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IMHO, if you have to ask the above questions then the answer to each might as well be "no." What I mean by that is if you can't tell whether compression or other effects have been applied then you might as well assume they have not and proceed to add any effect YOU LIKE.



so if you were my guitar teacher and my guitar was badly out of tune you'd just let me go on trying to learn to play like that? I'm asking the questions precisely because I'd like to know the truth!

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And what YOU LIKE is the key. There are no rules---at least none that anyone should follow robotically. Best thing to do is read up on some of the top sound engineering books so you know what the BASIC RULES are...and then break them until you hear what you want to hear.



I appreciate your point here but I disagree for newbies like me. I have so little mixing experience you might say I shouldn't even be allowed to do it! But I wanna so I'm gonna! And it will be very helpful to me to start out learning basics and best practices before I start breaking the rules. Heck I'd even be willing to try some of the plug-ins with presets as my starting point for everything (if they were not so damn expensive!!!)