warning! amature in troublemaking mood!

posit a mixer; for the last 3 days, he has lived on starbucks coffee / pastries, and he has not showered or brushed his teeth...

this is unacceptable to the powers that be.

for his punishment, he has to relive 3 days of his life... he has to mix the exact same commercial pop/modern music track each day.

day 1, he gets to do his mix on ssl9000j
day 2, he does his mix on a neotek
day 3, he does his mix from cubase w. uad/urs/tc plug summed thru behringer 1604 vlz clone

his goal is to produce a mix that sounds good on lots of different consumer playback systems, the majority of which are sub-optimal...

question...

does it make a difference, in terms of the end goal, what system he's using?

yes, one may be more of a pleasure to work on... one may be more convenient, one may provide more options, etc... but

in the end, isn't the name of the game to twist knobs till it sounds right?

isn't that achievable on most any reasonably featured modern gear (that works?)

excepting time and ease, can't, theoretically, the same man produce 3 solid, pro mixes?



no offense, slutty 1's
(just trying to justify getting off the slutpath and get back to spending money on booze and broads, sinatra style ...)

/smartass mode on

It won't matter since it will all be squashed to hell in mastering, squashed again by Clear Channel, or reduced to a 128K MP3 for Ipods which use a pair of 39 cent earbuds.

Quality no longer matters, which makes me wonder why anyone uses anything besides broken Shure SM-58 mics into a Beheringer, or better yet...Beheringer CLONES!

/smartass off

I'm glad I actually had a chance to hear the results from decent gear before all this cheapass audio insanity became the norm.

Bri

At least you gave a good excuse!

War

Not me! Ignorance would be bliss. I mean what cables and which outboard to buy just cost money, talent and some education to get stellar sound. Once you knew it, you knew it. Now to go high end you have to make sure the gear you buy is "COMPATIBLE" with gear you already own, not to mention have room for expansion in you system cause it'll be out dated in six months if you don't. Let's not forget, God save you if you've fell behind the learning curve cause you just blown a year trying to learn the new stuff which, by the time you actually know it inside and out, it has become obsolete. If you get lucky enough, the heavens align and you do achieve a stellar sound, like you said "It won't matter since it will all be squashed to hell in mastering, squashed again by Clear Channel, or reduced to a 128K MP3 for Ipods which use a pair of 39 cent earbuds."

I cried the day the music died and I morn it still!

the more people involved in the creative side are inspired, the better the result.....

so, be it girls with pagers, lavalamps, diy fairchild clones, plug-ins with glowing tubes, freedom scale chairs replacing herman millers, hovland caps in the les paul, a basketball net on the trashbin, blue leds, a fatty (not in the control room please) etc.

The result, mangled, L2'd, mp3'd.....will still have inspiration.

That's why!

Andy

...Beheringer CLONES!

Isn't this redundant?

Damn straight, you're right!

'It's boozin' time, baby!'

I still can't f-ing believe they made Sammy drive the garbage truck in Ocean's 11!

When Mars Music was still around, I was there picking up something or another, and indeed, they had Beheringer clones. Chinese-made lookalikes with a brand name I'd never heard of that were priced below Beheringers.

Bri

Ahhh, taste the sweet, delicious irony! heh

Behringer clones

Man...........even the cloner get cloned........LMAO

one things for certain...stepping up from ****ty gear is always a great feeling. not so much if youve always used high end, right

wonder what beethoven would've given to have a crack at all the cheapass audio insanity at a guitar center these days...

all that dude needed was a book of blank sheet music. add a group of great classical players. done. no technology needed....

right... but u don't think he'd use finale or sibelius, a gigasampler, and a vienna string library, at least? dam site more convenient than 95 musicians

plus, he'd probably appreciate the loudness wars in mastering...

he was deaf, after all

To get back to the actual question, I believe that a good engineer could get good results one each system. The tools given will make the mixers job easier or harder, faster or slower, but in the end I believe if that person know how to mix a jingle, they know how to mix a jingle.

