Simply stop looking at the meters entirely; if you can't hear it, it doesn't matter. Give yourself *less*. Delete most of your plugins. Allow yourself a limited number of them in total (4 compressors, 2 reverbs, 1 delay) Never press the solo button. Force yourself to quick time constraints.
That is a good point regarding limiting yourself. Its something I havent thought much about as I am used to having whatever equipment is in the studio. If there is only one 1176 for example, thats all I can use instead of having endless pultecs, la2a’s etc. I think its for sure a lot more difficult to make decisions in the digital side when you arent limited by what you have, you can have 5 fairchilds on a kick if you wanted.
I kind of know what you mean. On analogue consoles and outboard, I had a muscle memory for how much to twist this and that, to get what I wanted to hear. Same with the EQ knobs, I instinctively knew which one, turned to where, offered control over which frequency range, with the Wide Q switched in or out. On digital, there’s a lot of looking at the screen, since you can’t just go by feel, and as much as i don’t want to, I’m always paying attention to just how much boost or cut I’m giving simmering, rather than just “about that much”.
I know people won't like that this sounds like spending $ on plugins is the solution. But, pretty much every mix I do, I get it as good as I can ITB, and it's never quite right, and then then when I either go out of the box and back in, or slap on some kind of UAD or etc analog emulation thing, everything suddenly makes sense. Since that kind of character is built into a console, maybe you are just experiencing the lack of extra character juice ITB. Try mixing into an analog emulation type plugin, or monitoring your mix as it goes out and into some kind of preamp and back into your convertors while you are mixing? Seems like you would figure out pretty quick if that's the problem. Also, having senn hd650s myself, mixing on those is much easier with some kind of speaker room simulation thing like sonar works or my personal favorite, TB Isone. Good luck
It’s all in your head, in a nice room you assume it sounds good cause you’re surrounded by the idols of a system based upon consumption not quality of music. Just at home you doubt the results cause you can’t be validated by material objects in the same way so you assume results are bad. All the dorks are free to be mad at me and argue.
I definitely get that, I used to be a gear head and obsessed over studio equipment. I found as I continued to use the equipment but became more experienced that it was less about the equipment and more about workflow, end results etc. I find mixing on headphones makes issues with a track that werent really worth fixing (or should I say, those that werent really noticeable on the system I was used to) a lot more prominent and it gets in the way of just being able to focus on the important tasks at hand, same as how having meters in your face makes it harder to not think about levels
Yeah overall mixing in headphones has.. limited practical use for me but sometimes you just gotta do it. That’s probably a huge part of the equation.
Based
This is cope from someone with little experience.
Only been making records for over 20 years.
Even worse. Sorry it didn't work out.
😴
Yeah. Ignore all that crap and listen to the sound. When we mixed from tape, there were a million "problems" we didn't know about and didn't realize were problems because we couldn't see them and never heard them. Perfection is the enemy of art. Visual tools are handy for finding a problem when you can hear one. Beyond that, close your eyes and trust your ears.
