| I'm gonna take a crack at answering the question, cause I've had a lot of experience mixing. If I understand the original question, you are asking if the big mixers' stuff sounds good because they get great tracks or they have awesome skills to mix whatever they have to deal with. The answer is they have awesome skills to deal with, whatever they get.
I can tell you from experience that having great sounding tracks to mix does not automatically equal a great mix. It might make it a little easier, but you still have to have your mix game bangin' to go the extra distance to make it sound like a record. It doesn't make THAT much difference whether the tracks are pristinely recorded or just average sounds with a blunder here and there. In fact, for me, killer, perfectly recorded tracks are sometimes MORE challenging because it's tempting to declare it done before you've gone that extra distance.
What is REALLY important is not whether everything has gone through a Jag XKE preamp and a Fairspank toob compressor, but the quality of the production. However in these non-linear digital days, sometimes problems in the production can be improved during "mixing". Just part of doing whatever you have to, to make it sound like a record.
Dave McNair |