Question 2 Answered
Keep those questions coming. I'll answer what i can. This question comes in anonymously....
"Ken,
in your experience, what is the best converters can use? i use apogees and love them but am always looking for the best especially for final mixes when i cant to half inch."
Well, I guess this all depends on budget and fanaticism. when your talking about high end convertors you are talking a major money investment for a minor improvement. I've posed this question to several mastering engineers in the past and done some of my own listening, though I've never really gotten too hung up on the issue.
In fact, one of my favorite mixes that I've ever done was printed ONLY to 16 bit DAT, thru an Apogee PSX 100. That mix was Usher's "Throwback" on the Confessions album. This mix might be my favorite radio mix I've ever done, and we printed at 16 bit!!! (this was Just Blaze's choice, not mine, and there was no half inch machine in the room.) I did print 24 bit stems back into pro tools, but the mastering was done off the 16 bit dat. So, although i fully endorse the use of high quality convertors and 24 bit mixdowns, you see i think people sometimes get too caught up in the quality of the convertor and not caught up enough in the quality of the mix itself.
Truth be told, the most important piece of equipment during any mix is the mix engineer, period. this one piece of "Gear" will have an astronomically greater impact on the outcome (good or bad) of your mix than all the rest of the gear combined. Choose wisely. :-)
After that, yes i personally think its important to have great gear to mix if you want to come out with a great mix, however, the best mix gear in untrained hands is usually pretty worthless.
Back to convertors. DAC gets very high marks from both Emily Lazar and Andy Vandette. I've never used DAC, my favorite that i've used is the Prism convertors. Having said that, even being a top pro mixer, i cant bring myself to spend that kind of money on 2 channels of A/D. Apogee has always been the industry standard, and while they aren't the best out there, i think they probably offer the best price for performance, and they sound great to my ears. I've never used Lucid, but people tell me they are good. For recording, I still use the Digidesign 192 interface, which i think sounds great. I'll be moving to 16 in/out of Apogee just as soon as i want to drop another huge chunk of dough on the never ending pursuit of gear, but for now, my 192's are rockin.
I really love mixing to half inch, but i dont own a half inch machine, and fewer studios i go to have them or maintain them well. And with the uncontrollable urge of labels to do recalls, especially with as easy as it is to recall with digital, you can really eat up alot of your budget on half inch tape.
One thing to possibly consider instead of upgrading from your already great sounding Apogee, is an analog summing box. I just bought the SPL Mix Dream. The summing box, in a nutshell, is an analog mix buss for a pro tools style mix, and is supposed to give you more depth and width and clarity in your mixes. I have not begun using my box yet, I'll keep you posted on whether i think it makes a difference.
Now, I'm not advocating that we go technologically backwards, however, i do have to point out one thing that the race for sonic perfection has seemingly forgotten. the end user will most likely be listening to your mix as a degraded quality MP3. I'm not saying we dumb down the sonic quality of mixing due to the dumbing down of the end user format, however, i think we need to stay focused on whats most important, great feeling mixes. a super high quality A/D isnt, in my opinion, going to change the perception of the end user for 99 percent of listeners, and these things cost big bucks. in a perfect world, i would own all the best gear, in the real world, i own far more gear than any one person should probably be allowed to, but there will always be something new to buy. choose wisely where you spend your money and make sure your spending on what will most enhance the musicality and creativity of your mixing (like spending money to hire a great mix engineer, there i said it :-)
goodnight
-Ken Lewis
"Ken,
in your experience, what is the best converters can use? i use apogees and love them but am always looking for the best especially for final mixes when i cant to half inch."
Well, I guess this all depends on budget and fanaticism. when your talking about high end convertors you are talking a major money investment for a minor improvement. I've posed this question to several mastering engineers in the past and done some of my own listening, though I've never really gotten too hung up on the issue.
In fact, one of my favorite mixes that I've ever done was printed ONLY to 16 bit DAT, thru an Apogee PSX 100. That mix was Usher's "Throwback" on the Confessions album. This mix might be my favorite radio mix I've ever done, and we printed at 16 bit!!! (this was Just Blaze's choice, not mine, and there was no half inch machine in the room.) I did print 24 bit stems back into pro tools, but the mastering was done off the 16 bit dat. So, although i fully endorse the use of high quality convertors and 24 bit mixdowns, you see i think people sometimes get too caught up in the quality of the convertor and not caught up enough in the quality of the mix itself.
Truth be told, the most important piece of equipment during any mix is the mix engineer, period. this one piece of "Gear" will have an astronomically greater impact on the outcome (good or bad) of your mix than all the rest of the gear combined. Choose wisely. :-)
After that, yes i personally think its important to have great gear to mix if you want to come out with a great mix, however, the best mix gear in untrained hands is usually pretty worthless.
Back to convertors. DAC gets very high marks from both Emily Lazar and Andy Vandette. I've never used DAC, my favorite that i've used is the Prism convertors. Having said that, even being a top pro mixer, i cant bring myself to spend that kind of money on 2 channels of A/D. Apogee has always been the industry standard, and while they aren't the best out there, i think they probably offer the best price for performance, and they sound great to my ears. I've never used Lucid, but people tell me they are good. For recording, I still use the Digidesign 192 interface, which i think sounds great. I'll be moving to 16 in/out of Apogee just as soon as i want to drop another huge chunk of dough on the never ending pursuit of gear, but for now, my 192's are rockin.
I really love mixing to half inch, but i dont own a half inch machine, and fewer studios i go to have them or maintain them well. And with the uncontrollable urge of labels to do recalls, especially with as easy as it is to recall with digital, you can really eat up alot of your budget on half inch tape.
One thing to possibly consider instead of upgrading from your already great sounding Apogee, is an analog summing box. I just bought the SPL Mix Dream. The summing box, in a nutshell, is an analog mix buss for a pro tools style mix, and is supposed to give you more depth and width and clarity in your mixes. I have not begun using my box yet, I'll keep you posted on whether i think it makes a difference.
Now, I'm not advocating that we go technologically backwards, however, i do have to point out one thing that the race for sonic perfection has seemingly forgotten. the end user will most likely be listening to your mix as a degraded quality MP3. I'm not saying we dumb down the sonic quality of mixing due to the dumbing down of the end user format, however, i think we need to stay focused on whats most important, great feeling mixes. a super high quality A/D isnt, in my opinion, going to change the perception of the end user for 99 percent of listeners, and these things cost big bucks. in a perfect world, i would own all the best gear, in the real world, i own far more gear than any one person should probably be allowed to, but there will always be something new to buy. choose wisely where you spend your money and make sure your spending on what will most enhance the musicality and creativity of your mixing (like spending money to hire a great mix engineer, there i said it :-)
goodnight
-Ken Lewis
posted by Protools Mixing at 4:38 AM
2 Comments:
Learn to type and learn to spell.
Keep it up Ken ! ! No bullshittin straight down to earth talk. Youre a genius ! ! !
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