by Roger Nichols
Digital Forever
I just finished mixing the Japanese album I mentioned last month. I mixed it at Chung King Studios in New York City on their AMS/Neve Capricorn digital console. This was, so far, the most fun I have ever had with my clothes on.
When talking about the size of a Capricorn console you must mention the total number of I/O channels and the number of physical faders. The normal analog spec that mentions the number of inputs, busses and aux sends is meaningless, because the inputs and outputs of the Capricorn can be anything you want them to be. The Capricorn at Chung King had 190 channels of I/O pairs (one in and one out is a pair). The inputs could be configured as analog inputs through NVision converters, digital inputs from digital multi-tracks, returns from effects, or returns from DATs or other mix destinations. The outputs could be sent to channels of the digital multi-track, analog multi-track, aux gear, two track mix machines, or anything else you could think of.
The physical console consists of a center section and one or more sections that contain 24 channel strips each. The Chung King console was fitted with three of the 24 strip sections. The number of physical channel strips is up to the client, because you can actually record and mix a 96 track digital project with only a center section with one fader. There is a Capricorn in Nashville and one in a mobile truck that only have a single 24 channel strip section.
Do you like the EQ before the dynamics, after the insert, before the fader, or EQ on the dynamics side chain? A graphical interface allows you to configure the DSP blocks anywhere you want. Do you want to insert some of your own digital processing before the master fader and use the final dithering in the console? No sweat.
But How Do I Really Feel?
On one particular mix, I had what I thought was a good sounding mix, but I wanted to try a few things with drum balances, panning and EQ. I spent about 90 minutes screwing up what I had. It took less than five seconds for the console to reset to what I originally had going. I could even easily toggle between them. At one point I kept everything I had from the mix I was working on, and recalled all of the drums from the final mix of another tune.
OK, so you can do this with a digitally controlled analog console. But try this. I had a guitar track that exhibited some phasing between the direct tracks and the amp tracks. Delaying the direct tracks made the guitar part feel funny, so I advanced the amp track earlier. The ambient mics for the drums sounded too far away, so I made them earlier and the drum sound tightened right up. I had trouble setting deep gates on the toms, so side chained them from an earlier feed from the tom tracks so the gates would open in time.
I also used mostly digital outboard gear, like the Lexicon 480-L, Lexicon MPX-1, Roland 880, TC-M5000, TC Finalizer, and Valley Audio 730LT.
I Can't Recall
During the Steely Dan Live album mixes, Donald Fagen wanted to recall a mix to turn one guitar down about a dB. We put everything back just exactly the way it was during the mix, which took about two hours, and then A/B switched between the final mix we had and the recall. We got things pretty close, but the new mix just didn't feel as good as the final we had. We could not match them up close enough to make the change, so we left it the way it was.
Part of the reason for the difference is the accuracy of the positioning of each of the thousand knobs on the console. An EQ knob off by a hair, reverb sends off by a smidgen, a different "Fader Cal" on Neve Flying Faders or VCA drift on an SSL can all contribute to the missmatch.
The final test of the Capricorn came on the last day of the two weeks of mixing. The artist wanted to make some very small changes to some of the mixes that had already been printed to the master tape. Recall of the mix with all of the cross-patching, outboard gear settings, and fader labeling took less than one minute. To confirm that the mix was identical, I printed a piece of the new mix to hard disk, lined it up with the same spot on the original master, inverted one copy and added them together. The results was an empty file. They were exact, sample by sample. We turned the congas up a little (very precise technical term) and printed the new master. We did the same with four other songs. Recall the mix, change a couple of little things, and reprint the master.
ONE SONG PER DAY?
The reason behind the one-song-per-day schedule is this. After you spend a lot of time getting everything to sound perfect, your ears get tired and you get used to hearing things that may not be exactly the way you want them. Over the years it has become common practice to get the mix to where you think it is done, make a DAT of the mix, and take it home to listen. Maybe you will listen later that night, or maybe the next morning when your ears are fresh. When you go back to the studio you make the changes you need to make and print the master. Some artists and producers print multiple "versions" of the mix just in case later they decide that the vocal should be a little louder or a little lower.
When the versions are printed, you start on the next mix, get it to the place where you think it is done, make a DAT, go home and finish it the next day. The cycle continues until you are done.
This is the benchmark that seems to work out the best. Of course, there are exceptions. Sometimes the mix is kept up for three or four days to a week or more. The artist could come back after listening at home and decide to re-do the vocal, or try an entirely different approach to the mix, or take a two day break to go water skiing. Who knows. Who cares. If you have your own studio, or the budget to lock out someone else's studio, then fine, go for it.
The underlying premise is that nothing gets touched or changed until you are finished with that song, because everyone knows how hard it is to get back to where you were.
The Digital Way
Back to our Capricorn mixes. Our work days in the studio weren't that long each day and I knew that we would want to do some recalls on the last day. We had already mixed one song in Los Angeles on a Neve 72-VR. The Capricorn mixes sounded much better and I wanted to re-mix the LA tune. Our schedule of one tune per day would not give us enough time to mix the additional song. What's a guy to do?
Each day I went to the studio a couple of hours early, stored the song in progress, and worked on the extra song. When the artist came in to OK the previous day's mix I stored what I was doing and recalled the mix in progress. The changes were made, the mix printed, and the next tune brought to completion. The next day I came in early, recalled the extra song, worked on it some more, and so on. A few days before the end of the project I also gave the artist an overnight DAT of the additional song that was OK'd and printed the next day.
Woe Is Me
I asked my wife to proof read this article. The next time I went downstairs
my Yamaha 02-R was gone. It was in her demo studio and her old analog console
was leaning up against the wall. I just got my Yamaha 03D, so I may have
a hard time convincing her to return it. Maybe if I offer her a nice assortment
of colored grease pencils.