Re: [LAD] Half-OT: Fader mapping - was - Ardour MIDI tracer

On Fri, Aug 22, 2014 at 12:32:19PM +0200, Ralf Mardorf wrote: I'd agree with that (while not commenting on the rest). Regarding EQ pre or post 'tape', that is for a part a matter or personal preference, but also related to history. At the start of the multitrack era, many engineers were perfectly capable of mixing the type of music they usually handled 'live'. They didn't need a hundred trials to arrive at a good mix. And with only 16 or 24 tracks available, you often had to pre-mix things before tape. Using EQ at that point was a natural thing to do. The typical structure of the mixers used at the time also plays a role. Desks used for multitrack production were in fact two mixers in one box. In the first generation, you had a 'main' mixer with everything on it, EQ, inserts, large faders, etc. While recording tracks, this was used to mix the signals going to tape, on 16 or 24 mixing busses. A separate 'monitoring' mixer, usually a lot simpler, no EQ or just a very simple one, was used to create a control room monitor mix of the tape signals. Aux busses were shared between the two, so you could create a monitor mix for a musician using both the mic signals and those already on tape. For mixing you would switch the main mixer inputs to the tape outputs and mix them on a stereo bus, again using all facilities provided. These desks tended to be quite large, since the monitor mixer was a separate section, usually to the right of the main one. Using EQ while recording was a natural thing to do when using such a mixer, simply because it was available, and for the reasons already mentioned above. Then came in-line mixers. In-line means that one channel from the main mixer and one from the monitoring one were combined into a single strip. So each strip had two faders, the second normally being a small one. One advantage was much reduced size. At the same time the signal routing was made more flexible, to the point that the two signal paths within a strip could swap roles. In other words, even while recording tracks you could opt to use the 'simple' mixer to do that and the 'main' one for control room monitoring. The result was that at the end of a session you could have the main mixer completely set up for the mix, including post-tape EQ and any effects, without having to change anything. And on some mixers (more as time went on) you could save that setup and recall it later, so this was an interesting way to work. All the large mixers I ever used (Neve, Harrison, SSL) were in-line, and I usually preferred to use them as explained above. It was a personal thing, some other engineers at the place where I worked did the same, and some others never did unless they had to provide a live mix for broadcasting while recording multitrack at the same time. A DAW such as Ardour has remnants of the in-line structure. Logically there are still two signal paths in each track strip. But the 'pre-tape' part, instead of being a mixer, has been reduced to the mininum: no gain controls and fixed one-to-one connections from inputs to tracks. The only thing that remains is that you can measure the input signal, and use it as input to the main path while transport is stopped or the track is recording. With unlimited tracks available, this makes sense of course, though it encourages postponing everything to the mixing stage. I'm not convinced that is always a good idea, you can easily end up with 'too much to handle' there. Ciao, -- FA A world of exhaustive, reliable metadata would be an utopia. It's also a pipe-dream, founded on self-delusion, nerd hubris and hysterically inflated market opportunities. (Cory Doctorow)