FOR MUSICIANS ONLY Hurricane Sessions Mixdown -- Part Two December 8 -- I made a first pass through all the tracks of this song, and didn't like what was happening to it. I tried filters and plug ins, in an effort to speed things up a little, but I always end up going back and doing it right. There's no replacement for doing this stuff manually. I may be the only one in the world who thinks this way. But from a practical scientific viewpoint, it makes complete sense to me and I don't see how a computer algorithm could possible be more accurate. For one thing, the computer can't tell the difference between background noise and music. It will treat them the same and boost the noise level. Tim likes the high-end presence (without being all Rickenbachery about it). He's playing through his amp and the high end peaks are keeping 6 dB of gain all to themselves. I tried running a limiter at it, and a compressor. Neither one really worked because they changed everything. Then I tried using EQ, but again, it changed averything. His track had already been compressed once, so I went back and grabbed the generation 1 track.   I went through and manually limited the track so that the gain of the hotter frequencies was reduced to a closer proximity to the rest of the frequencies in each note, but still leaving them the extra bit of headroom. This let me bring the rest of the bass frequencies up about 4 dB, which brought all the bass back with the tone unaltered. I just attenuated the individual frequencies, not even entire notes, then brought up the gain. This smoothed out the bass part considerably, filled up the bottom end. About 80 percent of the way through this, I'm questioning the value of this whole "do it manually" thing, just because it's taking so freaking long. But one playback when I was finished and the difference was significant. Whereas I was kind of pushing to get the bass to have enough presence earlier, now I've got to actually pull it back a little. For the moment, I'm not going to worry about the EQ for the bass track. Now that the peaks are under control for the kick, snare and bass, all three have claimed their own aural space, instead of being all glommed together. More distinct. Cry Raw Tracks --256k Download Phase 2 -- 128k Download Phase 3 -- 128k Download