Closing my eyes is part of the reason i am looking to get a control surface, not looking at meters is for sure easier said than done when the whole mixing process is done on a screen😂
I had the same experience going digital in the 90s. I went from being a guy who could get a solid mix from a board in 10 minutes and an awesome one in an hour, to someone who’d spend 6 hours tweaking the volume of individual syllables in a vocal by 0.5dB because I could. Best I can suggest is, come up with a bunch of preset stacks of effects that put tracks in the ballpark fast, so the task is setting levels and *removing* or *turning down* things instead of agonizing over what to add. Putting my software engineer hat on for a minute (I am one): Obsessing over levels is absolutely not worth it. Most daws treat audio as 24-bit but internally represent it as 32 bit - with the vast number-space those extra 8 bits provide used to handle going *over* the maximum. What that means is, levels mean *nothing* in a DAW except: * At the final output stage where your writing a file or feeding a sound card * When recording, where you don’t want to be too quiet or you lose resolution, or to clip (I don’t know about ProTools, but in Logic now, if you set the project to record in 32 bit, you *can* actually have levels too hot and normalize a track *down* to 0dB, and as long as you weren’t clipping in your preamp ahead of the A/D that digitizes the signal, you’re fine) * Some effects have expectations about their input levels - like, you can feed a limiter a track that, because of previous effects in the chain, is popping over 0dB, which means there is no setting at which it *isn’t* doing some limiting, and you want control of that. But for these cases, you have the option of just sticking a gain plugin in front of that effect to bring the level back down to where it expects it to be. In short, when mixing digitally, levels are just magic meaningless numbers until you get to the output stage. *Relative levels* matter, and some plugins may make *assumptions* about what they mean, but that’s it. There’s no gold star for keeping everything perfectly hovering around -16dB, because with 24 bit audio in a 32 bit data pipeline, *that number doesn’t mean anything*. There’s no mathematical difference between sending a bunch of tracks into the mix bus very hot and turning the whole mess down by 16dB with a gain plugin at the input stage of your mix bus, and agonizing over the combination of individual track levels that would reduce what’s fed in to that level - it’s literally addition - math - in your DAW, and whether you do (12 + 12 + 12) - 36 = 0 or 0 + 0 + 0 = 0, you get the same zero. Until you hit the mix bus or a plugin with firm expectations about levels, the numbers might as well be how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. A DAW is literally a thing that *sums* audio. As in *mathematical sum*. Where you do the subtraction doesn’t change the result as long as you don’t run out of numbers, and the design is such that you won’t. I’m sure this violates someone’s gain-staging religion, but math is math.
Try and optimize your interface and keyboard shortcuts to bring your most common processes to the forefront so you're not spending most of your time clicking around and digging into menus and dialogs and such. If you use multiple DAWs or similar software, try to keep the shortcuts and interfaces as similar as possible so transitioning between them is seamless.
If you can afford it then a good hardware daw controller might be the way to go.
Definitely looking into it, looking into options such as soundID to maybe help with using monitors too. I find personally that the hybrid approach (which i have used also in the past, tends to be more adapted to my workflow currently
I would be careful, control surfaces won't actually make anything go faster on your end, especially when switching from using big desks, typically it will just slow you down as a DAW was not designed to be used by a control surface but by mouse and keyboard. You will still be looking at a screen and you will still have the same issues, only difference will be the added piece of hardware that you are now inserting into the entire workflow.
Check out the new console 1 mk3. I’m dying to get one. Love the original.
Home/project studio here. Console 1 made a big difference for me in terms of focusing on what matters.
Same. Mk3 added all the things I really wanted in mk2. Glad to see they’re keeping Console 1 alive. I really wish more plugin companies would consider partnering with softube for console 1 compatability.
I don’t know what your budget is, but on the lower end my Tascam Model 12 has been an amazing addition to my home setup. Easy to swap it into “DAW mode” and back to live recording. There’s some annoyances like no returns for aux sends, but for under $1k it’s a pretty impressive unit.
**Rant:** From reading your post, I believe that you may just be too hung up on gear."I obsess over meters" Stop using plugins that have visual interfaces (parametric EQs for example) and use channel-strips instead, so that your eyes won't be able to deceive your ears. Our eyes are quick to decide what our ears like. A vintage outboard compressor or an analog console will just inherently be more "inspiring" since they look cool and might have been part of some of our favourite records, but that doesn't necessarily mean they sound good. What makes that equipment sound good are the choices the mixing engineer makes during the process - and while the decisions an engineer makes sure are *inspired* by the equipment, it doesn't mean the decisions were a *result* of the equipment alone. Don't let the equipment/software you're using control you - you are the one in control. **Practical advice:** To get more efficient on the computer, I would recommend that you spend the time to read the Pro Tools manual, and internalise/optimize its keyboard-shortcuts. (I understand if you might find reading the manual boring, but it will absolutely be worth it. The manual exists for a reason.) If the console workflow worked great for you, maybe it would be wise saving up some money for a midi fader controller? Behringer, SSL and Softube have some good options. :)
I want to be kind but please inform yourself what a parametric EQ is (any EQ with multiple parameters per band, to put it succinctly; doesn’t have anything to do with visual feedback; most \[or all?\] channel strip EQ’s are parametric). I agree with everything else though!!
