You don't.

You do your best and pass it on to yor mastering engineer that has hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment (no Mackies) and over 20 years of experience.

It takes all 3.

You, me, and the equipment.

No recording is fully realised until your mastering engineer and their skills are involved. It takes another pair of ears and equipment to get it there.

If you do not think this is correct, look in Internet audio, my forum.

Testimonies are there proving the facts.

Then it can happen.

Reading to back it up.

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Blake,

You don't fully explain your setup, but if you are going back directly through the 001 converters, then I would hazard a guess that is where the weak link is.

You are obviously enjoying the sound of analog summing as opposed to mixing in the box, and it is that summing which is making up for the deficiencies of the 001 converters. A good clock or better front-end converters will make a huge difference.

Hope I have not misunderstood your set-up.

Peace.

I tack with the cranesong spider and when I mix I want to take 8 outs from digi into my mackie 1642. I then take a stereo out of mackie back into cranesong spider.When I listen back to the stereo mix in protools it doesn't sound like it did when I was monitoring it before the Spider. The spider has an optical out back into 001. I know the converters and mic pres are great on the Spider. Any more suggestions. I can't use a mastering engineer since I do everthing on my own and have a serious budget limitation.

I wish I had some of your budget limitations to be able to afford a Spider. ;)

How are you monitoring the final mix? Analog out of the 001, or digital through the Spider? Are you doing any dithering, or are we talking 24-bit all around? Are you matching levels? Is the 001 clocking to the external sync?