. That above post is where I find myself constantly at odds with being an engineer/producer looking for the best 'technical' production, and also a music lover who cannot get past the fact that the most precious albums, the ones with most character are the ones with glaring production flaws. At what point do you cross the line and start to HURT the music with over-production? I think that's as much a battle as learning the skills to create a 'technically perfect' production.
One of the bigger drawbacks is likely that we've almost abolished the use of tape entirely. There must have been something added by the medium that created a natural vibe around the performances. Perhaps as technology gets better and our saturation plug-ins get 'on the level' we can start recapturing some of that? I don't know, it's a long shot but...
Anyway, I'm glad to hear that a few of you guys are Stabbing Westward fans. I thought it was just a teen angst thing for me, but I truly do still love that music... It really is atrocious what happened with Chris' new band. At the very least they covered a few SW songs in their live sets for the last few years. I think the 'glory' days for that alternative, brooding industrial music are well over.
It's all food for thought. In my never-ending search to get better at this gig, I need to balance this out and work out where to draw that line, and how to do so while continuing to get work, and letting the music shine on its own merits. This is why I'm so reluctant to delve into the world of gridding vocals syllable by syllabe, autotuning bass etc. Does it actually HELP the record, or just help to DATE it?
Glaring production flaws: Yes, the question is whether they are production flaws or actually production choices.
Back to the example of Dreaming Neon Black: this one is definitely not a Kelly Gray mudfest, as you can actually make out what each instrument is playing. Neil Kernon did his best to capture the sound he thought fitting for the music.
The only real flaw is the clipping on some guitar power chords and Neil explained on his board how that came to be (HDCD mastering). Besides that I, as primarily a listener and fan of music, don't find real flaws in there.
On Opeths Still Life, I remember reading that they wanted to use the Boss DS1 because it produced that special muddy sound (something like that at least, I don't remember the actual wording). Then heavily layered the guitars, the end of Face of Melinda has about 5 different guitar tracks playing at the same time. Again, choices. Way different choices than on Deliverance. Both good sounding records, but I know which one I prefer.
However for a thrash band or Arch Enemy, my preference would be way different.
So as you said, one thing is learning the skills, the other thing choosing when to apply them. A djent band or technical death metal band requires a different approach than progressive, atmospheric music.
Now in general, I believe tools like autotuning and quantization are great for correcting recording mistakes and maybe salvaging tracks that can not be retracked due to time/money restraints.
But it's your choice not to overuse them and shape each band into the same mechanical sounding form. Learn the difference between "character" and "flaw". IMO flaws are the things that make you cringe (in the worst case) or generally prevent you from enjoying the music to its fullest.
Example: On Psycroptic's Observant, I quickly noticed that they didn't quantize the kick drums. Sometimes that's very noticable, sounds almost like stumbling. On the one hand, I appreciate the obvious honesty in that, on the other hand personally I would have preferred to have them aligned a little better. It's a detail that jumps at me without me listening specifically at the kicks and draws my attention away from the kickass songs, so that's a flaw in my book. Best case, they should have retracked it, but time's money, so quantizing would be ok for me too.
BTW, I am certainly guilty of doing a lot of correcting/salvaging on my band's debut album which is still not finished. I'm curious to see how it will turn out, and how it will age. And I have learned alot about how to avoid needing correction in the first place, during the tracking stage. Most important thing I learned: A good, well-prepared musician doesn't need much correction after tracking.
So my primary goal nowadays is to get my musician skills up to par so guys like you don't have to use all those tools that kill the unique momentum of my takes, just to save them from being played like crap. Still got a long way to go.
