[Bob Katz]

I just wrote a blog that can be found at PMFC here.

So, now that you’ve seen the blog, here’s a good question: Are there any processes or techniques you’ve encountered that are definitely not “a free lunch”? Or vice versa, any processes or techniques that you think have no down side at all? Get the juices flowing, folks…  All the lines are open.

[Phil Koenig]

As a longtime fan of Robert Heinleins work (The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress was the first one I read, and got me hooked), I can’t agree more.

There is a psychological focusing effect, where you listen primarily to the processing you’ve just done and how effective (or not) it was.  That leads you away from the other aspects of the mix that would doubtless pop out if you were listening the the same mix for the first time.  A quandary, for sure…

All that said, I recently encountered a ‘black magic’ plugin called Goyo, which does a remarkable job of splitting out 3 types of ‘stems’: vocal, reverb, and everything else.  I haven’t used it extensively, since I both mix and master my own music; if the mix is deficient, I simply revisit the mix before proceeding.  But it might be worth a look.  If you try it out let me know what you think of it.

https://goyo.app/

[Bob Katz]

Hi, Phil. All those “remixing” plugins have a dark side: If you ISOLATE any  of the derived elements, it will sound like space monkeys, like a poor lossy codec (e.g. mp3). The reason is NONE of the algorithms are perfect. I don’t think they can ever be made perfect. So, how and why would you use one of these artificial “stem” generators? Maybe if you want to raise or lower the vocal 1/4 dB you can get away with the artifacts. It depends on how much of the vocal is recovered just into the so-called “vocal” stem and how much of its leakage or other elements are found in the so-called “reverb” and so-called “everything else”. The more you try to equalize, compress, process or otherwise alter any of the derived stems, the more you will start to lose depth, dimension and space. I’m speaking from sad experience as well as the theory.

[Bob Katz]

Hi, Phil. All those “remixing” plugins have a dark side: If you ISOLATE any  of the derived elements, it will sound like space monkeys, like a poor lossy codec (e.g. mp3). The reason is NONE of the algorithms are perfect. I don’t think they can ever be made perfect. So, how and why would you use one of these artificial “stem” generators? Maybe if you want to raise or lower the vocal 1/4 dB you can get away with the artifacts. It depends on how much of the vocal is recovered just into the so-called “vocal” stem and how much of its leakage or other elements are found in the so-called “reverb” and so-called “everything else”. The more you try to equalize, compress, process or otherwise alter any of the derived stems, the more you will start to lose depth, dimension and space. I’m speaking from sad experience as well as the theory.