Waves Native Power Pack or T-RackS 24?

[tallbobsmoke]

I took the poor man's solution. Instead of using any extra software or plug-ins to dither and maximize, I am using a 1/4" reel-to-reel tape machine to do the job.

Recalling what my electronic music teacher told me about how analog tape machines clip a signal, I felt that it would do the trick.

Take a listen if you like: http://www.tallbobsmoke.com/ADAD/HotPotCity.mp3

[Doc]

Very [img]images/icons/cool.gif[/img] song. Reminds me of Frank Zappa. Very fat sounds especially drums and sax. What did you use on the session?

Only a couple of things:
The top end is a bit left channel heavy. Watch out for this when pushing the levels to tape. This can cause the stereo image to shift about.

The stereo image sounds blurred (uneven frequency / phase response). I'd be checking the 1/4" for head wear and misalignment and/or oxide buildup. Are you using noise reduction? If so, what type?

Both of these things could have been caused by the MP3 encoding, especially if the encoder was set to 'joint stereo' not 'stereo'.

Anyway, I like the song and the mix a lot. Please let us know when you post more [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

[tallbobsmoke]

Doc:

For this session I used:
bg4.1 condensers over the drums
sm57's snare and hi hat
a bg dynamic on the bass drum
sm58's on the toms

Horns:
i mic'd the bells with sm57 and placed a bg4.1 condenser about 2 feet off the side of the horns. i mixed these signals about 50/50.

I pre-processed most of the tracks with the standard 4 band EQ (no boost, only cut) and also processed with the standard compressor on the horns, snare and bass drum

The high frequencies in the left channel are probably due to the keyboard being panned hard left. I have no doubt that there may be some imperfections in the heads of the 2-track, but the best I can do is clean them with alcohol. So the imperfections will have to fall under the category of "character" [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

If you want to hear a goofy country song, try this one: http://www.tallbobsmoke.com/ADAD/SkywalkerStomp.mp3

Thanks for the comments.

[theom]

sorry to throw a fly in the ointment but have you checked out waveburner by emagic?

I really like it. It burns red book cd-r and has a great plug in arrangement where you can put plugs on individual songs and then another insert point that affects the "mix bus" after what you put on the individual tracks. It uses VST plugs. and there are a lot of good mastering plugs out there in the vst format.

I think they have a demo, check it out.