281. Tips & Tricks For A Speedy Mix, Part 2

In the final episode of 2024, Sean and Andy pick up where they left off last time (Episode 280) in rounding out some baseline tips for getting a rocking mix going fast — compressors, effects, and general mixing advice abound as their last holiday gift to everyone out there listening! This episode is sponsored by Allen & Heath and RCF.

Episode Links:
Episode 230: Sean’s Go-To Effects
Episode 236: Pat Brown on Gain Structure
Episode 273: Ben Ivey
Episode 280: Tips & Tricks Part 1
Episode 281 Transcript

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Transcript

Episode 281 - Tips and Tricks for a Speedy Mix, Part 2

Note: This is an automatically generated transcript, so there might be mistakes--if you have any notes or feedback on it, please send them to us at signal2noise@prosoundweb.com so we can improve the transcripts for those who use them!

Voiceover: You’re listening to Signal to Noise, part of the ProSoundWeb podcast network, proudly brought to you this week by the following sponsors:

Allen & Heath, whose new dLive RackUltra FX upgrade levels up your console with 8 next-generation FX racks – putting powerful tools like vocal tuning, harmonizing, and amp simulation right at your fingertips. Learn more at allen-heath.com

RCF and TT+ AUDIO.... Delivering premium audio solutions designed for tour sound and music professionals for over 75 years. Hear TT+ AUDIO's GTX 10 and GTX 12 line passive line array and the GTS 29 dual 19" passive subwoofer.... all powered by RCF's XPS 16k amplifier, live in the arena at Winter NAMM 2025. Many other RCF products will be demo'd in Hall A in room #17108. Visit RCF at RCF-USA.com for the latest news and product information.

Music: “Break Free” by Mike Green


Andy Leviss: Hey, welcome to another episode of Signal to Noise. This episode is actually a continuation of a conversation Sean and I started last week, in episode 280, so if you haven't listened to that one yet, hit pause on this one, go back and check that one out first. Once you're caught up, come back and join us, and we'll pick up right where we left off then... 

Sean Walker: I think a lot in settings of other compressors to then make on these digital compressors, right? Like the classic compressors that we used. What are those? And what's happening there, same thing on the SSL channel compressor, the fastest release on a 4k channel compressor is 100 milliseconds. 

So at fast release, on the channel compressor that made every freaking record we've ever heard in our life, 100 milliseconds is the fastest release. And it's like a 1 millisecond attack. At fast attack or slow attack, it's a little variable, but it's, it's not a millisecond. So again, there's that 100 millisecond release again, that seems to just kind of work for people in SSL. 

And so I just use that on my channels, I use it on my bus, and then I fuss from there if I need to. But like, you know, when you got to get going faster than 44 minutes and 38 seconds of trying to explain it to somebody, uh, 

Andy Leviss: You're 

Sean Walker: You just got to have these things in your head where you're like, I'm walking in, I got no time. 

I got no fricking sound check or whatever. I've got four fricking seconds. Like we had this conversation with, or you know, you guys had this conversation with Brian in the discord a week or two ago. What do you do? Like you start with the vocals. You got that. You know, you got to like sort this out super, super fast. 

You got to have a few things in your head, whether they're these numbers or these metrics or your own metrics you've come up with. I'm just sharing mine so that if you don't have your own, you've got a place to start and then take what works for you and throw the rest in the bin. And I'm sorry, it's a little rambly cause I didn't take any notes, but like use whatever is helpful to you and just get rid of the rest of it. 

You know what I mean? But those will be incredibly helpful to like have some place to start, right? The next thing I think after keyboards, because we, that was the crazy pants rabbit hole we just went down, sorry guys, would be vocals. And for me, vocal, dude, tell me about it. Like at some point they're going to get somebody that's good at this to do this thing for them. Oh, sorry, dude. So vocals for me, that is 28 to 30 dB of gain for a wired SM58. And then, you know, whatever your, whatever your vocal channel looks like, for me, that's a high pass at 125, a big wide scoop at 200 with a Q of 0. 5, like three or four DB. And it creates this, like, I'm just untilting this vocal that has a bunch of proximity effect in it. 

Right. Cause we often walk up to very tilted PAs. And so if this doesn't already sound fine ish. I have a judge of what my PA is going to look like if we aren't at the point in our careers that we can utilize something cool like SMART or OpenSoundMeter to measure our PAs beforehand, right? Because like we talked about, um, a few weeks ago. 

Dude was at Madison Square Garden and didn't get a sound check. It's not just bar gigs and club gigs, right? Like he walked into Madison Square Garden, it was like, well, hold my beer. Here we go. You know what I mean? And it, and so like, he's already got those points in his head of like, this is what I need to see, right? 

Like if you think about your mixing console, your desk, right? As the gauge cluster of a fricking jet or plane that you're flying, like you've got to make sure everything is looking the way altitude's good, fuel's good, right? Like. Or your car, right? Got enough gas in the tank, there's no tire lights on, your tire's not flat, you're going about the speed limit ish, right? 

Same thing with the meters on the desk, they're there for a reason, in my opinion, right? All of this is opinion, there's no, no facts in here, right? But like, if everything's kind of looking the way it needs to look, and it's all kind of happening, and you're listening in your cans to go, you know, like, in my hearing, sometimes you gotta do those polarity flips in your cans, sometimes it's hard to hear through the PA, but once you get it sorted in your cans, you're like, nope, that's definitely better. 

It will translate through the PA, you know what I mean? But like, we don't always get to hear our PA. We don't always get to like have minutes or hours or whatever it is to tune or deploy or rehang or whatever. Sometimes we just got to walk up and go whether we like it or not at all stages in our career. 

