Message 8/17
Date: 10-May-01 @ 10:44 PM -
RE: new tracks...
I totally agree with the mixing on fresh ears theory. I think it was more the high mids than the treble that stood out to me.
Once I had a slight buildup of wax in my ears (prolly due to monitoring too loud thru cans) and I didn't really notice, but then suddenly I went completely deaf in one ear apart from low frequencies below about 250Hz, anyway I went to the Doctor and got them syringed, and for a few days my ears were extremely sensitive to high frequencies. After they had settled down I was listening to some of my stuff I had recorded before and they sounded REALLY bright. Luckily I just remastered them though an eq and they were fine. Worth a try?
Another thing which I think is important is to monitor at a medium level, If you monitor too low then you tend to knock the bass up too high and if you monitor too loud you over compensate for the treble and upper mids. Where I live at the moment I can only monitor at quite low levels and I have found that some of my mixes were too bass heavy, I tell you, its a fine art getting a mix to sound right. A tip I picked up from a friend who's been in the game for years is to do the original mix, then reset the mixer totally and do another mix, then again reset and re-record again, also do one mix with enhancer and compression and one without, then your demos can sound bright and punchy but when your stuff gets pressed use the unprocessed mix, using the cutting plants vastly superior outboard and the (hopefully) experienced cutting engineers years of knowledge.