I've said it time and time again in many articles. If you want to make a great recording, you have to start with a great source. This means that if you don't like the sound of your recorded guitar, it's probably due to the way the guitar amp's tone controls are set. I define the source as the musician, the performance, the musical instrument, and the room. This is the stuff that an engineer may not be able to touch but a producer may be able to.

It's my personal opinion that the source is almost everything and if you get it right, you are 90% of the way there. This is why it's typical for the big boys to switch out instruments before they reach for an eq or move a microphone. When I took a band I was producing to big studio with a Neve console, the engineer did not adjust eq much after he got what we were looking for. If I said, “I want a thicker snare on this song”, he'd grab a different snare drum. If I said, “I need just a little more crack in my snare” he'd go out and tune the drum to pop a little harder. After the initial setting up of the drums, there wasn't much that changed on the engineering side. The focus was entirely on getting the source right.

At one point, we heard a weird ringing in the cymbals. It turns out that the drummer was hitting the same cymbal while it was still decaying. The engineer recommended that he alternated crash cymbals. It worked out great! Again, it was not engineering that got us great drum sounds, necessarily. It was focusing on the source that got us great drum sounds!

Why I Focus On The Live Room Acoustics

It's been debated a thousand times on home recording forums. Which is more important? Live room acoustics or control room acoustics? Some very experienced engineers say that the control room acoustics are very important. I can't disagree with that one. However, when it comes to making compromises, I'll compromise the control room first.

Think about the most popular drum sound of all time. I'm thinking of Led Zeppelin's “When The Levee Breaks”. I've heard several times that it was recorded with just 3 microphones. I don't know if that is true or not. What I do know is that the room IS that sound!! Without that huge sounding room, there is no way it would have sounded like that. Imagine putting that drum set in a 10'x12'x8' room and record it. It would sound NOTHING even close!!! The room, which is a part of the source, became part of the instrument in that case.

So in the most extreme of circumstances, I'd gladly pick the biggest sounding drum room (assuming I wanted huge sounding drums) before I picked the most accurate mixing room in the world. Imagine you were in the best mixing room in the world and you brought up the faders of the tracks that were supposed to sound huge, but were recorded in a closet. The tones wouldn't be there!! Good luck using that perfect room to “create” the drum sound!

Can You Make Tones In The Control Room?

There is debate on this one, too. Can you make tones in the control room while mixing? Well, with some extreme creativity you can make a recorded track sound different (and maybe even add some vibe to it that really makes it work), but seldom are you going to make average sounding tracks sound mind blowing by playing with EQ and compression. We just don't have the tools to change the fundamental character of a recording yet. (We probably will eventually, though).

I must admit that mixes where I try to get too fancy and do too much always turn out like crap. When I try to alter what I have tape/disk too much I end up with something that not only sounds fake, but also sounds wrong. So, I find that I get VERY aggressive about certain things when I'm mixing. However, I usually have to tell myself that the tracks “are what they are”. If I don't love the tracks, I need to stop mixing and call back Mr. Musician to retrack.

Since I don't like the notion of trying to get “When The Levee Breaks” type of drum sounds with a Waves Reverb Plugin, I have a problem. It's my opinion that I can not fake the When The Levee Breaks drum sound with plugins. (Maybe I'm wuessing out). I think I'm being realistic. I think a reverb plugin is the wrong tool for the job. I think a great sounding, big room is the only tool for that job.

Potential Control Room Problems

Okay, I need to clearly state that I don't think you should ignore your control room. I've never said that. I've just said that I think it's more important to record instruments in a great space than it is to have a pristine place to mix. I've been to mega studios with platinum records on the walls. I wasn't blown away by what I heard there either.

Ideally, you've have a killer control room and a killer live room. I 100% recommend that for everybody. If you have an extra great room, send it my way!!

The hardest part about having a crappy control room is you need to guess with the low end. The bass response is never accurate in a small room, especially one that hasn't been treated with $30k worth of acoustic treatments. You'll find that as you walk around the room with the monitors cranked up that the tone of the bass changes drastically. So this can make it tough to figure out just how much low end you have.

Personally, the biggest problems I have with studio monitoring is what I call “the curve”. There is a basic frequency response curve that pretty much all major label cds follow. There is a tolerance so as long as you are within +/- X dB then your mix will come out sounding pretty good normally.

I find that getting that curve can be tough with a terrible control room. Then again, I've seen mixes that sounding amazingly powerful in pro rooms sound “alright” when played elsewhere.

Generally, I have more time for mixing than I do for tracking soI can always burn a cd and listen on a few systems. If the curve is off a little bit on my mix I can always go back and make a few slight changes to get me there. I think a tremendous record can be mixed at home. It just takes more time to get right. There is more guesswork in a crappy room.

Conclusion

Unfortunately, us home recording guys have to make a lot of compromises. It sucks, but it is the way it is. I will always strive to make sure that my microphones are picking up the exact tone I want and I will not focus on using tricks and or plugins to make the sound in the mix. By focusing on getting the source perfect, I know mixing is going to be relatively easier. It's a pain when you have to guess on your studio monitors, but this seams to be a problem for everyone, even the big boys, every once in a while.

I don't believe in fix it in the mix and luckily, if I get the source right in the beginning, there is no fix it in the mix. Good luck.