Right. But that vocal really helps me. Maybe that's the one thing that helps me the most is like, High pass at 125, little low scoop at 200 with a cue of 5, and I can, at gain of 28 to 230, depending on how I'm feeling that day, I can then listen to that and go like If it sounds like somebody's garbling a bag of dicks through my PA, I know that the PA is all fucked up and I got to take a bunch of low end or mids out or whatever, right? 

Like this is a super clear setting that might even be a little on the thin side if I'm, if I'm being candid, right? And if it sounds thick and tubby, like the PA is way too thick and tubby. If it sounds bright and thin and like garbage, like The PA, something's wrong with the PA, right? But if it kind of sounds pretty much ish like a vocal ish, and I'm going heavy on the ish, because again, art and science, this is a freaking subjective thing, right? 

But, but it won't sound broken. You'll go like, oh man, that sounds, that sounds great. I kind of, man, maybe I do want a little more girth to it. Maybe you take out that, that low mid cut, right? Maybe it's just high pass at 125. But like, if you're having to do like, 3, 4, 5, 10, 000 EQ cuts in your vocal on a, any normal microphone, 58, a 935, a M80. 

Although I know people love those things, but that 800 Hertz boost in there drives me fucking crazy. Uh, like you shouldn't have to make a bunch of cuts on your vocal mic. We all know what a voice sounds like. It should sound like a voice with You know, just like a high pass and one or two filters really. 

And then you can fine tune with dynamic EQ and the other things that we use. Like we talk about a lot of tools to really make it fit in a mix better. But if it doesn't already sound like a voice, like you're not going to fix that later. It's all of these inputs already have to sound good on their own or pretty good on their own. 

And then you can fuss them against each other. To make them fit together as a package or as a cohesive mix. But what you can't do is go, I'll just fix it in the mix later. If it already sounds like shit, like if it sounds like shit, you're not going to fix it, dude. You know what I mean? But there's a few like. 

Parameters, I think, which will give somebody a basis to start their mix on that will then translate into something that makes more sense. And if you start there and you bring up your PA and you're like, holy, way too much output, right? Just take a low shelf on your output and bring it down until it sounds One of the things that I learned from this discord and Michael Lawrence in particular is that I did not use before were high and low shell filters on my outputs. 

I was just, I don't know why, I just didn't even think about it. Those are the two most powerful things to tilt or untilt or re teeter totter your whole rig. In two filters that is unbelievably effective and powerful. Even if you've got an SQ or an X 32 or whatever you're rocking, that is like, I just, I just got this one out, the stereo output of the thing and their process and the rest of it with a high and low shelf filter, you can, you can fix a lot of things that you can't. 

To get them in the ballpark, right? You're not gonna like fix a bunch of like super nerd shit, but like way too much sub, way not enough sub, way too much treble, way not enough treble. Like you can re bang this thing into a something as usable as you're going to get for the day if you don't have other control or other knowledge of like, I've got smart, I've got a DSP, I know how to use it, which is the next step. 

And I encourage everybody to go do that. But If you aren't there yet or don't have the ability or that's just not the day you're at. Cause even some of us that are smart users do know how to do DSPs, are trying to figure out how to be better systems guys. Like there are still days you walk up and you're like, that's where we're at today. 

Huh? I guess we're just going to get to ripping, you know? We're 

Andy Leviss: Yep. Yep. There are days that are trust your console days. There are days that are, well, if the PA sounds like trash, it's going to sound like trash and my headphones on the console to compensate for it, or sound like inverse trash. Let's go. 

Sean Walker: totally, 

Andy Leviss: And that's, you know, two, two things you brought up earlier that I want to like kind of frame and like put on the wall for people. 

One, you, you didn't quite say explicitly, but it was kind of inherent in some of the stuff you were Saying as we're talking through EQ is, keep an eye on if you're making the same change over a bunch of different channels. If you're cutting 450 out of, you know, three channels in a row, you probably should take it out of the system at that point. 

Even if you have one or two inputs and end up needing more of it later, put them in on that one or two inputs. But at the point that you're burning the same band of EQ on everything, you're EQing a room or a PA problem out of an input, and you're making your life harder. 

Sean Walker: dude. 

Andy Leviss: And then the other thing just for like blindly dropping in and dialing in that if you noticed a pattern every time Sean gets to a dynamic mic, particularly a dynamic mic from Shure, which is going to be a lot of our standards, we're landing somewhere around 25 to like 32 ish dB of preamp gain. That is the classic era of Shure dynamic microphones. If you got to dial them blind in, somewhere around 25 to 30, give or take, dB of gain is going to be a solid guess to where to start. 

Sean Walker: Totally dude. Totally. And, and some of the other manufacturers mics come out hotter or not as hot. And that's okay. Right. It just, it's just, that just is, but like whatever your mic package you've got, take notes mental or otherwise about kind of where those are usually landing for you so that when you're in this situation where you've got to run and gun and got to get to ripping. 

You're just like, I already know 28 db on a vocal mic on 58 and if they're super quiet, I can gain it up. And if they're super loud, I can get it down. But right there over decades of doing this has been just fricking fine for thousands of singers. You know what I mean? And so that's a wide 

Andy Leviss: rough it in before you start, like while they're sussing out like a like the last bits of patch on the stage and have it pretty close, that means a lot less time futzing and trying to get it in the right ballpark. Particularly on like a digital console where it may be a lot of turns and clicks to get it up to 30 db of gain, if you rough it in around there, you've saved yourself a bunch of work while you've got somebody out there sitting going dum dum without having to fuck with it too much. 

Sean Walker: Yup. Exactly. And, and while we've been talking about front of house. In, in my mind, specifically about front of house, cause that I'm not a very accomplished monitor engineer. Like nobody's calling me for any level of monitor tour. Some people just speak and think in monitors and that's not me because I can only do one mix at a time. 

But it also works for us that have to do monitors in front of house from the same desk. All of these settings, you'll notice, fall into a, what I'm going to call a good gain structure. None of them have a bunch of high end boosts to make it bright and clear, so that when you go to put this in a wedge, it doesn't instantly blow up in your face. 

