Mixing with the DAW's plugins

[Uncle E]

I've seen the same advice come from a lot of the EDM guys that are making and selling records, i.e., are producing "professional" mixes.

Again, you and I have been referencing a different standard of "professional". Yours is the right standard, mine was wrong. ARIA's producer of the year Flume is certainly a professional, it's just not the standard by which I'm personally aspiring to. Since the question was NOT "can a DAW's plugins make mixes that Uncle E is aspiring to," I acknowledge that the things I've been saying on the matter have been incorrect.

On the spin-off thread, we've been discussing the idea of a mix challenge. Would you or anyone else in this thread be interested in participating in that?

http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic ... 4&start=45

[Uncle E]

KVR Mix Challenge

I'm gonna put my money where my mouth is. Any takers?

[arkmabat]

I think, before plugins, there was more focus on getting the performance nailed in the first place...

Let me add that even the Beatles used ADT, Sampling, "Cut and Paste" performance and so on, though.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beatle ... technology

[Hink]

On the spin-off thread, we've been discussing the idea of a mix challenge. Would you or anyone else in this thread be interested in participating in that?

http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic ... 4&start=45

no thank you,
1. Mixing is my weakest link imo, I would rather a less judgmental exercise. I have nothing to prove, just more to learn.
2. I really am not a fan of contests, winning isn't important to me (see above)
3. With the vast amount of different people from different places enjoying different genres I get a headache trying to figure out how the winners and losers would be judged. How do you define a good mix? My definition is a mix that is interesting, I believe it's the mixing engineers job to not only create a balance of all the tones but also make it interesting...so now you have to define interesting and that will change. People will disagree on what is interesting and what is not, example...I wont find a dance mix very interesting cause I dont dance (well I do but we call it gag em style)
4. What's to stop us from getting help, you dont know my list of friends on FB but besides my cousin I have a few very good mixing engineers as friends. Of course I could just throw Rob's new plugin in there
6. My entry would be late

not trying to be a negative Nancy, have fun...I just dont like competing when it comes to music (which of course is atypical and should not be meant to suggest contests are bad in the arts, just not my thing)

[Uncle E]

2. I really am not a fan of contests, winning isn't important to me (see above)

Then just vote for a winner!

3. With the vast amount of different people from different places enjoying different genres I get a headache trying to figure out how the winners and losers would be judged. How do you define a good mix?

That's the beauty of polling, the winner would be decided by a collective of subjective opinions. Any one person's definition of quality would be averaged in with the community's definition.

4. What's to stop us from getting help, you dont know my list of friends on FB but besides my cousin I have a few very good mixing engineers as friends. Of course I could just throw Rob's new plugin in there

There are many ways to cheat but what's the point? All you're winning is the opportunity to get mixed in the next contest, you could just have Rob mix your music directly.

[Hink]

There are many ways to cheat but what's the point? All you're winning is the opportunity to get mixed in the next contest, you could just have Rob mix your music directly.

like I can afford him He probably gets more per hour than my lawyer

I'll vote, I just wont compete...who wants to start the bidding for my vote

[Guest231427]

This:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pmZM4NW_eA

[ghettosynth]

On the spin-off thread, we've been discussing the idea of a mix challenge. Would you or anyone else in this thread be interested in participating in that?

http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic ... 4&start=45

no thank you,

6. My entry would be late

See, that's funny. I don't care about those kinds of things either. I'm glad people run them because sometimes I like to grab the stems to try out ideas with material that I have no connection with. I think that it helps to mitigate certain kinds of bias when I'm testing out gear. It also gives me several reference mixes on the same material that I can compare to my mix. But, I'm not willing to spend enough time with the process to finish an entry.

I might vote if it crosses my radar, but I have most of the forums filtered out of my watch on here because there's a lot of noise so I don't always see such things. Despite good intentions, I've voted in the one synth only challenge once, maybe twice. I also tend to vote very quickly, in the reaper forum pearl mic mix challenge referenced in the other thread, I would have quickly voted the reference mix down for too much damn reverb and it doesn't sound natural/good. I only had to listen to a few seconds of the track for that.

[Uncle E]

But, I'm not willing to spend enough time with the process to finish an entry.

I don't see myself spending more than 1-2 hours on a mix.

[kbaccki]

I've seen the same advice come from a lot of the EDM guys that are making and selling records, i.e., are producing "professional" mixes.

Uh oh. "Professional mix" = "mixed by a professional"… but not necessarily "good mix". I hear a lot (and I mean A LOT) of crap mixes today. My conclusion: a lot of "professional mix engineers" (and dare I say "prooooduuuucers") are producing crap mixes. If all you need to do is compress that crap out of a 2-bus, for example, then sure any old stock compressor will do.

[ghettosynth]

I've seen the same advice come from a lot of the EDM guys that are making and selling records, i.e., are producing "professional" mixes.

