I can't really find a poll fit on the percentages but I place tracking as the most important.

If it was all ITB production then of course mixing would be the most.
Mastering is the least especially if the tracking and mixing is done well. Being said, 80% tracking.

audiokid, post: 447721, member: 1 wrote: I can't really find a poll fit on the percentages but I place tracking as the most Important.

If it was all ITB production then of course mixing would be the most.
Mastering is the least especially if the tracking and mixing is done well. Being said, 80% tracking

We are on the same page Chris ;)

other! i believe the most important thing is the song. then the performances. there are lots of examples of stuff recorded on very cheap gear that became massive hit records. we all take this stuff way too seriously sometimes.

when someone says to me "I want to record this.", i always ask why? is the song great? are you so talented you need to get your rendition / performances out into the public eye? or do you want to record because you want to be a "producer" or a "star"? hint; the last 2 reasons are lousy ones.

assuming that the players are solid and the performances are great...

In a perfect world, 80/10/10...

But there are lot of variables in there.

Are we working in a pro studio with nicely balanced acoustics?
Or in a home studio where much of it is "make-do"?

As someone who has produced several records, the songs need to be there first. And neither the arrangements or the production methods need to be complex to be great.
Yesterday, Fire & Rain, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, and hundreds of other great songs that started out as nothing more than a vocal with an acoustic or piano accompaniment - regardless of what the production ended up being, those songs were all great to begin with.
They could have been tracked just as they were written, and would have still been fantastic records.

Mixing consoles and preamps and mics, and computers and converters don't make music, they don't write great songs. They're just wires and power supplies and tubes and cpu's...
Writing and performing a great song is a human thing.

If you get a great song, with great sounding performances, you're at least 80% of the way there.

The job then is to capture those performances as best as we can.

IMHO

pcrecord, post: 447717, member: 46460 wrote: Assuming the musician performance is pristine.
What would be the most important part of our job as audio engineer to get the best recording?

This is the OP question though lol. :D

audiokid, post: 447742, member: 1 wrote: This is the OP question though lol. :D

Yea.. I get it.

Which is why I eventually said:

DonnyThompson, post: 447725, member: 46114 wrote: The job then is to capture those performances as best as we can.

Which can involve many things. Gear, Knowledge, Room Acoustics, Trouble-Shooting certain issues, like Mic Placement, or choosing an alternate array, which then comes back to experience and gear.
And, dare I say this - sometimes, it's knowing when not to do anything at all. ;)

I think that letting the song be the song it wants to be is really important, too, but it's not always easy to do that, even for veterans, because we as engineers are artists, too ( and the majority of us are also musicians as well), so it's easy to want to put our own creative "stamp" on things; but that's not always the best thing to do.

Unless you're Sir George Martin... he could have told me that the best thing I could do for a song was to hang upside down from a crane 2000 feet above the Thames wearing a dirndl skirt and I would have been happy to do it. ;)

All that being said, in the end, as engineers, the most important step, IMO, is The Capture.

Without good sounding tracks to begin with, our jobs get much harder, The worse the raw tracks sound, the harder they are to mix.
That's not to say that we can't mix something good from bad sounding tracks, but it sure is a lot tougher to do that, than when we are working with tracks that were recorded well.

And, with good sounding tracks, the faster the mix comes together, and the less time we're forced to spend repairing things, ( or trying to, sometimes futilely) so we get there quicker, and our ears stay honed.

But, when we are working with poorly-recorded tracks, we are forced to spend far more time on the project in the mix stage... and the longer we spend on that, the more we start to lose objectivity, and the higher the chances become that we'll start overcooking things, because our ears eventually get burnt from spending too much time on it; and the changes that we make aren't as audible, so we start making bigger changes, and it becomes kind of a downward spiral at that point...and we end up changing things that perhaps shouldn't be changed at all, or changing things to larger degrees than we normally would, because our ears and critical listening skills have become numbed by repeated plays of the exact same song, with the exact same frequency combinations.

LOL ... ask me how I know. ;)

Sometimes, just being friendly and have our way to make the artist at ease will impact the results far more than having the best gear and mixing skills

DonnyThompson, post: 447749, member: 46114 wrote: ...and we end up changing things that perhaps shouldn't be changed at all, or changing things to larger degrees than we normally would, because our ears and critical listening skills have become numbed by repeated plays of the exact same song.

The story of my world lately. Some people say they only need a couple of hours away from the song before they go back to mixing. I sometimes need a week or more away from the song. Maybe it is age.

I initially didn't answer, but my gut reaction, particularly with improvements I'm finally getting.. was 80% capture. I personally have spent WAY too much time previously correcting my lack of quality of capture.

When you spend hours on something that may have even been a brilliant performance, but it's just not got THAT sound you heard.. well.

DonnyThompson, post: 447749, member: 46114 wrote: Yea.. I get it.

Which is why I eventually said:

I was thinking more about Kurt on this one lol. Just giving you "guys" a hard time. :love:
I make sure I have new strings and some scotch or refreshments around too. After a while who needs gear at all. Get the iphones out and get it all on youtube. :D

audiokid, post: 447759, member: 1 wrote: I was thinking more about Kurt on this one lol. Just giving you "guys" a hard time. :love:
I make sure I have new strings and some scotch or refreshments around too. After a while who needs gear at all. Get the iphones out and get it all on youtube. :D

That would be a thing to experiment ! iPhones near each musician. Then we sync and mix all the audio track and do a montage of the video.. lol !! ;)

Definitely 80% tracking. It makes mixing such a breeze when you don't have to spend time correcting the deficiencies which result from poor tracking. With mixing simplified by great tracking, you can also minimize the work that the mastering engineer has to do. It all comes down to good tracking, which includes room, mic, placement, preamps etc.
~Jeff