I will say that's the other thing about doing this, and even if you've got a dedicated monitor console or you're the monitor engineer, On a, you know, small to mid sized show like this, which is where, if I'm being honest, this is where 95 percent of us live, no matter what Instagram or Discord or Facebook say with the pictures. 

Like 95 percent of us are doing regular ass shows and we're doing hundreds a year. You know what I mean? The other thing that really helped a lot was those high and low shelf filters apply to your monitors also. And if you just get, cause oftentimes we ended with things that were not meant to be monitors, right? 

The amount of times that we were blessed to have M2s or M4s on a You know, X12s or whatever kind of dope monitor you're thinking is, is the shit. For some of us, there are some of the discord that only get that in fucking good for them. There are others of us that have gotten that a few times and some of us that don't get them at all and probably never will. 

So if you've got a K12, if you've got an RCF, you know, an X or art, you've got a, whatever it is, you know what I mean? That's a Mackie or something. You can look at that and listen. And usually the linear setting is the best. The other ones are all kind of a differentiation of footsie, but the gain structure applies to that too. 

And your high and low shell filters will be your friends there too. If you just get that not so bright, cause they all come with a giant smiley face carved into them. If you just frowny face that thing, so it's not so smiley faced, you won't have a bunch of feedback problems. You can then get to your parametric EQ to like figure out the things that work or don't work. 

But like we, we have the RCF NX 32s, which is like their wood box, 12 inch and a horn utility box that we use for everything, monitors in front of house on small things, corporate stuff. And with like, A two or three DB high shelf and a high pass at 60 to a hundred. I can just fricking, I can get that box to somebody who's like, please stop. 

It's loud enough. And it sounds good. I'm good. Right. Rather than trying to take a graph and cut it to pieces. And what I really needed to do was just take the horn down a few DB instead of nine graphic filters. You know what I mean? And so it just. It just works good and it's way stable. Same thing applies to a K 12, it doesn't have to be brand specific, right? 

But that'll be helpful for people that do in front of house and monitors at the same desk, which let me just tell you, if nobody has told you, is fucking brutal. It is brutal to have to do monitors in front of house from the same desk. Yes, a lot of us do it. Yes, we get good results with it. Yes, it's very common in our industry. 

It really limits you to all the tricks that we like to nerd about. That you can't really do. First, you've burned up all your buses. So you've got a bunch of limited processing. You can't do your bus processing like, like we would like to do. You can't have a bunch of like super compressed sources because when they're not compressing, you get all that gain back into your monitors and they start to feed back and it's, it gets to be crazy, right? 

Like you've got a bunch of things happening. That you don't want. Plus you're carving these things up to make a great front of house mix with EQ or compression or effects or whatever. That may not be what they need to hear in their monitors. It's, it's really hard. You know what I mean? They're like, well, my voice doesn't have a bunch of low end. 

It's not big and booming now. You're like, well, yeah, cause I did carve it up because it's being put into a PA for a few thousand people. And they're like, oh, well, can I have a bunch of low ends? And I got to figure out like, okay, what am I gonna do? Just put them on my, on my bus and my, my, my monitors can be thick and everything else is thick. 

And it's just, it's fussy, man. It's way easier just to have a dedicated monitor console. The gain structure still applies. I think the channel EQ still applies because I do it, whether I'm doing monitors or front of house, I'm not always the front house guy at my shop. I let everybody else decide what they want to do. 

And then I take the job that's left over. Sometimes I would say once or twice a year, I pull the boss move and I'm like, I'm mixing front of house for the show, but by and large, I just let everybody else pick what they want to do. And I'll do what I do patch a lot. I do monitors. I do, you know, sometimes nothing. 

Sometimes I don't get a show position. I'm like, that's cool. You guys have fun. Let me know how it went. You know what I mean? But like. There was a whole, a couple of years where I just did monitors on these shows because I was miserable at it and I was like, I got to get better at this. And so I just suffered through monitors because I didn't know what to do. 

And what I found after that was everything that I'm doing in front of house for me on the scale of shows that I'm on translates into doing monitors. I'm just not adding a bunch of extra compression. I'm down the compression back, but the EQs, the gain structures, they all kind of work. And, you know, if I tune the wedges. 

Kind of the same top end of the curve that's been floating around at Discord. You know, if I just take the top end down, they're, they're much more stable. I just, it just doesn't have the low end tilt in it. You know what I mean? Those have been the most helpful things that I can think of. To, uh, to like, you know, get it in a good place. 

Um, the, I think the last thing, unless you guys want to dive into effects, which is a whole nother two hours of me rambling about shit nobody cares about, would be, I compress my stereo bus cause I'm an old studio guy. So I use the same 10 milliseconds attack, 100 millisecond release, either two to one or four to one. 

Cause remember SSL bus compressor is two or four to one. And zero makeup gain on the bus. And that's at like a minus 12 threshold for me. Cause that mix is banging compared to the individual channels. And I'm looking for that to have like one to three DB of gain reduction sometimes more, but really like as I'm fussing in that one to three DB, I can hear it compact. 

I can hear it like. You know, some people will say glues and people use different adjectives to describe it. But really what happens is like, you hear the whole thing come from this, like, everything's kind of moving on its own to kind of everything is moving together. Right. And it doesn't take much. It's like a dab will do you like some hot sauce other than I get a little crazy with the hot sauce, but like a little dab will be, and you'll feel the whole thing just like settle into a cohesive unit. 

And you're like, okay, dude, that's good. That's great. And like, Trust what you're hearing. If it sounds better, it is better. If it does not sound better, don't listen to a damn thing I just said and undo. Like if it sounds better, use that setting or that number or whatever. You know what I mean? Your thoughts after let me ramble for too long. 

