Revealations to a newbie!

[Shinozoku]

Was listening to With Odin On Our Side through my ATH-T22's, and just noticed the fact that there's an ever so subtle delay, just barely audible on Johann's vocals. I've not noticed this EVER before. What's crazy is I wasn't even critically listening to it, I was cleaning the garage

I'm assuming that working on practice mixed from this board and putting effects on, listening for subtleties, pretending to hear an incorrectly routed reverb bus has all made my ear more sensitive.

Anyone care to share any of their stories from when they first started to notice things early in their hobby/career as an AE?

 

[PhilTheBeard]

The moment i realized the guitar's on black dahlia murder's miasma album were out of phase. I use to think that tone was amazing :/ shame on me. But the past three album's have sounded amazing!

 

[Tommy Evans]

The fact that an instrument sounds perfect solo'd doesn't mean shit when it's in a mix.

 

[Ensi]

I'm in an "early" stage, intermediate can be said. And I've noticed that there is soooooooo much to learn, so many different ways of doing things! Again, it's a metric buttload of ways and information about AE'ing out there.

 

[professorlamp]

Delayed snare in limp bizkit tracks <3
come to think of it, lots of limp bizkit stuff has a shitload of tricks going on, my favourite being lowpassing the snare in the verses of nookie and then in the chorus backing off that lowpass and it punches you in the face

 

[acalaf]

the moment I heard the "analogueness" in the Foo Fighters' recordings.

 

[Mikaël-ange]

Most recently, the fact Colin use a verb plugin mostly know by PT user's as is reverb
FML and bring the 480L

 

[reg3n]

When noticing delays on vocals and noticing autotuned to fuck tracks, and when I finally "felt" compression for the first time and got the concept right it was like OH GOD I'VE BEEN BORN AGAIN

 

[Mago]

finding out about time aligning after micing up a cab for the first time, and allready using more than 1 mic

phasing all over the place, but didnt really recognize it, just thought its strange it doest sound cool, but since no pro and all I thought it has to be like that.
After reading about the time difference and the possibilty to line the signals up I was like as it sounded SOOO much better.

Wasnt the best mic position anyway + didnt use a TS with the green channel of the 6505+...so a few more fuck ups in there anyway too.
Been reading a lot more from that point on

Oh yeah, and the moment I heared of "automation" I was quite overwhelmed too.

First time I could tell that this sound is a specific amp and that it was right was also cool.

 

[crillemannen]

When i first started to hear what analogue compression is all about. I was damn, now i can't live without it.

 

[Torgal]

When we hooked up a EVH 5150III mini and an Engl V.S. Ltd. to the same Marshall cab and with the same mic position and the two amps sounded really realy similar to each other.
That moment I realised how important mic positioning is.

A week later I reamped at home with two different mic positions. On the first try I had to EQ the tracks pretty bad to get the sound I'm looking for. On the second try I only had to do high and lowpass, done.

 

[StefTD]

ultimate newbie revealation here:
started playing guitar, wanted to play metal, didn't knew how to activate the distorted chanel on my
15 watt practice amp, so I thought I should use a sharkfin plek-something like this:

and use the side on the bottom to scratch the strings while playing one powerchord for 5 minutes.

After 3-4 months playing that way, I saw that there was a little button (it was held back by the chassis
because of a little construction fail) and thought "hm-let's try this" and the volume and gain for the 2nd
chanel was set to 10, my parents were pretty shocked and I thought that this has to be the best fucking
amp in the world!

I think I don't have to add the info that wasn't my last revealation...

 

[Paulie!]

Summer of 2005... Recorded a demo into Acid Pro for my band through my pc sound card (stereo mix from a mixer) and realizing later on (as I listened back to the tracks a year or two later) that the reason the kick sounds like shit is because I cut the lows and highs and boosted the mids on the boards instead of the reverse... so I have a pop-punk demo floating around with a horribly flubby kick sound that is all but buried in the mix

 

[Shinozoku]

Another one of mine: A few years back when I first got bit by the recording bug, I wanted TR00 ANALOGUE TOANZ for my recocrdings, so I got a Tascam 4 track tape recorder... Without realizing I also needed a mixdown deck... =/

And what I REALLY wanted was a 1/2" 16 track reel-to-reel

 

[rob w]

I've noticed recently that the snare drum on All That Remains last album and Hardships in Season by Romeo Must Die appear to be identical. In fact the mix itself is very similar. There's also a song on Fall of Ideals by ATR that has a cymbal isolated few a few beats that has always bugged me as it sounds like you can hear the start of the sample cutting the tail off of the one before.

 

[bryan_kilco]

The moment i realized the guitar's on black dahlia murder's miasma album were out of phase. I use to think that tone was amazing :/ shame on me. But the past three album's have sounded amazing!

Wait, really?!?! I love that album! I thought you couldn't have phase issues with 2 different sources? Or, you're saying, each track has more than 1 mic on the cab and they are out of phase?

 

[schwinginbatman]

1. The moment I figured out compression.

2. When I first was able to notice the reverb in any room I was in.

 

[Redoubt9000]

1. The moment I figured out compression.

2. When I first was able to notice the reverb in any room I was in.

Definitely the compression revelation "awesome fuck" moment

And certainly the room verb. I now obnoxiously clap whenever I enter a room.

 

[ArnaudM]

When, at 5 o' clock, after 24 hours tracking guitars as a recording tech, I began to hear voices and people laughing behind the tracks.

AM

 

[LeSedna]

When I first heard harmonics in natural sounds. I noticed I could distinguish all the harmonics in a church bell sound, then I noticed in some natural sounds you can as well if you are very concentrated.

When I realized how using a good guitar in a good DI box with fresh strings makes a big differences. And that a good guitar DI is almost usable as it is and that a clean amplifier (like a fender) doesn't change it as drastically as I thought. Before that, I thought a DI sounded bad, sharp, annoying, and that the amp makes it sound good.

Also, in the beginning, I used to put like 10 vst on every track, crazy Eq, an exciter to make them pierce the mix, reverbs with the wet knob at least at 20%, and compressing the shit out of every track. I though high level producers had very complicated and scientific recipes. Later when I realized a good sound can just be a good recording and a subtle Eq and compression, it blew my mind.