[zboy2854]

Originally posted by robmix
When I was coming up I assisted Bruce Swedien and Chris Lord-Alge. Both respected mix engineers with completely different approaches. In both cases their mixes were consistently good whether or not the tracks and productions were well done. It was really just a question of how many hoops they had to jump through to get there. Bruce would go through some serious craziness to get each track sounding pristine - trying different outboard D/A's, sometimes using esoteric audiophile gear to clean up someone else's tracking mess, doing huge track edits by offsetting two machines. Chris was a fast EQ and compression guy, some snare samples, lot's of outboard gear, etc. I've seen both of them save songs. Chris once mixed a song for a big female artist that everyone thought would be left off the record, it was an after thought. By the time he was done it was being considered as the first single. The production got in the way of the song, but by the time he was done cleaning up the mess the song became the focus again and everyone realised what they had.

And THAT's why the big name guys are big name guys, not because they're lucky and get to work with great material all the time, but because they're just that good.