Andy Leviss: I dig it. I mean, I, I feel like just like broad picture thing I'm going to throw out because I know it came up in the disco recently. If we're talking about monitors a little bit, particularly lower and lower to mid end of gigs, you're still going to be doing a lot more wedges than in ears. In ears are their own thing. 

In ears are going to be a fairly good mix because that is all that musicians are hearing. But the thing, and I, I, I, I've said this on the Discord, but I won't take credit for it, it's something I learned from people way smarter than me over the years, is that it's easy to fall into that fallacy, particularly if you're new to monitors, to like make the monitor sound awesome and make it sound like a rockin mix. That's not the purpose of a monitor, and that benefits nobody. The purpose of the monitor is to give the musicians what they need to play together, and it's not only What they need in the monitor, but what they need in conjunction with what they're already hearing off the stage or off the room. So particularly with wedges, it might vary. 

That's one of the reasons we like in ears is it varies less day to day. 

Sean Walker: totally do. Cause they've got a ton of stage volume happening up there that we don't as much in front of house. So you're absolutely correct, dude. Absolutely. Cause maybe they just need their own vocal. Like that's, that's the, that's compared to in ears where they need a pretty good mix. Like maybe the singer just wants his vocal or her vocal super loud in their wedge. 

And that's it. Cause they're standing right in front of a drum kit. Guitar is already on 11. Like maybe they just need to hear 

Andy Leviss: yeah, or if there's like piano keys that like don't have a lot of, a lot of stage level and they need that for picture to know where they are in the song, then they might need that. But you know, broadly speaking, yeah, you're not building a full mix into your wedges. Like it's, it's all about what the end, I mean, we are blessed today to have. 

Like all these like iPad and laptop apps for consoles, 

Sean Walker: Easy, easy, easy. I don't know if I'd say blessed. 

Andy Leviss: it's a mixed blessing. But one of the benefits of it is you can grab a tablet and walk the fuck over to the vocal mic and hear exactly what they're hearing. 

Sean Walker: No, you're absolutely right. I was just trying to make a joke. Yes, trying to mix in front of a house with a tablet is one of my least favorite things to do in mixing audio. Helping people down on their mixes or going to listen to what they're hearing is absolutely important. And almost indispensable use of the tablet. 

You're totally right, dude. Like just being able to walk over and go like, what is happening anymore? This, that good. Okay, great. You know? 

Andy Leviss: Yeah. And the other trick, and I talked about, like, we talked about this a while ago when I covered One Day on Monitors for that band, and we were talking about swapping out in ears there, is the biggest skill you can learn for, I mean, front house too, but for monitors especially. is to hear a request from a musician and learn to then listen and figure out what they actually need. Cause they don't, they ask for the thing they think they need, but asking for more guitar might not actually be that they need more guitar. It might mean that there's too much other shit in the mix bearing the guitar. 

Sean Walker: Yeah, yeah, totally. If the bass is just ripping in the mix and that's all you can hear and they're asking for more guitar, maybe turn the bass down so they can hear the guitar that's already there. Whatever. Yeah, totally. Absolutely, dude. Absolutely. Is there anything that like we did not ramble? I mean, cover, because we got to rambling 

Andy Leviss: not in like the basic, like if we're talking core band, I think we covered a lot. Like we haven't really gotten into anything on like horns or anything like that, but. 

Sean Walker: I don't end up with a lot of horns. So those end up being like, I'm, I start to think about those like guitars or vocals, if I'm being honest, like those are going to have that same, like 20 to 30 DB of gain and a high pass starting at like 70 to 125. And I'm going to start making some decisions from there, if I'm being honest, you know what I mean? 

Cause like a trumpet, for example, is not going to need any low end. I might, that high pass might end up in the hundreds or more. You know what I mean? Whereas like a Barry Sachs. Maybe I don't need a high pass to 125. Maybe I need a little more of that low end down there, but you can, but you'll hear those, right? 

Like, especially depending on what your PA is, you put your cans in, your ears, your cans, whatever you got that you know and trust. Like, it doesn't matter what model, doesn't matter who makes them. I like, I like the Shure 840s because I read that Dave Ratt freaking thing and that was what I could afford. 

Uh, and it's turned out to be great. You know what I mean? But like, If it doesn't sound good in your headphones, it's not going to sound good anywhere else. Like, this is your constant reference point, so get some in ears you like, get some headphones you like, whatever. If it sounds good in the headphones and doesn't sound good in your PA, It's not a channel problem. 

It's a matrix problem, right? That was the one thing, maybe it was from Dave, that I read someplace, but like, if you have a constant reference, like a pair of headphones, which is why he does that, right? If you have a constant reference, and it sounds good in your reference, like if your mix is banging in your headphones, but not banging in the PA, well, it's not a mix problem, dude. 

Don't be butchering your mix to try to make it sound good in the PA. Cause now what happens when you have to send it to records, or the cry room, or the, you know what I mean, I don't know what kind of gigs you're doing, but like when you gotta send it someplace else, right, so, if your mix is banging coming out of your desk, fix the other end of the thing, cause you'll have to fix the monitors, you'll have to fix the PA, you'll have to fix, adjust for the cry room, but you can't fix your mix to make all those things sound good, cause they all sound crappy, right. 

So that, that was it, to like, I remember trying to figure out. Where to EQ something, you know what I mean? And, and I think it was Dave, but somebody was like, dude, the channel EQ makes the source, the instrument or person to the microphone sound correct in your headphones, in your reference. And then your output EQs fix wherever that's going, right? 

So that was really helpful for me when I was learning also. And then there's a whole bunch of nerd shit in between. But like, if you're at the point right now where you, Aren't feeling really confident in your mixes. If they're not sounding the way you want, if they're not very clear and you're trying to figure out like, what am I doing wrong? 

