Engineer is giving my band information, IS IT THE TRUTH??

[ThatOneGuyOverThere]

Hello and thank you for reading.......

My band has recorded our latest album with a small studio 1200 miles away from home that uses Pro Tools HD on a Digidesign board. We are happy with the tracking, but he just finished mixing the album and it is not suiting our ears.

We have a studio closer to our home with the same Pro Tools setup and Digidesign board that we recorded and mixed our first album ourselves in, our hope is that we can have him send us the files, and we can improve on the mix he has worked on up until this point.

We like what he has done with the EQ
We like what he has done with compression
We like some of the reverb & delays he has used.
We just want to work on the mixes, panning, add verb & delay in spots

This is what our Engineer is saying

"50% of the mixing has been performed with outboard hardware and the other 50% has been with plug ins. If you guys take these files elsewhere for mixing you will be starting completely over!"

So is this true?

1. If the Pro Tools tracks are sent to us, and we don't have the same plugins/outboard hardware then will these adjustments be transparent to us? He is saying he used expensive compressors etc. on our instruments, and if we take the tracks from him, all that will be lost because we don't have the same equipment. Otherwards all work will be lost and we will have to start over with raw tracks.

We just want more creative control with the mix, this engineer is good at tracking but his mixing skills are lacking.

What's the truth about all this?

Thanks

~ TOGOT

[crizdee]

Originally Posted by ThatOneGuyOverThere

1. If the Pro Tools tracks are sent to us, and we don't have the same plugins/outboard hardware then will these adjustments be transparent to us?

Yes! if he has used outboard on the mix then this will be missing if he sends the sessions to you.

There are options to bounce the tracks down as audio files? maybe if he's willing and able to do it correctly. You certainly wouldn't lose the expensive compression if he was to bounce the tracks to audio!!! the complications are the effects that are used!! if these are outboard as well then they will also be lost.

Other option could be stems! but this could be complicated if not thought out before hand.

I would ask him to send you one of the sessions and get it loaded at your local studio and take a look and see whats missing. chances are most of the effects could be re-created quite quickly.

The engineer does have a point! but he should also offer ways to get around this! carefull bouncing of the files with clear mix notes and it could be done, but would cost in time and money to do so.

Chris

[hummerZ]

Either give him comprehensive notes to work from and make adjustments, or get someone to mix it locally. and yes, you'd have to start from scratch, more or less.

[Keybeeetsss]

Again Criz, from the good ole days of Family Fued "Good Answer-Good Answer"

[Kenny Gioia]

As a mixer, anything I get is a completely from scratch remix.

I don't see much point in preserving something that you don't like.

Just hire someone else (why would you think you could mix any better?) where you like their work.

Gear won't be an issue with a new mixer.

And the guy is telling you the truth. In fact, without further payment I doubt that he's going to reprint pieces of his out board gear for you.

I don't know any professional mixers who'll do that for you.

[KingFish]

Not to follow Produceher around today, agreeing with everything... But - I also make about 70% of my living Mixing.

I have MY favorite compressors, outboard gear, and a tremendous investment into the plugins "I like to use" and at the end of the day... like a musician, or any other artist, I get "A" sound that's kind of my own, as does Kenny, as does anyone who mixes, and I'm generally hired because people love what "I get"

I generally wouldn't touch the other Mixers "Printed compression tracks", if you don't like his mixing, find someone who "Gets it" for you, and have them mix from scratch.

[s.d. finley]

I would agree with the start the mix over camp. Keep the other
guys final mix, just in case you like it better.

[GrooveJungle]

And the guy is telling you the truth. In fact, without further payment I doubt that he's going to reprint pieces of his out board gear for you.

I don't know any professional mixers who'll do that for you.

Further to that, I would not want someone else's printed compression or EQ on tracks. I want it raw so I can take anywhere I need to go.

I prefer to start with a session copy, remove most of the groups, plugins and automation, starting from scratch because in the end I get happy quicker than trying to reverse someone else's setup/mix, and I can grab any critical automation from the original session, if need be. . .

[ddwhitney]

Another reason to start fresh is that the monitoring between the two places are probably completely different which can be misleading causing more headaches downstream...

[Mixchump]

Here's my take on this.

In this age of reckless disregard for intellectual property, you must understand that the work that's being performed by your mix engineer is owned by him. Because you are the client, you own the raw tracks that were recorded, and the final mix, but nothing in between.

ANY work that he has done in the mix process belongs to him. It is absolutely unethical and professionally irresponsible to try to obtain his ProTools session files and modify them. Even ASKING him IF you can do that demonstrates that you don't understand the nature of this. Yes, in the old days, depending on the project, the record label would get copies of the SSL automation disk, the recall sheets, patches, etc... But, that only ever happened IF it was the label that was paying the bill for the session. I can tell you that some of the most DIFFICULT days in the studio have been when some f&%*head at the label decided that he wanted to exercise their corporate power, and recall a guys mix and f&%* with it. After 20 odd years in this business, I have NEVER seen one of those mix recalls end up on an album. Whenever that dreadfully awkward situation would occurr, one of us staff engineers or assistants would casually alert our good friend the mix engineer that some label douc43bag was recalling their mix, and the resulting backlash would always ensure that the half-baked mix recall would never see the light of day.

If the client at the studio is a high-end mix engineer, and he's paying the studio bill (or owns the place), the studio costs are a portion of his overall mix fee, and the intellectual property inside those mixes belongs to him. Yes, it's a work for hire, but you own the result, not the process.

For example; you commission a popular artist who is renowned for his vivid colours and texture work to do a portrait of your family. You will own the finished canvas upon completion, but you do not get to know how he mixes his colours to get his result. If you hire Chris Lord-Alge to mix a single for you, you pay the fee, and you own the final master. You don't get to de-construct his mix and get copies of his drum samples, and observe/emulate his routing and dynamics chains.

You have to try to work with the guy to get the mixes where they need to be, or pull the plug on those mix sessions, pay the guy, and move on to another mixer. THAT is why it's very expensive to make records. There's a very good chance that his mixes suck, and that hiring a better mix engineer may be the best carreer decision you've ever made. There's also a very good chance that another mix engineer might not get it as close as it already is.

If you want to move along through your career with integrity, then you must understand this. This is a VERY subjective industry.

Cheers, and good luck, eh?

(my words in this post are not meant to be personally offensive, but merely a strongly worded opinion piece directed at the idea, not the person)