This is a custom mix of the classic who song Who Are You.. The master stems were summed into Harrison’s Mixbus and mixed hybrid. Harrison plugins and expander gates and vocal processing was used. The tracks were mixed external on a 32 track digital external console utilizing Midas Mic preamps and digital processing. The vocals and backup vocals were processed with lexicon 480l vintage reverb and Teletronix LA2A. The guitars we’re processed with a waves transient designer. The secret recipe to Pete Townsend guitar tone was 3 different guitar tracks. He utilized Hi-Watt tube amplifiers and is probably the first guitarist to get a sans amp blend lol. This song was recorded in 1978. One guitar track might be either a hi watt cab mic’d up with just treble. I don’t think the Hi-watt had direct inject out like the Marshall did. Then another amp was mic’d up with normal tones. A second guitar backing track was also recorded. That’s Pete’s secret recipe in the studio to get that almost impossible to duplicate crunch tones he got recording the album Who are you. He wasn’t a shredder like Jimmy Paige and Eric Clapton on that time. But my hat gets tilted towards Pete Townsend.
Mixing Help from Audio Engineers
Who Are You digitally remixed and Mastered
- Rock
- September 14, 2020
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Sounds really good!
Thanks. Could’ve been better. I only had the 2 track mixdown of the drums and couldn’t tweak em the way i wanted to. There’s nothing like pro stems to mix with. These songs were recorded in the 70s on 2 inch tape. They still hold up remixing them digitally lol. Those yesteryear engineers had their shit together!
I used a Neanderthal Behringer T1958 Tube compressor as my mastering limiter. The old cheap piece of shit doesn’t sound bad???
Didn’t Behringer used to make gear that was pretty solid? I thought Behringer being associated with crappy gear is a newer thing.
It’s hit and miss. Some of the gear is solid and some are not. It all depends on the user lol. I own the X32 console. That was used to mix this outta the box. They partner with Midas, Klark Teknik and Bugera is another brand name. Since Midas merged? Behringer got their shit together. They expanded from novice, semi pro up to professional. They really have Midas Mic pre in the new audio Interface and the digital consoles. The X32 is just a little shy from the Midas M32 specs. But They both run the pack. The New Wing series console is another game changer. But i do personally think that the older rack units sounded better than the cigarette box size ultra tube box they have now. The new single space rack tube composer is a joke compared to the Tube composer T1958 unit. It has real vacuum tubes and control knobs to blend in the harmonic distortion parallel to the main compressed signal. The newer tube composer just has a button you press to simulate the Tube warmth and saturation. There’s no tube. Just sounds like distant high end FM radio static in the back of the mix when engaged compared to the actual tube unit. They we’re foolish. My next gadget I’ll get is the Tube saturation Mic pre amp. Looks like the T1958 but it’s a Mic pre and can switch to line input too run tracks through it. I’ve heard demos of it. It’ll run next to the old DBX 588 unit. Except it’s a pre amp and not a compressor like the DBX 588. DBX 588 is on my purchase next list. I just like running signals out into real tube hardware. There’s definitely a difference between plugin tube emulation software verses real hardware. Remember that three computer is still using binary square wave to mimic sine wave. There’s still pointed edges. External tube hardware is sine wave true analog. It’s like the difference between a virtual guitar instrument and a real guitar. The real guitar captured will be warmer and more natural tone. The virtual will be crispy around thee edges and sound scratchy compared to an actual guitar cab mic’d up with a genuine tube amp.
It’s very easy to run tracks outta the box and use external gear without the need of an expensive console/audio Interface. Back in my beginnings? I only had a computer and a mouse lol. ITB. I would utilize my computer sound card and run tracks out from and back into the computer to run a signal into my external gear. It’s a hassle because you can only process single tracks. But it’s better than nothing. I just used my insert cables and a 1/4 to 1/8 mini phone adapter for the stereo sound card output. Then vice versa for the stereo card input on the computer. I’d ping pong “bounce” from computer into external and print the incoming signal. Depending on the daw and system? You’djust need to re align the bounced track with original to keep time alignment if any buffer issues caused it to capture it late in the beat grid. I also used an external tape cassette deck in budget mode like that. Took forever bouncing tracks from daw to tape and then back again, but it was worth it. Even though the tape deck can’t sync with the daw? It’s manual play and record. I’d just re align the bounce with initial track again. Pure analog tape saturation and tape compression due to the lower dynamic range. That method will blow away any slate or wave plugin emulation
Sounds great. A classic. Nice work 🙂