>
>Nah, disagree. Just going through a mixer pre tracking,
>meaning the individual sounds were still being tracked to the
>ADAT after being eq'd (I doubt there was compression per
>channel on what he had), makes a significant difference than
>just straight tracking. Every analog mixer, even shitty ones
>are going to add color. And tracking your eq means that's the
>place that it's starting from. If he takes that adat to a
>bigger studio it already has a sound on it which the engineer
>is going to help bring out, but just in the tracking he's
>added his touches to it.
>

No disagreement there. So to be straight here (because I too am intrigued with Dilla's workflow) he programmed on the MPC, tracked that out to the 24 channel mixer to EQ it there and then print to ADAT? If so that speaks to what I was saying about having the 24 channel mixer in the signal flow SPECIFICALLY because it mangles sound in a pleasing way. Because if it isn't for the special sauce of the channel strip, what would be the point of pushing it through the mixer just to then port it to ADAT to THEN be mixed?

So the EQ on the mixer was there for that purpose. I guess we're both Kinda right?



>>EQ and Compression are the ONLY ways to make individual
>sounds
>>sound the way the OP wishes they would.
>
>which is accomplishable with the mixer (sans compression which
>isn't necessary, but also was onboard the 3000). You can get
>the sound you want out of just that. Then you have that sound
>mixed.
>

If and only if that mixer was used for that purpose. I've had almost all of the MPC versions ever made and the compression was always the weak point IMHO. I never used it and sought out compressors that were more tasty so to speak. Again if Dilla was only using onboard MPC compression he was even a bigger genius than I thought.



>>Did Dilla even actually mix his own stuff or did he track it
>>and then send it to be mixed?
>
>Based on what I'm describing it doesn't matter but probably
>the latter.
>
>Disclaimer - everything I'm saying is speculation based on the
>gear I saw him with.
>


Actually I would argue it REALLY matters because if the mix was good coming out of the DAW/Board there would be no need to send it to be mixed. Maybe mastering but not mixing. I just checked Dilla's disco and he gets a mixer credit on only 2 of the projects he was involved in.
http://www.allmusic.com/artist/jay-dee-mn0000809513/credits