Managing Tone for Audience - From Studio Monitors to Regular Speakers Dilemma.

I think your question likely applies to the entire mix. As you mix, I suggest comparing to commercially released recordings of similar songs in a similar genre. The closer you get to them, the closer your mix will translate to all of the playback possibilities.

Good mixes (which are a collection of individual tones) are really just mixes the translate well to many different playback systems and environments. A very good room and good monitors lets you hear what is really going on in the mix to make better decisions. The better your understanding of what is really happening, the better your chances of creating mixes/tones that will translate well to other listeners. However, good engineers can generally work well on almost anything as long as they have a reference they know well to “tune” their ears to the tools they are working with. In these situations though it is often important to cross check on multiple systems to make sure it does translate as expected.

That's what a good mastering engineer (like myself, hahaha) will take care of ... if the mix/stems are already well made.

How many years of practice and experience does it take for a beginner guitarist to reach pro level skills and versatility? Same applies to a recording engineer, a mixing engineer ... and then add a few more years for a mastering engineer.

Quote from BayouTexan

But is all that skill even necessary today?

You seriously underestimate what a good master can make out of any given song mix I do this stuff every single day, since many years. I've listened to thousands of (good, mediocre, bad) mixes and I know what I can squeeze out of them.

Quote from BayouTexan

they just don't make records sound this good anymore

... even more if you consider that most of the guitar tracks were recorded using a little Tom Scholz Rockman device

But this being said, when Mutt Lange produced this album, he already had 15-16 years of experience and had worked a truckload of big acts. And I hope I don't have to introduce the great Bob Ludwig to you ... probably the greatest mastering engineer ever. No idea how many thousands of albums he has mastered over the decades. So Def Leppard had the best of the best taking care of their materials (after a pretty bumpy ride before they got there).

Quote from BayouTexan

Mutt produced ... a killer song with great guitar tone.

The funny thing about him (and the interesting thing in terms of "they just don't make records sound this good anymore") ... Mutt Lange is an unscrupulous producer. He doesn't mind at all to suck all the "natural" life out of artists performances. He was one of the first to make heavy use of the Fairlight sampler and in many of the big hits he produced, you can easily hear how he used samples and programmed drums.

For example compare Def Leppard - Hysteria with Tina Turner - What's Love Got To Do With It. Both use sampled drums, the snare in both is a mix of a gated natural snare sound sample and a (electronic) Simmons Drums sample. Even though the mix is slightly different, you should be able to hear that easily. He chopped up guitar riffs and arpeggios so he could mess around with them to satisfy his sense of total perfection.

That was a huge success story back in the 80s (and still for most of the 90s). His approach to production was "perfect" but to a great degree unnatural, overproduced.

His style and his idea of sound certainly contributed to the growth of the "counter-movement" known as Grunge. People got sick of the overproduced sound and craved for the honest, natural, human feel of rock music.

Sorry for this little excursion ... just felt like it's a good idea to give a little context to "what sounds great to whom?"

And at the same time it's really fun to deal with plenty of different musical genres / mixing styles in mastering (like I do).

Just listen to Nirvana - Heart Shaped Box or any other song from In Utero. Bob Ludwig mastered this as well and it sounds great. But it's quite the opposite of what Mutt Lange's idea of music production would have been. It sounds raw, honest, a bit like recorded in a garage, very little "produced".

The goal is to keep the producer's intention untouched but still add the necessary shoe-shine and polish so it translates as good as possible wherever you play it. That's something , a mixing newbie or even an intermediate mixing engineer can't (yet) do. It requires a LOT of experience and years of training to hear minute details.

Hope this novel helps

I saw a video with Matt Belamy once where he described working with Mut Lange. He said Mutt would automate EQ for each individual syllable of the entire vocal track to get his idea of perfection ?

Quote from BayouTexan

Maybe I am over-thinking it all.

AKa the curse of the guitarist ?

Quote from BayouTexan

I realize that I may have to increase mids, cut down highs, or even dry down some effects for the mix to sound right

Yeah, maybe. If you plan to mix it on your own and if you're still kind of "starting", I can only highly recommend you to record separate tracks.

