rumour has it that Rick Rubin does not eq anything but does pan, set levels and compress
some things to be aware of
compression gives you a false sense of increasing the high frequency content of your track, simply because if your compress and add back in makeup gain you are raising all freqs equally but due to the way we hear frequency it seems as though we are lifting the mids and highs in compassion to the lows, which require more energy to be heard as being at the same "volume"
from the above we should take away that we should not try to overcompensate for missing low end energy
in general I follow a sequence of mixing like so:
start with
- all faders at then nominal 0dB level on the console
- all eq off (no cut, no boost)
- all panning centered
Now we address level balancing
- make sure that the most important thing can be heard by reducing the fader levels of all other tracks
- now do this for the second most important thing
- repeat until you have your levels balanced
Now address panning
- pan each instrument to where you think they should be
- revisit your level balancing if necessary
Now address eq
- panning and level balancing may need to be revisited
Apply FX and Compression as needed
- address your fx as inserts - compression, distortion, chorus, flanging, phasing etc - and send - reverb, delays etc
- address level balancing and panning as needed