@mdphunk said:

This is great! I've been frustrated for years with "remasters" of tapes that circulate with no info at all regarding what was done the tape to improve sound (and often achieve these results using compression or limiting, as far as I can tell).

Would you be willing to share what frequencies you cut, or are you trying to keep that as your own "secret sauce"?

I *could* share them, but I don’t feel that will help much. What works for this tape, won’t work for another. I do everything by ear, based on my experience as a producer and mixing engineer. My fear if I explicitly state my settings is that people would use the same values I did here, and try to apply that to every tape which is 100% the wrong way to go about it. That might contribute to EQ jobs I feel don’t actually improve the tape. That’s one of my top criteria when doing work on tapes: if my end product doesn’t sound better to my ear than the original, leave it untouched as-is.

The best advice I can give you is to practice on your own, mix and EQ as much as you possibly can. Learn what tools work best for you in different environments and workflows. Like I said in the blog post: trust your ears, let them guide you and the end product will benefit in the long run. There will be lots of trial and error, especially as you make mistakes, but that’s how we learn.

I couldn’t distill my experience in mixing and producing succinctly enough for a blog comment, or even a blog post - it would take years of hands-on demonstration to show you how I approach mixing. Which I am not opposed to, but limited time sadly restricts me from being able to do this.