DI track (Git Studio), Stack, Master stereo. If you have S/PDIF available, set the S/PDIF output to Git / Stack (2 mono tracks) and the Main Output to Master stereo (1 stereo track). Don't try to setup your Profiler rig for what you think would be a "perfectly mix-ready" sound. Once you cut too much bottom end or top end you can't properly bring it back in mixing (unless you reamp). Final mixing decisions must be made when things come together.

Other than that ... have fun

Quote from BayouTexan

But is all that skill even necessary today?

You just asked a mastering engineer if his trade was even necessary today. I now have a new definition for chutzpah.

All kidding aside, yes, it's much easier today for mere mortals to deliver their own mixes. The software tools we have available are incredibly powerful and relatively affordable. Not the same as hiring the best talent in the business, but you can still get good results.

As others have said, it's not just about the guitar tone, it's about having a "portable" mix, i.e. one that sounds good in all environments - the studio, a high quality home stereo, a cheap beat box, the car stereo, your favorite phone or pad (using the speakers or just marveling at the massive difference between different sets of earbuds). This is the holy grail for engineers everywhere, and always has been. And conversations about how studio quality doesn't matter because they'll just listen to a compressed mp3 on Spotify are the exact same conversations people used to have about crappy AM radios and cheap cassette decks. Hardly anyone listens to music in an environment as good as a recording studio.

One standard trick has been the "car test." You do your mix, think it's awesome, burn a CD / tape, and play it in your car. You then throw it out the window while barreling down the freeway at high speeds because it really does sound that bad. Back to the studio, remix, rinse and repeat.

Another common technique is using reference mixes. If you have a song that's in the vein of AC / DC (for example), play an AC / DC CD on your studio speakers and then compare your mix to that one. If the bass is a little lacking on the AC / DC song, you want yours to lack exactly that much bass, etc. It doesn't matter if their song doesn't sound perfect in your environment. What's important is to make your mix sound like their mix in your environment. They had world class engineers who made their mix portable, so you can reference that to make yours come close.

Another trick I use relies on the fact that I have an internal website running in my house (I'm a programmer, so that's not surprising). I copy test mix mp3s to the server and put a link to them on one of the web pages. I can then access that page on my internal network, e.g. point my iPhone to 192.168.0.x /Mixpage. In this manner, after doing a mix, I can quickly and easily hear exactly what it will sound like on an iPhone.

It gets better as you learn how your environment translates to others.

Quote from Chris Duncan

The software tools we have available are incredibly powerful and relatively affordable.

Affordable software tools don't replace an experienced set of ears.

Think about it for a second ... why would an experienced producer / mixing engineer like Brendan O'Brien still hire a mastering engineer (Ryan Smith) to give AC/DC's latest album the final touch? You think Brendan O'Brien couldn't come up with a "portable mix" on his own? He certainly could.

Nothing beats a set of (experienced) fresh ears after the producer / mixing engineer has spent weeks or months on a project.

Quote from BayouTexan

Or do we say, "Get yourself a real stereo if you want to hear good tone"?

99% percent of your listeners listen to your tracks on cheap speakers or headphones. If you only want to serve the 1% who don't then it isn't really about your music anymore.

As a filmmaker - while color grading - I also watch my films on reference monitors knowing that they will look different in every cinema and on every home screen. That doesn't change the soul of the film though. So I force myself to take a break from the reference monitor once in a while and watch a color grade on my old Macbook Air in 720p. I always think: If it still works on a crappy device, it can just be better on a better one.

Quote from BayouTexan

the tracks were muddy. I had to increase the EQ curve exponentially from 1K to 12k to get a sound that was similar to what I heard thru studio monitors.

Without knowing the track, I can already tell: wrong approach. You said it "sounds nearly perfect" when you play it through studio monitors. And I don't doubt your impression. But at the same time, I'm sure your ears aren't yet trained and experienced enough to hear potential issues that prevent it from translating well to other speakers. So you resort to a pretty brutal "solution" although you already know it will sound terrible on good speakers. And that's a good example for something that had been mentioned earlier in this thread. The software tools are affordable ... but you still need to know how to use them. It's a job of its own ... and it's fun. But if you want to go down that road, just be aware that it takes away from your time playing the guitar. The day still has 24 hours only and it takes years to become a good mixing engineer ... just like it takes years to become a good guitar player. Those who think they can manage the entire spectrum of music production easily just because "they can afford the tools" will run into troubles.