Originally Posted By: Islansoul
[The Audiophile thing is a joke. I read a post from an audio engineer facebook group about a guy who was aksed to make and aduiophile version of a song and only used stock plug-ins


Hi Islansoul,
There is no special recipe to follow , but there are some established guidelines. Rules are also made to be broken (except when it comes to the risk of digital clipping) but first you need to put in the required time it takes to learn and understand those guidelines . After that many great mixing ideas can result from happy accidents and from breaking rules.

Re; plugins , there is absolutely nothing wrong with stock plugins, they are just tools, but its the way in which these tools are used that makes all the difference..., just like a new car from the showroom that has it's OEM stock tires - even though there are better, more expensive tires on the market , that car still performs just fine with the stock tires.

Mixing (and tracking) is all about trial and error , and A-B-ing to find the right balance for "You" and it's various intended listening environments.

You will find a pro with a great range of 3rd party plugins would also be able to do a great job managing with stock plugins ..., you just need to "put in the time" to know your gear.

Just to give you an example , a great producer "Joey Sturgis" is well known for being able to complete a great mix in a pro studio and equally as well on a laptop with headphones (and stock plugins) while recording and mixing in anyones garage .., but he 'put in the time' to work out the differences in listening environments using lots of trial and error comparisons to work out the correct adjustments required to still make it sound good wink

My Specs
Computer : Mac Pro (late 2013) - OS Yosemite 10.10.5
Processor : 3.5 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon E5
Memory : 64 GB 1866 MHz DDR3 ECC
Graphics : AMD FirePro D300 2048 MB
Interface : Avid Mbox 3 Pro
DAW : Pro Tools 12.6.0 (64 bit AAX)