Human Mistakes

[pauli]

I think animosity is impeding on a very important discussion, here... technical versus musical processing. My observation is that most engineers lean toward one camp or the other, most likely due to their backgrounds as either musicians or audio technicians. Fabulous results abound from both styles, obviously. I try to balance the two approaches but as I was a musician for 15 years prior to learning the basics of mixing and recording, my processing decisions most likely "serve the music" the way I want to hear it (and in the places I'd want to hear it), and I'd probably be more likely to go against my gut/personal taste to try and get the sound an artist is going for. But the more technically oriented engineers are looking to create much more cross-platform sounds... sounds that will hold up well under many different listening systems and listening situations, which is more likely to sell, without question.

This leads me to the observation that there are some serious apples to oranges comparisons going on here... we're here practicing/showcasing our mixing skills without the intention of producing something that will satisfy both the band and their producer with the dollar signs for eyes, so at least in my opinion, personal taste is going to be a big factor in any sort of artistic decisions we might want to make... and obviously there's a difference in opinion here

One of us is the kinda guy who's looking for results that have strong cross-compatibility with other systems, which I agree requires a well treated room and quality equipment (and a recording from a well treated studio with professional mics really helps, too)... and his mixes get a lot of (in my opinion) unfair criticism, partly targeted at his artistic decisions (again, personal taste, here) and his unwillingness to sacrifice good translation to all systems, including audiophile systems, for somewhat better musicality on a limited number of systems... and this is further complicated by the home studio nature of most of these projects... where in most cases, you can only guess at the room, mics, artists intentions, and many of them were recorded under constraints that make it very very difficult to achieve his goals without compromising in some way.

And on the other side of that token is the fella who is willing to overlook 100% cross-system translation to retain his perspective on the artists intentions, filtered by his own personal tastes... simple as that. This is an easier perspective to work from in the case of recordings made at home because if you can keep the damage under control enough to get it balanced in your untreated home-office/bedroom on mass market computer speakers, most people listening in similar situations and on similar equipment (and most casual listeners WILL be listening to music in those situations) will hear a balanced mix as well, provided you're referencing appropriately and you know what professionally mixed music sounds like on your equipment. Although I have to agree that a spectrogram is necessary for the bass, because even identical rooms can vary tremendously in bass response depending on what's in there and a zillion other factors.

But you can't really compare the two approaches on Boolean right vs. wrong grounds, because the objectives are completely different... This is an important topic of discussion that can benefit us all if we can keep that in perspective!