Instead I like to refine things, and use the most minimal processing possible. So in general, I don't like to beef up or change the sonic textures too much. People also really want to know where the sounds that they worked on are. With so many people involved, it's easy for people to get demoitis.
You can download a larger, zoomable version in the Zip file attached to this article's righthand sidebar."When mixing it's really important to keep the integrity of the rough, and that of the producers that I work with. This composite screen capture shows the entire Pro Tools session for 'Weight'. So I tried not to get too psyched up about technicalities and frequency responses. I'd never used them before, so that added a level of anxiety, but at the end of the day, they're great monitors, and it also was the first time I was working in a room that was treated correctly. I've always mixed on Yamaha NS‑10s and Barefoot MicroMains, but at Abbey Road I used the ATC SCM25As with a Genelec sub. There were three tracks that we had recorded in America, and I sent these vocals also through the 1073 and LA‑2A to make them match the vocals we'd recorded at Abbey Road. We mixed entirely in Pro Tools, but we had some Abbey Road outboard set up, like a pair of Fairchilds and Tube‑Tech compressors and EMI TG2 EQs. I also like the faders in Pro Tools, and in general things are easier to look at and easier to manage while you are mixing. I think the sound engine has higher fidelity. "As to the reason to make the transfer to Pro Tools, I have always mixed in Pro Tools, and I honestly think it sounds better than Ableton.
But if we just slapped on a quick reverb or delay just to make something sit well, we'd print stems without these effects and we'd start again during the final mix. Also, because of time pressure, we wanted to stay with the integrity of how things made us feel during the creative process. "If there are effects that we really love, we print them in the stems.
"We always do full stems, which means all tracks in a session that make the final arrangement are included," explains Joba. The first step of the mixing process was to export all the songs from Ableton as multitracks, which were loaded into Pro Tools.