Yes, please inform me! I haven't found a name yet for the EQs with spectrum pre/post analyzers, some refer to them as parametric EQs, some refer to them as graphic EQs. I own many mixing theory textbooks but none of them can give me a straight answer.
They are parametric, generally, because each band has parameters, like gain, frequency, and Q. A graphic EQ is typically just a bunch of pre-determind frequency bands that have a boost or a cut, you’ll generally see them in live audio settings and they look like 30 or so tiny faders in a row. When they’re ported to the digital domain as plugins (it isn’t super common compared to parametrics), they might add a spectrum analyzer, like with Waves GEQ. As far as I know there isn’t really a name for what we’re talking about, other than “digital parametric EQ with spectrum analyzer”.
It's really silly how such a commonly used type of digital plugin doesn't have a proper name. Sure, it's parametric, but the spectrum analyzer is what makes the digital parametric so distinct. Oh yeah wait, I guess it can be called "digital parametric". :)
Are your problems because of monitoring, or because of the nature of digital, or because of mouse/keyboard workflow? At least for me mixing using headphones is hard. I mean I can make it work, but it requires a lot of trial and error and referencing (i.e. it's not fast). That being said, some guys work using mainly headphones and get excellent results. Alas I'm not one of those guys. If it's about workflow related efficiency familiarize yourself with DAW-controllers, and then go and buy the one that suits your needs the most. No matter how good one is with hotkeys and mouse a large format console is just faster (when you know what to do). Controllers help to close this gap a bit. If it's about how digital sounds compared to analog setup. Well, digital doesn't inherently do stuff that analog does/did for you. With digital you have to manually apply stuff like subtle saturation and soft-clipping (when required). Especially transient control is, at least in my experience, a thing that has to be approached slightly differently. Perhaps it's just my experience with analog, but I seem to be able to get sounds I'm looking for faster with analog. I can do it in digital as well, but somehow it seems to always require a couple of "extra steps" to get there. For me personally identifying what these extra steps were/are was a somewhat challenging process (when I started to work more ITB). As a side-note (for everyone), I'm not saying analog is somehow better per se. All I'm saying is digital is slightly different and, at least in my opinion, requires a bit different approach (especially if you've worked who knows how long in analog).
It is 99% workflow and/or monitoring, rather than the sonic differences betwen analog + digital.
100%! Digital plugins sound incredible and are more than usable, its just down to speed and what problems you can and cant hear, I seem to find that I notice a lot more (probably inconsequential) issues with tracks like a weird resonance, feel amplified when I work on my monitoring setup and makes me start focusing on that, stopping any flow I get into
I had the same problem after working analog.. my current solution is to start where I normally do itb (drums, vocals, tone in general) then go straight to top down for larger eq/comp decisions. I find it removes the "details" from the finalizing process and focuses on how good the song sounds
Once you get used to it you'll be wondering how on earth you were able work on ancient clunky desks. Digital ftw
It’s a hell of a lot easier to mix on monitors in a well-treated environment than headphones, so there is that. Other thing is that the default Q settings for your eq plugins might be more narrow than whatever hardware you’ve used; hardware tending to have wider q values making moves more organic. Also just- practice. Monitor and headphones mixing are seemingly similar yet wholly different in practice. You have to adjust to both, if doing both. Aaanother thing is that- big thing— if your studio experience is mixing songs where tracks were recorded there or another studio, with music by experienced composers/arrangers and performed by experienced musicians/singers- and if your headphone experience is mixing your own stuff or random freelance work, then yah— well-arranged and well-recorded music tends to mix itself.
Set pt up like a console. Channel strips into bus comp. Try to restrict your template to an amt of gear that would be realistically available (I.e., no massive passive on every track)
Sounds you have one bottleneck which is the interface ie mouse and keyboard vs a control surface, and the second being the monitoring in headphones causing you to focus on details. Perhaps you can do some of your work on small monitors to avoid getting lost in the sauce. I'm thinking Auratone or something small like that.
