Blackbeer wrote:
I don't see any problem recording with nearly 0db or - 12db, because I don't hear any quality difference to be true. Specially the live recordings of my band have all different levels and it is no problem to get a decent mix down with this different tracks.
My levels too usually end up all over the map. As Andreas says, it is very possible to get decent mixes. He is also right about the need to make music rather than spending too much time debating.
Like Robbie has expressed, I would like to understand the "best" way to proceed, realizing it is not the "only" way. The author of the "yep" post makes an important point when he wrote about getting the job done. So you don't have to go searching ( should you be interested ) I have copied that section from the PDF that Bok posted of the oiginak thread, from another forum
Finished vs. perfectRecording, like any process that is both technical and creative, is a state-of-mind
thing. Any single aspect of the process has the capability of being either a launching
pad or a stumbling block to better records. Experience brings a sense of proportion
and circumspect “big picture” awareness that is hard to get from reading
web forums and eq recipes.
It is important to work fast. Finished is always better than perfect. Always. In
more ways than one. For one thing, you will change your mind about things as
the recording develops. There are a thousand steps along the way, and if you get
too stuck on one, you lose your inspiration and sense of proportion, you'll get
frustrated and your ears will start to burn out, and you will start to hate the song
and the sound. Recording it will start to feel like a chore and a burden and that
state of mind will show in the finished product, if it ever gets to that state. More
likely, the project will become a half-forgotten waste of hard disk space that never
gets completed.
The best way to work fast is to take as much time as you need to get ready for recording,
before you actually start the creative process. This is actually a big problem
with new clients in professional studios – they show up late, with worn-out
strings and drum heads, out-of-tune instruments in need of a setup, they're hungover
(or already intoxicated), they only got four hours sleep and haven't rehearsed
or even finished writing the material, and so on. This is frustrating but
manageable for the engineer to deal it with, it simply means that the client is paying
for a lot of wasted hours to restring their guitars and so on. The engineer can
take care of the setup for the first day or two and then get on with the business of
recording.
In a self-produced home studio setting, this approach is fatal. If you're trying to
write the song, learn the part, demo plugins, set up your instruments, figure out
your arrangements, and mix each part as you go, you will spend two years just
tracking the first measure*.
So the next couple of posts are going to deal with methods and techniques designed
to get you moving fast and making constant progress, and also with figuring
out when you've stalled out. The whole idea is to keep the actual recording
process a primarily creative and inspiration-driven one, and to separate, as much
as possible, the technical aspects that a dedicated engineer would normally perform.
Setting specific goalsThe best way to make sure that you are always making forward progress while recording
is to set specific and achievable goals for each session. In other words, if
you have three hours to record tomorrow, decide in advance what the “deliverable”
will be, as though you were answering to a boss. ....