I think we’ve stumbled upon the final mix for the first track, “The Company I Can Get”. (This was the opener on the recent West Coast tour.) We’ll re-visit it today before logging the mix and starting in on another track.
Mix reference CDs in use so far: Who’s Next, mainly, with some Complete and Legion of Rock Stars videos for good measure. The former led us in an interesting direction, summing the drum tracks mostly to mono and panning them slightly left. I do miss the enveloping stereo spread of Albini’s drum recordings, but I think the panning lends some charm and gives the bazllion overdubs in the song a little more room to breathe.
We’re doing very little in the way of EQ or compression — a little top-end added to the snare and main piano, some limiting on the piano and bass, and some de-essing on the main vocal. Unlike most mixing projects I get, we’re spending most of the time feeling out balances and panning, not carving up tracks with EQ and compression to make them sit together properly. I’m a very lucky man to get to work on tracks this well-recorded. Makes my job much easier.
Technical geekery: I’m printing mixes to our Studer A80RC 1/2″ 2-track, using RMGI Emtec SM911 tape, 30ips, AES EQ, no nr, 385 nWb/m. A frequency sweep shows a less-than-flat frequency response (-1db @ 100Hz, +1.5db @ 70Hz, flat @ 10k, +0.75db @ 15k!), but the playback sounds wonderful, so to hell with it! I’m also printing a digital copies straight off the 2-mix and the Studer’s repro head for safe-keeping.
Original tracks were recorded by Steve Albini in Electrical Audio’s Studio A. Studer A820MCH 2″ 24-track. Quantegy GP9 tape, 15ips, CCIR EQ, no NR, 500 nWb/m. On the first day, we dumped everything to our Cubase system (Apogee Rosetta 800 converters, Big Ben clock, 24-bit, 44.1KHz sample rate) for safety copies and possible playback for mixing.
Playback for this song was from our Cubase system. We’ll probably do half the songs straight off the 2″, and half from the Cubase system for ease of automation.