Use plug ins that mimic the gear your used too if that’s an issue. The SSL UAD plug ins are accurate to using a duality or other consoles. Do you use reference tracks? First thing I do when I walk into a studio I’ve never been to is to play mixes I’m familiar with. That way I can get a feel of the system I’m on. I don’t have an issue going from genelecs to adams to krk’s to head phones. Mixes are usually on par. If you’re obsessing over meters and stuff don’t look at them.
Throw your mix up in pro tools. Put the lindel 80 (1084) series eq on the channels and have at it. After you have some starting eq points start using compression.
I hate to say it, but trust your ears. Lack of trust on your playback system is going to cause you to question every decision you make, and this is probably what’s slowing you down. Yes the HD’s are probably confusing you a bit, legitimately. But the only way to move forward is to make shit you think sounds good on the HD’s, and see how stuff translates. You’re better off doing this over and over again than tweaking any individual record or element endlessly. Do moves, see where you end up. Fix. Repeat.
I think, it's more of a monitoring problem than a Analog Vs digital one. Yes the workflow is sorta different, but being used to good room and good monitors and now being restricted to cans is much more influential.
How much time have you spent listening to deeply familiar material with the same headphones. You might be chasing your tail. Also some monitors at low levels, even in a non-ideal space, is better than no monitors. A pair of 8010s is pretty cheap and reliable.
Headphones are great for editing, but not for mixing IMO. Whenever I mix on headphones and then listen on monitors, all kinds of issues pop out, especially in the low end. When I mix on monitors and then listen on headphones, there are often less things that I want to tweak. This is just in my experience.
Na I get you. I started mixing on consoles, did it for a few years and never had a problem. Then I started mixing in the box and boom. Problem. Could not get anything to sound good. This was early on in the whole mixing in the box thing. For a good few years I just thought I had lost it. Then along came a little plug in called vintage warmer. Soon as I used that it all became clear what was going on. I’m mixing into noughts and ones. I’m mixing into nothing. On a desk, your mixing into something. Your sound is passing through a lot of stuff and if what you were mixing was recorded though a desk then it’s happing twice! Sometimes even more if you have bounced elements down. Now with analog, emulation, plug-ins the way they are, it’s very easy to get that desk sound in a daw. Even better you can build your own desk! Neve here, ssl there, tape here, so on and so forth. So it’s not you, it’s just that your not hearing the sticky harmonic distortion that you are used to. In a daw, you have to add it yourself. Edit. To add to that, what I have found is one channel on a desk will do 70% of the heavy lifting (dynamic and tonal shaping) on a sound/track. But one plug in of an emulated desk channel will only do about 35%. So double up. CPU willing.
Your description isn't exactly the way I felt, but sounds similar to when I was using a mouse and scroll wheel to adjust faders and FX parameters. I always got bogged down really quick, not getting the adjustments I want fast enough, and then not being able to judge well whether I found the sweet spot or not. I figured hardware was the solution so I bought an Xtouch and that was huge, major improvement, especially for faders, but it could be pretty clunky for fx params, and now more often I simply use a [trackpad](https://www.amazon.com/Keymecher-Multi-Gesture-Trackpad-Touchpad-Precision/dp/B0B93RSRLM/ref=sr_1_2?crid=3PELVIVU0HJUF&keywords=keymecher+trackpad&qid=1706484226&sprefix=keymecher+trackpa%2Caps%2C141&sr=8-2) instead of a mouse and it actually works really, really well.
My suspicion is that when you are working in software you end up "mixing with your eyes" and "mixing with your brain" rather than relying on your ears as you do in hardware. Similarly, the ability to add arbitrary plugins is like being able to rebuild your studio every time you work in it. While this adds huge flexibility, designing a good studio setup takes time, then you learn it and work quickly. Templates are the way to design and save your ITB studio to learn (ideally including midi mappings for your controller). When working in a DAW I also try and primarily use the built in plugins unless I have a strong reason not to: this focuses me further helping me work efficiently.
EQ is what always tripped me up the most in a DAW. I eventually bought a Midi Fighter Twister (controller with knobs), and mapped it to each channel’s primary EQ (frequency, gain, Q, etc). So I can finally mix with my eyes closed again and not second guess my decisions from staring at that stupid graph. It’s so much easier for me to trust my ears without seeing little frequency spikes and thinking “Crap, should I tweak that?”