Case in point: I used to work at a music store. Every year for Christmas we'd get a huge stack of Strat-Packs. Those are the cheapest version of a Strat, the cheapest amp, a cheap cable etc. My friend Jerry, one of the best guitarists anywhere, could really make those things sound great. It was in his hands and his ears and his brain. Put him on his own '53 Tele and his Matchless and he'd sound even better, but musically the same.

Capice?

Hmmmm- but he did sound better on the better gear. Thats what we're concerned about here isn't it?

the thing about good tools used musically is that they make the chain IMPROVE at every step. i call this "rolling down hill" ... and it's the goal on every record i produce (not many, about 4/year) to roll down hill from the performance with nothing but goodness coming from the equipment.

average or ****ty tools can be well used to make mediocre or pretty darn good results, but it's often like pushing a rock uphill, or just a lot of sideways motion.



the deeper thing about quality is that the essential Quality of a chain can be heard at reduced bitrates. And the bitrate/compression shift of mp3 applies to everything equally, so a better recording still sounds better than all the other recordings on an mp3.

OTOH a ****ty mix or master is always a ****ty mix or master ... the better equipment doesn't help



Brian's right ... hundreds of thousands of dollars are tuned into digital moosh with Extreme Digital Limiting everyday, and it doesnt help that they're not very pretty tracks in the first place. OTOH, an all analog recording can be slammed pretty hard and hold up, if the initial tracks are higher quality.

" BERHINGER CLONES "

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHA !!!!!!!


I may rename my studio Berhinger Clones !

I think a lot of people that I have the honor of posting with around here could kick my ass on a mix hands tied behind their back with Cubase and plugz running through Berhinger Clones.

That doesn`t mean I personally don`t sound a heck of a LOT better with the current gear I used compared to the stuff I used to.

I think it makes a big difference personally beyond just ease of working. The sonics themselves are the big picture and it`s way easier to work when your sound naturally starts to get all glowy and nice through your gear as opposed to trying to fix brittle, muddy bull**** tracks with papery, gritty plugz or gear like I used to. From tracking to mixing I have the capablility of easily making really good sounds now which makes me screw it up a whole lot less.

Most of the chains have them. Sam Ash has Carlo Rebelli, GroovePack, StageWorks, Samson, and even Hartke (which they own). When I worked at Thoroughbred Music in Tampa the owner Elliot Rubenson owned Dean Guitars, D-Drums, and I think he bought Oberheim also.

All that proprietary stuff has HUGE mark ups, usually what you pay is double what they pay for it after the discount. Other gears margin, like Korg, Roland, Mackie, is much smaller.

I started with ****ty gear. I had nightmares because of ****ty gear. Plugs pretending to do something they cannot do. Plug synths that sould like sh*t on mix.

'Au contraire', analog Andromeda synth passed thru valve comp sounds (and uplifts mix) better than all plug synths together. I can smell good synth sound at 100 yards. By using Hi-end gear you are not forced to (desperately) fill arrangement with less-than-average sounds - it is doomed to failure.

Certainly better gear and better synths sound better (more unique, attractive) on radio, CD, MP3... IT IS worth to work this way. Financially too.

Look at Trevor Horn. He entered Hall of Fame by clever usage of Hi-end sounds on Frankie Goes to Hollywood project alone. So in analogy, better finish one Hi-quality project than hundered above average ones.

Ordinary people are aware of hi quality sound. When listening to mediocre production, they don't know technical explanation, but 'it just doesn't sound right' to them.

For pure tone I think it's true that crappy gear is a non-starter.

But people don't buy pure tone. Only engineers do. And a few geeks.

You mix the song to deliver to the public and the public hears it SO different than the mixer.

You tell them a song they love is done on ****ty gear they go:

"Really? Huh. I think it sounds really good."

But the original idea of the thread is'
I think a pro can do that.

Re-read mine and Lucey's posts.