Uh oh. "Professional mix" = "mixed by a professional"… but not necessarily "good mix". I hear a lot (and I mean A LOT) of crap mixes today. My conclusion: a lot of "professional mix engineers" (and dare I say "prooooduuuucers") are producing crap mixes. If all you need to do is compress that crap out of a 2-bus, for example, then sure any old stock compressor will do.

But now you're defining good subjectively, when you leave it in the realm of "professional", we at least have a somewhat objective measure of "good", even if you don't like it. This was my point earlier, successful dance mixes work on the dance floor. BTW: I'm not talking about fly by night "produuuccahs", I'm talking about successful EDM artists.

My definition of "professional mix" here is just a bit more than "mixed by a professional", as I said, many flops have been mixed by a professional. I mean that the record in question was mixed by someone who earns their living from mixing records, and that the record succeeded commercially in the market in which it intended to succeed. That means, by definition, that those people who earn their living playing said records, i.e. DJs think that the "mix" works on the dance floor. It doesn't have to work in your studio to be successful under that definition. This, in a sense, controls for some of the subjectivity inherent in deciding what's a "good mix." I'm sure that the label thought that "Jagged Little Pill" mix was great, I find it grating.

This is an adequate definition for the OPs concerns, and especially so if he's talking about EDM. He wants to know if he can be successful at the level of someone asking such a question. His definition of "professional" must be limited to be practical. If you're talking about getting into the Hot 100 then I doubt that having or not having any particular plugin is going to make 1/1000 of the difference of having a certain talent or financial backing. If you have that backing then you will have access to the tools at that level, because, it's likely you aren't mixing your own stuff anyway and you wouldn't be asking the question in the first place. Do you think MJ ever asked mom and dad if the equipment was good enough? I doubt that seriously.

[hibidy]

This:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pmZM4NW_eA

That's "the muzic" right? Yeah, he's good. If that is the one I saw a few months back there is actually a second part with 3rd party plugins from someone else. The results were largely the same.

[ghettosynth]

But, I'm not willing to spend enough time with the process to finish an entry.

I don't see myself spending more than 1-2 hours on a mix.

Yeah, I'm sure that you are a lot faster than me, and I'm not willing to spend even two hours mixing someone else's music for a contest. If I were going to spend a few hours working on someone else's music in the context of a contest, it would be in a dance music remix contest.

I encourage you to do it, I might download some stems from time to time, I probably will read the threads and listen to some of the mixes, but it's unlikely that I would bother to submit myself. I view these kinds of activities like playing video games, I'm not motivated by the carrot of winning, so they feel like empty activity. I have plenty of empty activity in my life that requires far less overhead to get going, e.g., posting on KVR.

[ghettosynth]

Of course this is right, there is always a middle ground, but, the tools in cubase 5 are certainly sufficient to obtain a good recording.

im sorry but cubases vst fx plugins are garbage both in 5 and 7.

With all due respect, I don't trust your ears at all.

http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic ... w#p5697412

See this post on gearslutz. Interesting note in there regarding Live's EQ as well.

http://www.gearslutz.com/board/music-co ... s-wow.html

I say that these "standard" clean, digital (including stock-) EQ's sound 90% the same in 2011. ONLY if upsampled, linear phase, special curve (like emulations of certain hardware), character EQ's with specific gain-Q interactions and saturation (like PSP sQuad, which are not simply curves) they will have a different, maybe better (subjective) sound.

It's mostly workflow and what you see/look at. Your mind often plays tricks on you (in general - not you specifically, of course).

Phonat uses some third party plugins with his old copy of SX3, but, for a lesson in minimalism in the studio that still leads to results, watch him talk about how he did some of the work on his first album. A third party EQ is not going to sell more records if you aren't already selling some.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jk4xxxJT-Jc

http://owsla.com/artists/phonat/

[AstralExistence]

Of course this is right, there is always a middle ground, but, the tools in cubase 5 are certainly sufficient to obtain a good recording.

im sorry but cubases vst fx plugins are garbage both in 5 and 7.

With all due respect, I don't trust your ears at all.

http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic ... w#p5697412

See this post on gearslutz. Interesting note in there regarding Live's EQ as well.

http://www.gearslutz.com/board/music-co ... s-wow.html

I say that these "standard" clean, digital (including stock-) EQ's sound 90% the same in 2011. ONLY if upsampled, linear phase, special curve (like emulations of certain hardware), character EQ's with specific gain-Q interactions and saturation (like PSP sQuad, which are not simply curves) they will have a different, maybe better (subjective) sound.

It's mostly workflow and what you see/look at. Your mind often plays tricks on you (in general - not you specifically, of course).

Phonat uses some third party plugins with his old copy of SX3, but, for a lesson in minimalism in the studio that still leads to results, watch him talk about how he did some of the work on his first album. A third party EQ is not going to sell more records if you aren't already selling some.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jk4xxxJT-Jc

http://owsla.com/artists/phonat/

lol i don't care if you trust my ears or not. i used the pos that is cubase 7 for 2 years. its so not wanted by anybody it took me 2 years to sell though i was selling artist. again, good riddance. if you enjoy working in it then im happy for you.