#1625908 - 08/28/00 05:21 PM
DOWNTIME
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virgo@inch.com
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Registered: 08/28/00
Posts: 7
Loc: New York,OR,UNITED STATES
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Dear AL,
I'm writing to get your esteemed opinions on where the ultimate responsibility lies for large blocks of downtime.
Here's the scenario…
We're recording a CD that is self-funded. The tracks (with the exception of drums) were meticulously recorded at home using a pristine Studer 169 broadcast sidecar to ADAT. Our mix engineer (name omitted) commented that the raw tracks sounded great.
The plan (engineers suggestion) was to dump the ADAT tracks to 2" 24 track analog tape. Any remaining tracks would be dumped to Pro Tools and slaved via a smpte track striped to the 2". The dump was to be completed in 2 sessions. The 1st session proceeded well and the subsequent mixes that followed turned out brilliantly. The 2nd dump session came and went. This is when the weirdness began. During the mixes of the songs, the drum sounds were lifeless and "blown out" according to our engineer. We spent 2 days trying to "fix" the drums but to no avail. We settled on a lame mix as our engineer was beginning to get "burnt out" with the song.
When we began mixing the next song…the same thing happened, bad drums. After another full day of chasing bad sounds, we dejectedly went home and listened to our rough line mixes…Imagine our surprise when the drums sounded GREAT. We went in the next day with the rough. The engineer admitted that the rough sounds were superior to the sounds he had spent the whole day working on. We went back to the ADATs and Lo & Behold…GREAT DRUM SOUNDS! At this point we just dumped the ADATs directly to Pro Tools and proceeded to get a great sounding mix. When it came time to mix the next song, The engineer LISTENED and COMPARED sounds between the analog and digital tapes, noted the levels to tape and informed us that the 2"deck had not been properly aligned prior to the dump. At this point, we had already spent 3 full days (that we couldn't afford, not to mention 2" tape stock) chasing bad sounds and trying to shine sh*t. When it came time to settle the studio bill, we spoke to the engineer regarding what he thought the studio should compensate us for. They were willing to give us 2 days plus some unexpected fees that had popped up (e.g. $10 dollar floppy disks, $25 dat tapes and $60/hr for dubs). We had a discussion with this unnamed engineer on getting the 3rd day as well…he became agitated and said that "mistakes happen and they get paid for" (meaning by us). It is our opinion that it's the engineer's responsibility to make certain that the machines are properly aligned and a comparison is done to insure that signal is properly recorded to tape. A 5 minute check would've saved 3 FULL days in the studio that will take us way over budget. The book on the studio is closed…they've given us all of the credit that they're prepared to give as it was their assistant who improperly aligned the decks in the 1st place. I still believe they owe us another day…
We have 2 more mixes to go and have not breached the $$ issue with the engineer as of yet. What I'm looking for is the opinion of well-respected professionals such as yourselves as to where this responsibility lies.
Thank You.
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#1625909 - 08/28/00 06:41 PM
Re: DOWNTIME
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PlatEar1@aol.com_dup1
Member
Registered: 08/11/00
Posts: 11
Loc: ,,UNITED STATES
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Believe it or not, I had a very similar situation with a studio in Cleveland. My artist was there and found the studio. Our engineer & I flew in from NY to do the session. Among the problem was misaligned machine, dead channels, etc. The sessions were booked there due to the singer's need to be close to home. We had a 3 day block. The last straw was when the studio was hit with a power failure on Sunday. After much haggling, the studio gave us 3 days gratis. Another timewhile there, the dump went the opposite way from yours (2" to ADAT) and in the dump the fade out on one song was cut off abruptly. This was discovered when we were back in NY (all raw tracks were done on the song, so we didn't listen to it~dump done without us present). We saved the mixdown using ProTools and had the fade faded and the subsequent fade faded, etc. and we were able to save it. I wouldn't pay the engineer. His f&^k-up, he should eat his fee.
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#1625910 - 08/29/00 04:51 AM
Re: DOWNTIME
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c.cash
Senior Member
Registered: 03/17/00
Posts: 321
Loc: Los Angeles, CA
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Holy Moley... One bad fade (very, very bad, yes), and that qualifies as a freebie for the entire project? Or *was* that the project?
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#1625911 - 08/29/00 06:38 AM
Re: DOWNTIME
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PlatEar1@aol.com_dup1
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Registered: 08/11/00
Posts: 11
Loc: ,,UNITED STATES
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Originally posted by c.cash:
Holy Moley... One bad fade (very, very bad, yes), and that qualifies as a freebie for the entire project? Or *was* that the project?
That was an example of another mess up (and a major one at that~time consuming to mask it while retaining the flow/integrity of the song). The main mess up was the studio with dead channels, a mis-aligned 2", defective mic cords, defective mics (so that we were settling for 2nd & 3rd choices of which mic to use), having to run out to buy a direct box because 2 of the 4 they had were broken. THAT was the time we got the freebie.
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#1625912 - 08/30/00 01:57 AM
Re: DOWNTIME
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Doctor Al
Senior Member
Registered: 05/05/00
Posts: 192
Loc: ,,US
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I think the negotiations worked out pretty well for you. It's a give and take world and the engineer has to make a living too. There are myriad lessons to be learned from this episode and I hope you've learned them.
a) trust noone
b) check EVERYTHING out yourself
c) finish the project amicably and then find another engineer. Fighting gets you nowhere when a project is not completed yet. What you got for your money was helpful on a stick-your-hand-in-the-fire level. Now you know what NOT to do next time. errrrr......some NEW things not to do next time....theres ALWAYS more of those
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