I do a little “consulting” now and then for people who can’t figure out why their recordings suck. This is one of those occasions:
This guy has a home studio and he’s got a TON of killer equipment. His gear is top of the line, worth thousands and thousands of bucks. But for the amount of gear he has, he can’t make a decent sounding recording. (Most crappy studio engineers think buying more gear is the answer, but it’s not)…
He has me listen to one of his recordings and sure enough, it sucks. It takes me about 7 or 8 seconds to figure out what his problem is. I reach down to his console and “do my magic.” BOOM! His mix opens up and all the sudden you can hear everything much more clearly!
He starts to freak out. “Wow! What did you do? That sounds so much better! You’re amazing!” I then inform him what a frigging PAN KNOB is. He had all of his channels panned dead center. $50,000 worth of gear and he doesn’t know what a pan knob is.
Someone shoot me now.