Hey guys

Just wanted to get your opinion on what this guy was doing. I should start off by saying the end result did sound like what I assume he wanted it to sound like, but everything he did was just the opposite of everything I've ever learned. It seemed careless and made no sense to me. I guess I'm just wondering because I'm a student if what I witnessed tonight was a decent workflow or if it was actually just some guy getting his desired sound by pure luck.

Bit of background, my school has one of the largest studios in the area, so it's sometimes rented out at night to locals. I got in there tonight expecting to get some work done, but found it to be occupied. I decided to stay for a bit just because I love spending time in the studio, but his methods made me super curious.

The guy was mixing a metalcore track. He loads up the project, something he's been working on before. The vocals are screamed, and they're fairly decent considering it's likely some local band thing. But they do need processing, that's clear as day.

The lead vocals were recorded in pieces, I guess because it's just easier to get better results that way in that style of music, so he sends them all to a group. He throws in the background vocals as well, which I thought was weird, I mean, what if there's something in the backing vox he wants fixed that isn't there in the lead vox? But I guess he knows the song fairly well.

First thing he does is to load up some distortion/overdrive plugin I'm not familiar with. Cranks it all the way up. Plays back the vocals for about 1-2 seconds. Decides he's pleased with the results.

Then he loads up a bus comp. Seemingly randomly does the settings. Short attack and release times. Threshold way below what I've ever seen before. I mean, whenever there was vocals present, that comp was working so hard I almost wondered if the artificial labor union would show up and demand he pay it overtime.

Next, he loads up a 5 band EQ and explains to me that the vocals sound muddy to him, so he figures he should gain them in the 5k area. That sounded like a terrible idea to me. Shouldn't he fix the muddyness instead? Why would he gain when the vocals are bad? Would you guys do that?

But he doesn't just fix "somewhere around the 5k area". He cranks that EQ the fuck up. And sure enough, the middle is around the 5k area, but that curve spanned like a quarter of the frequencies, including the low mids which is where I assumed the muddyness was residing.

But 25% of the frequencies humans can hear is apparently not enough. He also decides to raise the high frequencies with a (you know, when you raise all the high frequencies past a certain point, like the opposite of a low cut, name escapes me).

Listens approximately half a second. Listens half a second with bypass. Decides he's satisfied.

And don't get me wrong, because it did sound like metalcore vocals on a metalcore track. But I was just like: "How is this working out for this guy?!" Am I stupid or did I just witness pure luck?