Mixing in the Box

Hi all

I hope you are all fine and tautly waiting for Christmas Eve. I‘m sure after snowy days you will have some original Swiss Fondue with friends while chilling to downtempo music in your warm and snugly living room.

Once a student ask me about mixing in a box versus on a desk. In all opinions people have I can always listen to a small comment like: yes the analog way sounds better than digital mixing and it is the good feeling to work on a analog desk. Well, the way how the most producers work today is not the way like the others did 20 years ago. But while following the technological progress during 10 years of audio engineering activities in different kind of studio works, most of the people like to go back to a retro sound, but they still want to work in the box.

After I tried all the Studio Classic plugins and LA imitations from Waves, it was clear for me to keep the way to produce bands like I ever did in a perfect combination. I always rent a studio with a good room sound and analog equipment (SSL 4000 or Neve VR). I have overdub sessions at small less expensive studios and I finally edit and mix at my „home sweet home“ mixdown suite. Today we have a lot of possibilities to optimize our workflow while not loose money in far too much expensive investments for own recording studios. Of course you should have readiness to invest. But you should also know how technologies will advance in the future. Hardware become software. Software needs no expensive maintenance repair. You can insert copies of software plugins into several channels while hardware can‘t be cloned instantaneous and cost-free. Software plugins can now be a good replication of old good sounding gear by applying a technology called impulse response. You can also create your own impulse response to fill banks with your favorite EQ presets, e.g. using Q-Clone from Waves. You just need one gear of good EQ to replicate it as a plugin inserted in each track of your Pro Tools Session. You can also capture impulse responses from a room to use an adequate room acoustic in your post production. IT IS AMAZING.

But behind a good mix in the box it needs more: good musicians, good instruments, good vibes and good tools like Pro Tools. My favorite one. Each time when I taught Pro Tools guys drop a comment like: „Pro Tools is fast and has nice features like Tab-To-Transient... but...Cubase and Logic works the same...“ - I am sorry to say yes. Digidesign is erring on the side of conservatism. The same look and functions over years, just little features added from time to time. But Pro Tools is a studio standard, wherever you are, Pro Tools always works like yours at home. Once when I was invited to have recording session with Logic Pro 8, it was so difficult to get into the flow of work because this engineer has personalized Logic for himself only. I have to say that I forgot my shortcut file at home. But after a long night in my hotel room I have re-established all my shortcuts I needed for that session and the second day I was better. That could never occur with Pro Tools.

Students often forget to activate a so called plugin delay compensation. What happens is that each plugin‘s process occurs a delay on the current signal, which is in fact a good hearable phase shifting. Try to do a parallel bus compression, and you know what I mean. That‘s why I like mixing on a ProTools HD System. I have each plugin delay compensation under my control while on other systems I haven‘t.

Have you ever asked yourself why TDM (Time Division Multiplexing) plugins cost twice a RTAS plugin? Second question: have you ever compare the sound quality of TDM reverb plugin and the same in RTAS version? If I insert the Altiverb XL plugin (TDM) I am not be able to apply a longer reverberation time than 4.2 seconds with my 5 years old HD 2 system. This is just an example where you see how computational intensive this TDM plugin can be and the sound is really better than the native version. That‘s worse for my budget when I like to mix in the box in a perfect sense but it really pays off.

So, if you have further statements like these I would be happy about hearing from you and discuss with you. Let's mix in this "blox" :-) . At this point I wish you a merry Christmas and a happy new year.

All the best
Zumbi