Never Touch the Faders???

[DC-Choppah]

I know an older , experienced gentleman from the days of real studios and hit records who told me that it is best to consider the level of the instruments you are recording during the tracking phase, relative to what you want them to be in the arrangement and mix.

In other words, if you want the tensor sax 6 dB below the vocal when you mix, try to track it this way. So the idea is to make the tenor play as if he is backing up a vocal on stage, laying back, sitting naturally behind the vocal.

Now sure, you can record him doing his blaSTINg, but then turn him down in the mix. But I think that his point was that by leaving the faders all at 0, it forces you to factor in the arrangement DURING the tracking and this will get a more natural sound.

He told me to think of it as a goal. And then the corrections that you make are just that, corrections.

[mesaone]

Originally Posted by JFreak

And this is relevant to audio mixing, because you're making a song of dimmer and bulb buzzes?

It can lead to interference in the monitors, and any signal on the way in. http://ethanwiner.com/dimmers.html

But... I didn't actually think someone was conflating faders and dimmer switches, I was joking.

[Bob Olhsson]

Back in the mid '90s the gain control of a waves reneq sounded way better than the faders in Pro Tools or any other DAW. Thankfully we're long past that but I can certainly understand paranoia of that crunchy sound.

[Craig F]

Originally Posted by DC-Choppah

I know an older , experienced gentleman from the days of real studios and hit records who told me that it is best to consider the level of the instruments you are recording during the tracking phase, relative to what you want them to be in the arrangement and mix.

In other words, if you want the tensor sax 6 dB below the vocal when you mix, try to track it this way. So the idea is to make the tenor play as if he is backing up a vocal on stage, laying back, sitting naturally behind the vocal.

Now sure, you can record him doing his blaSTINg, but then turn him down in the mix. But I think that his point was that by leaving the faders all at 0, it forces you to factor in the arrangement DURING the tracking and this will get a more natural sound.

He told me to think of it as a goal. And then the corrections that you make are just that, corrections.

I can't disagree

[JFreak]

Originally Posted by DC-Choppah

In other words, if you want the tensor sax 6 dB below the vocal when you mix, try to track it this way. So the idea is to make the tenor play as if he is backing up a vocal on stage, laying back, sitting naturally behind the vocal. (...) He told me to think of it as a goal. And then the corrections that you make are just that, corrections.

That makes perfect sense in analog world. Digital though, is somewhat different. If you have 144dB dynamics (24bit fixed-point wav) and 124dB converters, then everything peaking lower than -20dBFS is eating the AD conversions dynamics.

But that technical fact being said; the old man's advise still holds true. If the material itself isn't very dynamic, it really doesn't matter whether it's peaking -20 or -40 dBFS as long as you get a great signal out of the preamp into the converter.

Just need to turn up the volume when tracking lower levels :)

[elicious]

the op's question comes from a real place and not just sniffing glue!

a long time ago, in a studio far far away,
many of us were using pt tdm systems as a tape deck and feeding the audio through our consoles.

there was a lot of hand wring about the "digital" sound of pro tools being crunchy, grainy, whatever;
like bob mentioned with the waves eq gain sounding better than the pt faders.

many of us felt that there was a fault with the summing mixer in ProTools.

*ancient geek-speak alert*
the 48bit output (some plugins were 48bit at the time) on inserts and also on big sessions where the TDM chips had to create invisible submixes to link in more TDM chips, involved using 24bit wide data paths.
this meant that anything at 48bit (the mix accumulator or 48bit plugin output) would have the 24 LSBs truncated.

many people thought this explained the weakness in the PT summing mixer.

If you were outputting all your channels individually to mix them externally, the feeling was to keep the faders at unity as PT truncates it's outputs.

If you are mixing internally within PT the fader outputs are passed along to the mix buss without being truncated.
therefore you didn't experience quantization error caused by the truncation of the 48bit signal at low fader levels when mixing internally as you do when mixing externally.

after a lot of back n forth, digi published their white paper
and introduced the dithered mixer,
tho stating that these errors going from 48bit to 24bit would be way below the hearing threshold.
In theory, true but it is feasible that enough correlated errors could interact with the program material to possibly be heard.

digi even set up an a/b test against a sony oxford mixer to compare.

as far as the master fader is concerned, this only relates to loss of headroom,
and post fader plug in issues.

anyhoozel, this is what the op's friend was referring to.
(and probably on an older tdm system.)

as always, test these things for yourself…
e

[Bill Denton]

Every since I read the info provided by DC-Choppah it has bothered me, as it kind of flies in the face of what I learned back when I first got in to radio and analog tape recording. Of course, "just cause you larnt it don't make it right!" Keep in mind this was before the days of "distortion as a musical element".

DC-Choppah had quoted an old-school guy who told him, "... it is best to consider the level of the instruments you are recording during the tracking phase, relative to what you want them to be in the arrangement and mix."

I was taught to "get your gain in the lowest-noise part of your signal chain", and "always cut hot to tape".

Since the biggest gain jump occurred in the mic-to-preamp segment, hopefully the preamps were quiet, so you could "get your gain in the lowest-noise part of your signal chain" through the preamps and weren't amplifying any noise.

And "always cut(ting) hot to tape" meant you would not be amplifying hiss or other tape noise.

Every since I read the old-school gentleman's advice I've been trying (unsuccessfully) to make it "fit" with what I learned back in the day...perhaps Bob Olhsson or some of the other guys who have been around for a while could help me out?

[JFreak]

I'm just thinking that the guy wants the faders to stay in the linear (plus minus 10dB around unity gain) area where the fader movements have more precision.

[bcwiz]

Originally Posted by JFreak

I'm just thinking that the guy wants the faders to stay in the linear (plus minus 10dB around unity gain) area where the fader movements have more precision.

Most definitely!
Also on an analogue desk part of proper gain structure in the constant battle to keep the noise floor as low as possible. Done properly the master fader is not too high or low either.

[shtik]

The point is to get your tracks recorded at roughly the level they're going to be in the mix, while the faders are at unity.

This way, every level change needed will be no more than +-5 dB's.

The perfect tool to do that is an inline analog console. It is possible to run the preamps as "hot" as you like, while maintaining a moderate signal into PT. Crank the gain up while lowering the small fader, and vice versa, while staying at the same perceived level. This way it is easier to judge what sounds better to your taste and not just "louder".

Do touch your faders at mix time, but you'll realize that that your fader moves will be much more natural and musical.