What plugin do I need to buy? Like you don't need to buy any plugins, man. As a matter of fact, if you've got layers of plugins on right now, bypass all those motherfuckers and just start here. And then. You can start inserting or instantiating those plugins one at a time to see if it really does make it any better or not. 

I would be willing to bet probably not. The more people that I talk to, less plugins they're using per channel, right? They've got like zero to. Three or four, you know what I mean? Like they've got a few things doing a little stuff. When I, when I see people that are like, well, my stuff doesn't sound very good. 

And they've got like every plugin slot filled. You're like, yo bud, like you're just doing too much. Like you can't throw the kitchen sink and everything, you know, that that's one of the things that I, one of the embarrassing lessons that all. share that I shouldn't share because nobody wants to share their dirty laundry. 

But when I went to Mix of the Masters with Chris, we, we brought this session, right? I made this mix with this band called Van Epps here from Seattle that I totally dig. They're fricking rocking dudes. And, uh, so I brought this mix that I made and I brought the multitracks. And so he got to listen to my mix and then he remixed it on the console there and we had a blast. 

But one of the things that I realized his. Ultimately, his mix sounded better, which, thank God, because why would you pay to go not have it sound better, right? But he did a lot less to it, just, you know, a lot less things just in more places. Like he was looking for the boulders, not for the quicksand, right? 

What are the big wins I can get on this? So like gain, level, panning, high pass filters, like those are the big things where you're like drastically affecting this source. Or high and low shelf filters. He was a big, like high shelf at AK to make things bright and clear kind of person, right? I had so much shit on this mix because I was at the time I was in the studio with an SSL 4060 4G plus and all the same outboard. 

Like I was super blessed. I was, I mixed it at Synergy in here in Seattle. I had inserts on everything. I had fricking effects coming everywhere. It was. It was insanity. You know what I mean? Bunch of parallel stuff. And in five fricking minutes he was able to like just smoke what I had going on, which is the driver, right? 

Not the sources cause he had the same sources I did, right? But he did it in like getting his stuff zoned out the way he wanted it. And that was, that's what I'm trying to help the people that are still coming up with is like, you don't need a zillion plugins. Just this year, I started messing with plugins. 

I'm going to just put that out there. Just, you know, Waves is never going to sponsor us at this point, but like, but like this year, 2025, which is more, more than a decade into my career, I just started messing with my first plugin going, Oh man, maybe this will help. And I'll be honest with you, the fucking reverbs sound a lot better than what's in my desk. 

It's pretty, pretty stunning. But, uh, but like. You know, I've got thousands of shows under my belt, I haven't gotten fired yet for the mix, right? I've gotten fired for being too drunk, I've gotten fired for saying something stupid, I've gotten fired for being an a hole, but it was never like, your mix sounds like shit, get out of my venue, you know what I mean? So like, don't be a dick, and follow what we just laid out, and you're like, already in the top 5 percent of 10 percent of mix engineers in the world. Just by not being a dick and having some decent gain structure and polarity, you know what I mean? And, and I would also say like, reminder to those that are coming up, this Discord server, which is something that I came to realize pretty quickly, this Discord server is full of like, the elite and also the not elite, but like, some of the best people in the world at what we do. 

Which is why I have all the disclaimers because like, you know, you couldn't possibly say like, oh, I know everything but like it's a blessing ask your questions I have asked all the stupid questions over the years and I've never ever ever had somebody go Well, you don't know that. What are you a dum dum? 

you know, I mean like I play I play a ding dong cuz it's funny dude because I'll ask all the questions that Other people don't want to ask. I'm trying to make sure that you guys get all your questions answered for you. But like, this isn't my first rodeo, dude. You know what I mean? And so having, 

Andy Leviss: take our examples. Like we, as the hosts of this thing, like we almost have the most to lose by asking a stupid question on the discord cause then we look like idiots. So if we're willing to get out there and look like an idiot, you're not going to look like an idiot. 

Sean Walker: yeah, dude, totally ask your questions, man. You'll be surprised who jumps in and very kindly answers in decades more experience than you have, which is how I learned almost all of the things I just laid out for the last hour was not because I'm like, Oh, I'm so smart. I just figured it out. It was like, I'm going to go ask all the questions, no matter how dumb I think they are. 

And somebody way fucking better than me was like, Oh, dude, have you tried this? You know what I mean? Have you tried that? And some of them were little things and some of them were huge, dude. When I, like, it was just maybe last year that I talked to Ryan about the drum polarity where all things are a push. 

I mean, for my whole career, I made sure that they were in polarity, but I did not make sure they were all a push. That was a little change that made a big difference in my, in my mixes where I was like, yo, man. Everything is just a little more in your face. It's a little more present. It is better in my opinion, right? 

Again, we're talking about opinions, right? Art and technology here, but it's, it's like, it's not just like, oh, you learned these all years ago. It's like, dude, every single day I get fucking learnt about what's happening and that is awesome and you should do the same. 

Andy Leviss: yeah, I mean like, I'm just thinking like examples on the discord. Like we talked a little bit about, you know, you were making reference to Brian earlier so like You know, a relatively new member of the Discord came in recently and was like, hey, I was in this situation on a gig where I like, had to kind of figure out what was going on and make this gig happen in like, no time. Both should I have been able to do it faster than I did, and how could I do it faster than how I did? And I think the answer we came around to in that case was, I don't know, I don't know. Yes, maybe you should be a little quicker, but it also sounds like in that particular situation, you were kind of getting fucked. 

Sean Walker: Totally dude. 

Andy Leviss: don't beat yourself up about it. But there was some great advice. And I mean, I mean, that's the big tip I threw on the discord is if Brian Maddox says something, shut up and fucking listen. Love you, Brian. 

Sean Walker: sir. 

