[James Price[_5_]]

On Monday, May 6, 2019 at 6:58:12 PM UTC-5, Scott Dorsey wrote:
Ralph Barone wrote:
James Price wrote:
On Monday, May 6, 2019 at 5:51:46 AM UTC-5, Mike Rivers wrote:
On 5/5/2019 9:53 PM, gray_wolf wrote:
~ 20 years Steinberg, I think, had a plugin that would match a target
sound track to the master track. IIRC it work on unrelated tracks.

It faded out of popularity when people found out that it couldn't make
their guitar solo sound like the one on a famous record.

It's still popular for matching the tone of an individual track
(frequently guitar) rather than an entire mix.

Wouldnt there still be obvious problems just based on what notes are being
played on the two tracks? Lets say that I love the sound that JimBob
MetalGod got playing power chords on the bottom strings of his guitar, but
Im strumming all six strings. Wouldnt such a plug-in suck all the treble
out of my track to match the absence of high frequencies in the reference
track?

Right, so you would want the reference to be in the same key as the thing
you're equalizing.

The thing is... once you bring up the rest of the tracks, the guitar sound
will change, and how the guitar is equalized needs to be a matter of making
it fit in. If the arrangement has guitars and vocals at the same time, you
likely want to scoop the midrange out of the guitar in order to make the
vocal sit right. But how you want to do this depends a lot on the register
the vocalist is singing in. Equalizing tracks in isolation without taking
the whole mix into account is nearly always a mistake, whether you do it with
an automated system or by ear.

The guitar sound will change to a degree to fit in a mix, however I'd contend
that ultimately, EQ matching is still a useful tool for getting a guitar tone
in the ballpark. The guitar sound is going to start somewhere, so why not
start closest to the target tone?