I definitely second rendering to audio. I have a shitload of hw but get easily stuck in changing things around and fiddling too much away from what works - basically still in the ideas stage. So commitment to recording is what gets me to finish anything.
I'll echo a common BONES theme too: keep it simple, leave the fancy endless plug-in options alone. Coming back to music a 2nd time after quite a few years break and I deliberately avoided collecting loads of sw, especially things like comps, Eq, limiters etc. I barely use Eq and my mixes are better than they used to be. I've seen opinions from the odd "pundit" who I trust that say: if you're going to use Eq then be bold and commit, Eq heavily so it is audible - if you can't
hear it then why are you doing it? And if you can't hear it IT DOESN'T NEED IT. I think we often Eq because we think we ought to, not because it makes it better. Obvs I use compression but again - simple. Most of the time it's stock Cubase comps or TDR Kotelnikov - clean, no nonsense. I used to dick around with fancy sw comps and hundreds of different modes and esoteric settings and tbh I just don't hear the difference coming at it nowadays, yet I used to spend hours on that nonsense. I do still use an old LA4C hw, but only occasionally and for in-yer face compression that is almost an FX.
Also I know I'm a sucker for putting too much in, too many instruments, too many lines. It's part of the fun for me, but the tracks I listen to and like the most are far sparse than my own mostly. Good tracks can have as little as drums, bass and lead. As opposed to my 10 synth lines. Then I wonder why those commercial tracks are clearer than mine.![:dog:]( "D'oh!")
But as ever, depends what your aim is. Mine is not end product for others. Take out the fun and I wouldn't do it, and the process is fun for me. Still, it's too easy to complicate it imo. My mixes done decades ago on a mixer, 2 or 3 synths, 2 FX boxes without even a compressor were better than plenty I did in 2000-2015 that I did with a computer full of 100s of plug-ins on every channel and every softsynth I could think of and then some, with literally everything Eqd and filtered and gated and normalized and enhanced then butchered to the nth degree on the master channel. My master channel now has compressor, limiter. That's it. I finally learnt that if I can't effectively say I know what I'm doing with all these esoteric Eqs and automated Eqs and levellers and multiband this and that...then don't use them. I used to multiband the shit out of some old tracks and now they sound so grating and flat and irritating to my ears.![:scared:]( "Scared")
I'll echo a common BONES theme too: keep it simple, leave the fancy endless plug-in options alone. Coming back to music a 2nd time after quite a few years break and I deliberately avoided collecting loads of sw, especially things like comps, Eq, limiters etc. I barely use Eq and my mixes are better than they used to be. I've seen opinions from the odd "pundit" who I trust that say: if you're going to use Eq then be bold and commit, Eq heavily so it is audible - if you can't
hear it then why are you doing it? And if you can't hear it IT DOESN'T NEED IT. I think we often Eq because we think we ought to, not because it makes it better. Obvs I use compression but again - simple. Most of the time it's stock Cubase comps or TDR Kotelnikov - clean, no nonsense. I used to dick around with fancy sw comps and hundreds of different modes and esoteric settings and tbh I just don't hear the difference coming at it nowadays, yet I used to spend hours on that nonsense. I do still use an old LA4C hw, but only occasionally and for in-yer face compression that is almost an FX.
Also I know I'm a sucker for putting too much in, too many instruments, too many lines. It's part of the fun for me, but the tracks I listen to and like the most are far sparse than my own mostly. Good tracks can have as little as drums, bass and lead. As opposed to my 10 synth lines. Then I wonder why those commercial tracks are clearer than mine.
But as ever, depends what your aim is. Mine is not end product for others. Take out the fun and I wouldn't do it, and the process is fun for me. Still, it's too easy to complicate it imo. My mixes done decades ago on a mixer, 2 or 3 synths, 2 FX boxes without even a compressor were better than plenty I did in 2000-2015 that I did with a computer full of 100s of plug-ins on every channel and every softsynth I could think of and then some, with literally everything Eqd and filtered and gated and normalized and enhanced then butchered to the nth degree on the master channel. My master channel now has compressor, limiter. That's it. I finally learnt that if I can't effectively say I know what I'm doing with all these esoteric Eqs and automated Eqs and levellers and multiband this and that...then don't use them. I used to multiband the shit out of some old tracks and now they sound so grating and flat and irritating to my ears.
Statistics: Posted by kritikon — Sun Nov 24, 2024 9:49 pm
