It’s reassuring to hear that the highly experienced folks do this kind of thing sometimes too! Not that I wish you any misfortune of course Adrian. Just makes it so we little guys don’t feel so silly. 
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Oh believe me Dave, I’m a complete buffoon most of the time.
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I’ve done some VERY similar stuff! It’s crazy how we don’t even consider certain things when our minds are in that mode.
So am I!! An unreconstructed goofball.
O I can’t express how much this story of misfortune cheered me up… thanks so much!!
It’s a contrary sort of thing, to find solidarity and even a type of comfort in such acts of misfortune … heh…
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We should rename this thread The Schadenfreude Thread.
I’m pleased that my stupidity and misfortune was not completly worthless, always glad to put a smile on your face Emma. Although I could think of better ways of doing it.
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I had a little freakout the other day. I was doing video/audio inside (and outside) of Reaper, which was something I hadn’t done in Reaper before (but had in Pro Tools). I had taken the video into Reaper to get the vocal track there, and add music while having the video for reference and transitions. I added the music, though the video playback wasn’t keeping up (it’s supposed to be decent in Reaper now from what I read). Anyway, the plan was to render just the music tracks as a stem and import that to the video session in Sony Movie Studio. When I did and played it back, the vocals were really phasey and flanged, weird stereo sounding. Since I was new to Movie Studio, I was wondering if I inadvertently added some effects to the track or something. After a minute or two though, I went back to Reaper and realized I hadn’t muted the vocal track from the Reaper video session - so I had two versions of the vocal, one of which was mixed into the music track, the other had already been in the Movie Studio session to begin with. It was basically a weird Doubler effect, but since the vocal was ‘spoken word’ it was awful to even listen to.
I can record a vocal that’s awful to listen to without going through all that.
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If we had a “shittiest mix” contest, y’all would have NO chance against me…!
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Can we have a Reverse Name that Song? Jim, I can name that horrible hack mix in three notes. 
I messed around with sidechaining the bass to the kick once to see what that was all about, it didn’t work at all for the song I was working on. I thought I got rid of the side chain but later I couldn’t figure out why my bass sounded uneven and kept cutting out. So instead of realizing I hadn’t gotten rid of the side chain, I just kept adding compressors and compressing the living shit out of the bass line trying to even it out. That didn’t work so finally I was about to re record the bass when I realized my mistake…
Then the other day I decided to try out the Izotope Ozone 7 demo. I had it on my master bus and I was messing around with the maximizer and what not in ozone and I couldn’t figure out why my master bus was clipping when ozone was last in the chain. Turns out I had something after the maximizer within ozone, an exciter or something. I even added another limiter and was relieved that that fixed the clipping. So I just thought it was weird that their maximizer wouldn’t keep things from clipping but their limiter would. It was several hours later before I realized what a dumbass I was.
Though I’m far from perfect, my stupid meter has been relatively in check. I’m so anal about stuff, and have so much responsibility for what I do, there is no room for error.
I have clients that trust in me so deeply, they sometimes don’t even listen to my final product and just ship it off. I’ve always hated that much pressure and stress, but after you do this for over 35 years and have a business, you sort of lock into a pretty tight groove.
One thing I don’t do, is put anything on my master bus that needs to be disabled for export. I don’t like putting anything on there anyway. Maybe a light 2 bus comp at times, but even there, being a mastering engineer as well as a tracking / mix engineer, I hate when I get mixes with too much stuff on the master bus or compression used too hot. I’d not do that to the engineer mastering my stuff.
But in my days of playing around on the master bus, as a huge ARC supporter/user, that’s where I used to put it. I forgot to take it off so many times, it was no longer worth trying to remember. I just had to figure something else out.
I created a bus just for ARC to toggle through but when I export, my options are set so that the bus is ignored and my interface is where it routes to. That’s really the only dumb mistake I’ve made in the past. I even sometimes put it on the master bus and never forget to take it off now because I have to check peaks.
Though I have arc calibrated, I still turn it off and run a pass through to check my output level. This in turn makes me keep it off because I’m ready to export at this stage. It actually works as well as the bus method.
For the life of me, I can’t come up with anything stupid other than it took me about 10 years to get a really good mix happening, especially on car speakers. I knew nothing about frequency masking, we had no internet, and people weren’t as willing to share secrets like they are now. I learned everything the hard way. In the field, struggling, no direction, just do it until it sounds good. I turned out pretty decent…but it’s not been easy.
Now…stupid things by blowing up gear plugging things into the wrong jacks…oh yeah, I’m the standing king! THAT, I can tell you a little something about. I’ve blown up amps, cabs, mixing consoles…lol…you know, having conversations while setting things up and not paying as close attention as you should be? Oh yeah…king of the dopes right here. Thankfully that’s not happened in about 25 years…so I think I’ve learned. Then again…hmmmm, I’ve not smoked a joint in 25 years…case solved! Lol!
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…Really @Chordwainer ? Who screen name is cpt-m-f’n-fiasco! I am the undisputed champ of crap mixes! (Or at least it is how they are perceived…)
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Arrrrg I’ve made too many stupid things and will proudly continue to do some more…
Mistakes are the essence of home studio. Would’t be fun without it.
Recorded drums for five new Salem tracks today. For the final tune, I armed all the tracks the same as I did for the other four tunes, but after everything was finished I realised that the floor tom hadn’t recorded. Why? Because it was plugged in channel 5, and I had armed channel 6. Now I’ve got to use the floor tom overspill from the rack toms to trigger a floor tom sample.
DICK HEAD.
AGAIN!
I was just reminded (I guess I must have blotted out the memory) that back when I treated my room, I did a bunch of before and after recorded snippets to try to capture the improvement in the sound. I had just bought my AT4040 right before I got my treatment pieces, and did several segments of vocal, acoustic guitar, mandolin, etc, then did them all again after I put up my acoustic panels.
Posted them all up on RR for discussion, and found out that everything tracked with the 4040 sounded really horrible… because I didn’t realize it had a “front” side and a “back” side, and I had been recording into the back side. DUHHHHHHH. Yeah, I have a PhD…
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You sure it wasn’t because the new room treatment sounded so good you just had to point a mic at it?
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lol! I remember that one 
Absolutely my most embarrassing moment in this group…!