Andy Leviss: Um, and, and Brian basically talking about dialing and mixing real quick. It's if you go, if you're on the discord or if you join the discord, go to the general channel and discord has pin messages and I pin this message in the general channel so folks can find it later because I think it's that important. 

Where Brian basically said like, start with making sound, Then get to making good sound, then worry about making great sound. And basically take, take about, aim to take three minutes to get stuff making sound at the most, then maybe another three minutes, like maybe around five or so total to get it making good sound, and then spend the next couple minutes working on making it great. 

But if you're not making sound at all, like don't try and make it great right out of the gate, or you're just gonna look like a fool. Brian didn't say it that way, that's me grossly paraphrasing and making it a lot more chatty. 

Sean Walker: Totally. But you're, but you're right. Like who cares what it sounds like if it doesn't sound right. Like if you're supposed to be going right now and your PA is not working, you got bigger problems than whether your kick sounds good or not. You know what I mean? So he's totally right. He's totally right. 

Andy Leviss: yeah, and like, and what I started getting into there a little bit was to kind of, it's dialing in a mix, particularly if you're dialing in a mix cold without the chance to soundcheck, is kind of a form of troubleshooting. Like it's, it's troubleshooting the, I need to get a band coming out and I don't know what's here. 

So, the same way as you would with solving any problem, there's folks will throw around and it came up in this discord of like treating it like triage, which is a term that comes out of And the thing is, there's a lot of misunderstanding about that. Like, people think like, triage, fix everything, fix it now. 

And that's not what it is. Like, in an emergency room, it's the people come in, and they will do a quick evaluation based on a bunch of things to figure out A. Is this person in immediate risk of dying? And then B. Can we help them? If we can't help them, we're not going to waste time helping them and let other people get into a worse position before that and kind of prioritizing that. 

And it's the same with sound. Obviously, nobody's dying, you know, unless maybe you're mixing in North Korea. 

Sean Walker: Wow. 

Andy Leviss: um, yeah, I went there. I went there. Sorry. But like nobody's dying here, but it's the same thing. It's very quickly figure out like and you'll get better at this as you gain experience. Well, that's a problem, but it's also a problem I have no way to fix now. 

It is what it is. Let me, out of sight, out of mind, not get stressed about it and deal with the things I can. Then go through and look like, okay, is this a problem that I need to fix right away to get the show going, to get the song going? Or is this a problem I can come back to later and just file away like, oh, that snare's not perfect, but it sounds okay, let's worry about that later, let's get the kick sounding banging, get everything going, get the kit sounding together, the rhythm sounding. 

And then once you're there on song number two, go back and be like, okay, let's make my snare suck less. My snare snuck, wow. 

Sean Walker: suck, less. Nice. 

Andy Leviss: I can word. 

Sean Walker: Love it. 

Andy Leviss: But yeah, I think that's the biggest broader scale tip I have is know when to move on from a problem or know when to file a problem and come back to it and don't get hung up on the details too early on. And then the second one, what you were talking about with like bypass all the plugins, if it helps, when you're on a gig, picture a little asshole Sean and a little asshole Andy sitting on your two shoulders. 

Like, we're here on the podcast, and every time you go to reach for a plugin or a processor, one or the other of us or both of us are going to turn to you and be like, why are you doing that? And have a good answer. If you don't have a good answer, maybe you don't need to be doing it. 

Sean Walker: I mean, I'm not, I'm not looking over anybody's shoulder. I gotta be honest with you, but, but have a good reason for it for sure. You know what I mean? Like I, I can't be everywhere, dude. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not the, I'm not the plugin police. I, I dig plugins. I'm just, uh, 

Andy Leviss: Or picture like the little Tom and Jerry 

Sean Walker: they're, they're a tool. 

Andy Leviss: somebody on your shoulder sitting there going like, why? It could be a parrot going, Caw, why? 

Sean Walker: but they're, they're a tool just like, do you need this tool right now or do you need a different tool? 

Really? I think it's what you're going, right? Like, 

Andy Leviss: Yeah, I wasn't trying to say we're sitting here judging your mix, and imagine it's judging your mix, because neither of us is in any place to be judging 

Sean Walker: no. Hell no, dude. Hell no. Dude. We're, we're all literally, we are all doing the best we can at all times. And there's not a fricking manual for this. There's not a bunch of like, well, didn't you go to school and this is how this is like, you know, we're, we're all kind of making this up as we go. Right. But it, but you know, we're just trying to give you some pillars and building blocks If this isn't already in your workflow, if you tried this, would it be helpful? 

If it's helpful, use it. If it's not helpful, throw it in the bin. You know, any other thoughts before we get out of here? Cause it's way over time. 

Andy Leviss: Um, well I mean, we did, and I'll link it in the notes because you mentioned talking about effects and I know like, sometime like a year or so ago, we dug into your effects chains a little bit. And I feel like we had an episode where we were talking about a lot of that, which folks can go back to and check out. 

But I know you said you started with plugins lately. Any big changes in what you're doing with like effects and processing and that sort of stuff in the last year? 

Sean Walker: Uh, the, the big change is that I, again, with the help of this wonderful discord community, who is so incredible and knows way more than I do, have started with reverb, specifically reverb plugins, because The ones that are in the desk are not as cool. And the reason is it takes a lot to make a desk. It takes a lot to make reverb and to hit a price point, you can only do so much and so the reverb suffers. 

If you're just making reverb, it's a whole lot easier to make great reverb, right? I've messed with some from Waves, some from Valhalla DSP, some from, uh, Liquid Sonics, their 7th Heaven Bricasti is frickin sick, and I mean, almost all of those are he who shall not be named so we don't have to drink again's recommendations, uh, and then a bunch of stuff that I've Shit. 

Sorry, Ryan. Uh, and then, you know, like a bunch that I've used over the years, cause I freaking love Alexicon 480. It's not even a reasonable love. I just like, I put it on everything I can. It's like a little fucking sriracha. Just please can I have some 480 on that? You know what I mean? Uh, and so the, the, um, Relab 480 is pretty fricking sick. 

