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[hoovie87]

This is my first time posting on here, so hopefully this is the right area.

I am an audio engineer at a church and a couple of weeks ago we had a praise night.  It is about 90 minutes (14 songs) of straight worship music plus a little talking.  All of the night was recorded down to tracks on Pro Tools HD.  There's about 48 tracks.  These include band, orchestra, choir, etc.  The reason it was recorded is that I am working on a praise night CD for everyone to buy before Christmas.  It was recorded straight off the pre amps of our D Show system.

Now, the question I have for all of you people out there is how long would you normally take to fully mix and master a CD to the best of your ability?  I was given about three weeks to do it along with most of my normal duties and FOH mixing.  I've expressed many times how it's just not possible to get it out that quickly.  As an engineer I want to put out a quality CD, but everyone seems to like instant products.  So, if you were to be put in a situation where you had to mix 14 songs individually, then master them along with lots of other things you are already responsible for at work...then what kind of time frame would you normally expect for a quality product?  I think we took months of work and crammed it into a few weeks.  Quality is going to suffer big time.

Feel free to ask me more about it if you need more details.

Thanks everyone!

[grantis]

If I had the luxury of giving such a project my undivided attention, I would feel comfortable getting it done in 10-12 days.

"Other responsibilities" taking time away and dividing my brain would drastically lengthen the project.  3 weeks would be cutting it close.

[el duderino]

hoovie87 wrote on Thu, 09 December 2010 00:06

I was given about three weeks to do it along with most of my normal duties and FOH mixing.  I've expressed many times how it's just not possible to get it out that quickly.  As an engineer I want to put out a quality CD, but everyone seems to like instant products.  So, if you were to be put in a situation where you had to mix 14 songs individually, then master them along with lots of other things you are already responsible for at work...then what kind of time frame would you normally expect for a quality product?

how many hours of time would you actually have for mixing in that 3 weeks? "other duties" can eat up alot of time.

if you aren't mastering on something other (and hopefully "better") than what you mixed on, send it out to someone. you'll be much happier.

[hoovie87]

el duderino wrote on Thu, 09 December 2010 01:34

hoovie87 wrote on Thu, 09 December 2010 00:06 I was given about three weeks to do it along with most of my normal duties and FOH mixing.  I've expressed many times how it's just not possible to get it out that quickly.  As an engineer I want to put out a quality CD, but everyone seems to like instant products.  So, if you were to be put in a situation where you had to mix 14 songs individually, then master them along with lots of other things you are already responsible for at work...then what kind of time frame would you normally expect for a quality product?   how many hours of time would you actually have for mixing in that 3 weeks? "other duties" can eat up alot of time. if you aren't mastering on something other (and hopefully "better") than what you mixed on, send it out to someone. you'll be much happier.

Looking at the calendar, I have only had 8 days mostly without distraction to work on it so far in the three weeks.

I know, it's a bad idea even for the same engineer to master, but basically I'm just going to do the basic stuff to it.  They want it all done in house and I'm the only Pro Tools/Studio engineer there (I'm also live, too).  Everyone else is live and sort of knows a little about studio/pro tools.

That's the other thing, all I have is some 8" Mackies and my personal altec 716 earbuds.  We don't have anything better...


Thanks for the input guys!

[Peter Beckmann]

hoovie87 wrote on Thu, 09 December 2010 15:55

That's the other thing, all I have is some 8" Mackies and my personal altec 716 earbuds.  We don't have anything better... !

I don't think anyone here would recommend you master using those, especially if you mixed on that set up too.

Sounds like a lot of work in a short space of time. Why not take the pressure off yourself, mix it as well as you can and then send it off to be mastered professionally.


Peter

[Fletcher]

First off - welcome to the forum - I sincerely hope the people that hang here can be of assistance to you.  

I have to say that when I first saw the title of the thread my first reaction  / thought was "how long is a piece of string?" ... as this is a pretty nebulous question not knowing the condition of the tracks.

If this was a 14 song "album" where each song was different and all of the "sounds" were individually "constructed" - I would hazard a guess at 2-3 weeks... but if I read the description properly - that is not the case -- what you have is a "live recording" where one can assume the tracks "line up" and your intention is to "recreate" the event in a consistent audio production.

In this case, I would say maybe one to three days depending on how long you call a work day, and the level of "detail" you want to attain.

For the most part, once you get the basic balances in order it should be a straight "run" with maybe the automation of some solos and maybe a little "processing" to a singer or an instrument here or there -- not the full "creation" of environments that may or may not occur in nature, and hopefully without a whole lot of "editing"  / "fixing" of parts / tuning /etc. [one of the things I find most special about "live recordings" are the "warts" -- but that could just be me].

I would think it would take 3-4 hours to set up the basic balances, then the rest of the day to automate in the solos.  Next day maybe some "touch-ups" on the automation, and maybe a little more attention to a sound here or there.

Then the 3rd day should be spent getting the "run" in order -- editing out unnecessary pauses -- putting in the proper "song labels" stuff like that... at which point you should have finished product for the congregation... or at least "finished enough" so the people who will hear it will be able to "relive" the experience.

Hope this is of some assistance.

Peace.

[Nick Sevilla]

What Fletcher said.

Spend the most time on the most complicated song, and then pare down from there.

Once you get a good balance for the whole of the one complicated song, you can translate that to the other songs too.

Hopefully you have one session with the whole concert in the timeline as it happened. That would be the way to go.

Cheers