Made some good strides last night until I had to shut down for the kids' bedtime.
First thing I did was start a new project from scratch and instead of using stems, imported all of the individual tracks. A big project, but not huge by today's standards; 79 tracks in total for this one.
Next thing I did was set up buses for all of the main elements -- drums, electric guitar, acoustic guitar, &cet. Then I routed each track to its appropriate bus. The buses then feed from my interface out to the desk.
Once I had all of the elements up, I knew my processing ITB would start to be compromised, so I kept it simple. Just used the channel strip EQ in Cubase (6) for the most basic corrective EQ. Things started improving.
The only 'luxury' I afforded myself was to strap Waves awesome Kramer Master Tape across each bus. Things immediately started to gel.
I then went with simple LCR panning for everything aside from the drums, which have a few soft panned elements. LCR really had me analyzing which elements were the most critical. Did basic level adjustments in Cubase with all faders at Unity.
Lo and behold! Something akin to music! Finally!
The next hurdle was monitor related, as this is just a temp setup. Even tho the monitors are 3-4 feet from the back wall, the room is quite live and I felt the room was obscuring the center image. I also felt that the JBLs were resonating w my folding table in a bad way.
Placed an Auralex panel like a screen running from monitor to monitor. Instant improvement, as the the center image actually appeared and was stable. I then isolated the monitors and gave them a slight downward tilt using pucks and absorbers from Harmonic Resolution Systems and Black Diamond Racing. That really cleaned up the performance in the upper bass/low mids.
Unfortunately I had to stop soon after that, but I felt that I am now getting closer to getting to know the system. I may try putting up temp side baffles tonight using the old acoustic blanket on a mic stand trick.
AndyR, I am not mixing down to tape. Don't really see the necessity. I run from the Mackie's main outs back into the 18i20 to print the mix.
One thing I have noticed is how there appears to be a logorhythm to the perceived volume on analog faders. From, say -9 or so to -3, fader movements are rather smooth and adjustments can be made on the fly without really being noticed. From -3 to Unity, there seems to be a much bigger leap in volume and the track seems to sit on top of t h mix instead of within it. Great for soloing, but you really have to be cautious.
I will probably have to put a compressor across the output just to catch errant peaks.
I am with you re having to really memorize the track to mix in analog! Doing rides by hand is really tough even when you have the tracks balanced coming out of the DAW.
Still, the results I started getting last night showed promise. The mix down is sounding ballsier, way punchier, brighter, and more visceral overall.