I like their A plate for vocals a lot, like a one and a half, two second plate for vocals with like a 60 millisecond pre delay. But uh, that's the big and the biggest change is going outward because they're a lot, what I find is they're a lot clearer. The, the, the ones that are in the desk are not as clear and so when I, I can't use as much cause it just, it sounds like, it sounds like cheap 80s crap reverb rather than like A luscious space to put this thing in, you know what I mean? 

Whether that's a hall or a plate or a room or like, it doesn't, it doesn't, hasn't seemed to matter in the desk. And when you go outboard, I found that like, you know, there's a few that I have come, recommendations that I've come to like, I think I just list them all, but like, Almost all of them, even the ones that come in your Waves bundle, whatever, like TrueVerb or IRV, whatever they're called, HVerb, like they're all much clearer than what's in my, my desk. 

So I've, I've very much liked the, um, whatever the new, new, uh, host is that came out that's, you know, That's VST3, what's the wave's one? Performer, SuperRack Performer, or Live, you know what I mean? So just using that in a MacBook through, we use, you know, we're on Yamaha consoles, so we use the Dante virtual sound card. 

But if you were on an X32, you could use the USB. The trouble with the USB is it's not very stable. If that thing wiggles too much, it like falls out and then you lose connection, which sucks. But, uh, the reverbs were a huge, huge benefit. Um, I would also say that if you had a desk that did not have any dynamic EQs, that would be a cool thing to do also, but, um, I'm still inexperienced enough and leery enough about insert EQs. 

I don't want to have anything on the computer that would take my show down if the computer went down. So I'm, I'm not there yet, although a lot of people have a lot of great success with it, but the, the Reaver has been game changing for me, which has been awesome, 

Andy Leviss: Yeah. Cause I feel like rather than like digging into the whole chain again, folks can go back and check the old one and then just kind of listen to it with, with that in mind a little bit. 

Sean Walker: Yep. Same, same chain, same settings. I just used outboard plugins and I have not settled on, Oh my God, these are the ones yet. So I'm not going to like list a bunch that you got to go by just that, like the outboard ones have been better than the onboard ones. 

Andy Leviss: Yeah, yeah, I would probably speak, and that's like a great explanation of why it's the, yeah, if you're, all you're doing is making a reverb, that better be a damn freaking good sound and reverb. 

Sean Walker: dude. Totally. 

Andy Leviss: it means you've got more resources to do it. Um, uh, do, do we want to talk a little bit real quick about like, about like ringing out and like game before feedback? 

Sean Walker: Sure. If you want to go ahead. 

Andy Leviss: Yeah, I mean, I mean, do it. 

Sean Walker: Yeah. Right. Totally. Totally. 

Andy Leviss: no, but I feel like that's like another question that often comes up is the how do I get more game before feedback, whether it's a vocal mic for a song or for corporate stuff. Um, and I mean, obviously EQ is the big thing. Uh, don't over compress. If you find you're fighting feedback a lot, try backing your compressor off a little bit because compression will make feedback worse. 

Sean Walker: Or 

Andy Leviss: another time we can dig into the physics of 

Sean Walker: totally, or take it off entirely. If you're doing monitors, take the compressor 

Andy Leviss: Yeah, um, oh yeah, compressor on monitors, oof, that's a, that's a dangerous road to go. That's, cause, cause, the, the short version of that being that if a singer is, they, they can't control their dynamics as well if they're fighting against you doing things, things to their dynamics. 

Sean Walker: Short version is don't do it, long version is what Andy just said. Ha ha ha ha 

Andy Leviss: we'll save for another time where we can talk about on Discord. 

Sean Walker: Totally, dude! 

Andy Leviss: Um, the, the other, the other like, and you don't have time to do this during like a proper sound check, but like for whether it's vocal mics on stage or singing for corporate, obviously long term goal, learn your EQ, learn your frequencies, learn to immediately hear that ring starting to pick up and pull it out. 

But if you're at the point where you're not confident in that, like do you do the parametric like sweep, narrow sweepy trick at all, Sean? 

Sean Walker: I do? Yeah, when I need to? 

Andy Leviss: Yeah. So, so basically get your. Take an EQ band, start it at zero, dial it as narrow a cue as you can so it's really nice and tight. And then you're going to push your microphone fader up until you hear it just barely start to ring, and then back it off a crack. 

And then you're going to dial that EQ up to boost, like anywhere from like 6 to 10 dB, like, and slowly start sweeping the frequency across until you feel that ring run away. And it's going to run away fast, so keep a hand ready to like, Pull the fader down or put the gain on that EQ band down, but that'll let you find it and keeping it nice and narrow helps you find that frequency that's going to run away from you. 

And then you can cut it out and typically you'll cut it out and you'll also widen it up a bit. You don't necessarily want to notch it tight like that, but that, that tends to be a handy like shortcut for training your ear to, to find those frequencies. And frankly, sometimes you're in a shitty room, even if you know what the frequencies are. 

Maybe you can't hear it quite as well or you've got a head cold or whatever and you don't trust yourself. I'll still do that from time to time. I'm like, I've got to wring some lavs out real quick. Fuck it. I'm going to gain them up, spin that EQ around to, to find where it is, cut it out and go on with my day. 

Sean Walker: dude. Totally. That's excellent advice. I had one more thought about plugins and processing. Uh, gain staging, if we got time for that before we let him go. 

Andy Leviss: Let's do 

Sean Walker: The other thing 

Andy Leviss: worst case, they'll listen to this in two 

Sean Walker: Alright, shit dude. The other thing that I, that I do that I didn't realize until somebody pointed it out that was odd is that because I came from the studio and we gain structure everything in the studio, I run tone to everything through my desk. 

