Are 50′, 60’s mixing tools good for electronic EDM – Effects Forum

When albums were recorded in analog studios, they would get the rough sound they wanted with EQ and compression while tracking, and that would be printed to tape. When the album was mixed months later, often at a different studio, EQ and compression would be used to get everything sitting nicely in the final mix.

It was pretty common for consoles like Neve, Helios, and API to be used for tracking because of their sonic character, but mixed on consoles like SSL (starting in the ’80s) for the percision of their fully parametric EQ, plus automation and VCA compressors on every channel.

That is essentially what you’re doing here. To follow the same signal path, you’d do “vintage” EQ and compression for colour first, followed by surgical EQ and transparent compression second, to mix & fix. You might also want to stick a tape emulation between the “tracking” and “mixing” stages.