Discuss here mixing and mastering

Speaking of 'Billie Jean', I read last night that the drums are actually 3db louder in the intro, and then Bruce Swedien does a slow fade down to tuck them in by the time the vocals come in. It's so obvious now but I never thought about it (or assumed it was due to mastering compression), it's so simple and brilliant. You get hit with "wow these drums bang" at a level that wouldn't be sustainable over the whole song.

I read ages ago that Quincy/the engineer on that album would use fresh tape for the drum beds, immediately bounce them to work tape, build the song on the work tape, and then only use the original drum bed tape when it was mix time, "so frequent replay doesn't deteriorate the transients on the drums", iirc

Regardless of the truthiness of the story, this isn't a lesson to me about "good usage of tape", more that it brought transients and their importance to my attention, I suppose

Totallyyyy. I also read someone theorizing that Thriller was engineered to overemphasize transients because they would be rounded out on cassette (and probably vinyl too), and that they're overly spiky today on digital. Interesting theory, but I don't really buy it (especially in today's world of super punchy transients).

Transients have a big Goldilocks factor for me lately, trying to find that perfect middle ground. I've mostly been guilty of ignoring them in the past (especially in search of super compressed and saturated tones), so now I'm trying to pay attention to them without overcorrecting hopefully. Or maybe I wasn't ignoring them, I just didn't know what I was doing and would solve problems by adding more layers with samples etc. The parallel processing thing has been helpful in certain instances, when it's hard to get it dialed in just right through compression though. Awhile back I heard someone say that they realized that one thing all their favorite records had in common was how the transients come across and that's haunted me ever since.

can someone here give this noob a working definition of "transients"? I do know my audio tech and sound physics fwiw

this revive reminds me of a recent interview I saw with James McNew of Yo La Tengo, talking about how they recorded the new album on their own, but sent it off for mastering "because that is something that can only be done by wizards"

Basically it's the attack at the beginning of a sound, like the stick striking a drumhead or a pick hitting a string. As opposed to the sustained tone that comes after. So sometimes you want to tame that with compression for a more even sound, but you also need them eg for drums that should 'hit' viscerally and not stroke your ears like a feather.

got it, thanks - the only other thing I knew was "that's what Rush fucked up on that album that people hated"

Haha, oh really?

https://gearspace.com/board/mastering-forum/736700-cant-stand-new-rush-album.html

Vapor Trails, I think

i've hired people for mastering before but never mixing. how does that work? you send them the basic stems? do you send any references, like your own mix attempts, to give an idea of what you're aiming for, or are you just trusting them to figure it out?

I think yes, that's exactly it? From what I've seen. I think it depends on the mixer but I think it's more than just levels and can get into pre-mastering kind of choices, EQing and dynamics at the track level, which obv can't be done in mastering?

I think the more information the better? Notes, references (other people's records for an aesthetic, your own mixes with what you did & didn't like?), yeah. If you've already done things that you're really happy with or that are integral to the sound, leave them on the stems rather than make them start from zero and recreate what you've done.

From what I've seen with friends, the trouble is only when the band and the mixer are going for different aesthetics and it's not communicated well. Also I guess revisions can be sticky, I would think that any mixer should be ok with one main revision pass and maybe some small adjustments after that, but I imagine most would charge more if it drags on and have some sort of agreement around that?