So when I have like buses that have plugins on them, so if I put like You know, an 1176 emulation or a Neve emulation or whatever it is you got on a bus to do a group of stuff. I will send a minus 18 1k tone to that bus. Uh, when, you know, when we're getting set up, this is assuming we've got some time, we're in the shop and pre pro whatever, because the gain structure of the plugins is never unity in and unity out. 

Ever. Never, ever, ever. They're always coming out way hot. So if you run a 1k tone at minus 18 through your plugin chains, you can adjust them so that you get like, you know, adjust your inputs or threshold or whatever you're at on your, whatever plugin it's got. So you get like either just tickling one DB of reduction or no reduction, or just right at that threshold of like, just starting to tickle gain reduction and make sure that your input and your output meters, because oftentimes they have in and out meters on them. 

are, let's call it, the same ish, right? What you'll find when you start that is the out will be way hot compared to the in, and you're like, I got no gain reduction and a bunch of extra level. How are you going to tell that's better? Louder always sounds better, so of course you think this plugin sounds awesome. 

But what you, once you regain structure it so that in and out are both at unity, and let's say right about gain reduction of, you know, one dB or so, You'll be stunned as to when you put things in and go, ew, nope. Or when you put things in and go, fuck yeah, dude, where's that been my whole life? You'll, you'll be astounded as to how much better things sound once you've gained structure, the whole thing. 

And I do that through the entire desk. And I, if I'm blessed enough to be Able to have control of the whole system. I do that through the whole rig from, through the desk, through the drive processor, to the PA and the amplifiers. Like everything you can get to have this same gain structure, minus 18 at a 1k sine, there you go, I pulled an indie, 1k sine tone, that is your gain structure. 

That, through the whole thing, that should all meter minus 18 on your channel meters, it should meter minus 18 on your buses, it should meter minus 18 on your outputs. All the way through your whole desk if you send that down a channel, unless you are obviously and intentionally doing something to gain that up or gain that down and you know that you're doing that. 

But if you send that down a channel at minus 18 and it comes out your master at clip, something's fucked unless you have intentionally done that, which, uh, I will leave that under the artistic rather than the technical, right? That was a huge thing for me that I figured out over the course of the years of like, I just did it and somebody pointed out going, dude, what are you doing? 

And I was like, what do you mean? What am I doing? And I didn't realize that wasn't like something that everybody did. So gain structure, your plugins and your desk is like, we've all got the built in plugins. Now, you don't have the premium plugins or even the extra two has got those different things. The, the, the rub is like, they will fuck your situation up if you don't gain structure them. 

And you'll be like, man, this sounds so much better. Or I didn't realize how bad I was messing this whole thing up or whatever it was. You mean? It's way night and day better. If it's the instruction all the way through the desk. 

Andy Leviss: Totally, and my two last notes on those things, one, in the nature of learn from Andy's dumbass mistake one day, if you're getting into nerdy enough stuff that you're starting to use things like noise reduction plugins, are probably going to think your sine wave is noise and try cutting it down. So if you're using more obscure plugins like that or some sort of multiband things, you And you're trying to figure out where the fuck did all my gain go? Try sending it something other than tone, or try sending it, like, noise, although noise probably will do the same thing. But be aware of that, like, it is possible in certain very specific situations. Your plugin is supposed to be, like, doing its job is reducing the gain of what you're sending to it. Again, that's a very specific footnote, but it's, it's one that if you don't have in the back of your mind when you start playing with that particular kind of plugin, you'll lose way too much time trying to figure out where you're losing 10 Don't ask me how I know. 

Sean Walker: Don't ask me how I know. I don't want to admit to it, but, but I know. 

Andy Leviss: Nope, I know exactly which gig it was on. It's a job we talked about on the show like a year and a half ago. I lost 5 or 10 minutes trying to figure out where a game was going until I realized that my, in that case, isotope voice genoise was doing exactly what the fuck it was supposed to and decided that my 1k sine wave 

Sean Walker: was noise. 

Andy Leviss: not a vocal. 

Sean Walker: There you go. Totally, 

Andy Leviss: Um, the other thing, we were just talking broadly about game structure and Like this, and I mean we talked about this a bit in the Pat Brown episode much earlier this year, which I can link to in the show notes too, is keep that green structure going. Like Sean was kind of guiding me through his structure where everything's hitting nice and solid on the desk, everything is hitting nice and solid on your bus. 

And if that's too loud coming out of the PA, back that off as far down the chain close to the speaker as you can. If you can do it at the amp, great. If you cannot, do it at the output of the console that's feeding the amp. But keep things hitting into a nice level as far through the console as you possibly can. 

It will make your life easier, it will make plugins work better, it will make your metering happier, it will make your recording happier. Cause that's, that's a, Even if nothing else, that's the two biggest things I see people struggle with and that I've struggled with in the past is both having like particularly dynamics plugins that I'm having to crank my threshold crazy low because the PA is so hot that I'm backing things too far off before those dynamics and then I'm barely tickling them. 

And that gives you no range for anything to work. And then also that's how you end up with like really quiet board recordings because you're making your whole mix quiet enough to not be blaring out of the PA. And that's again, where like Sean said before, the Matrix is your friend. The Matrix can, the output that feeds the PA can dial the PA back a little bit while still giving you a nice hot record mix. 

Sean Walker: Totally, dude. Totally. All right. I think we let them go and if they want round two, we can do round two, but that's probably more than anybody ever wanted to know from us. 

Andy Leviss: I dig 

Sean Walker: Thank you to Allen and Heath for, you know, making the AHM and some consoles and letting us talk some nerd shit. And thanks to RCF for making Rippin speakers that, you know, everybody can afford to go make some money with and letting us, uh, you know, talk about speakers and podcast audio shit. 

Till next time. That's the pod y'all.

Music: “Break Free” by Mike Green