Often you will have some phase issues in the mix as well, which you can use to your advantage. You can also shift the AUD or SBD tracks by just a few msec's to manipulate the sound of the mix. Sometimes it is better if they are not perfectly in alignment, sometimes not.
Phase issues between sources is something I haven't been able to find a lot of info on. How can you tell if two sources are in-phase just by looking at them? Is it when they peak and trough at the exact same rate?
How can you match the phase of two different stereo sources like a mic and sbd feed?
Lots of good info folks.......
One thing I find helpful is listening in mono, and this is the best way to determine phase issues. Phased instruments or sources can cancel each other out and/or change the way they fit within the mix.
If you find things sounded significantly different in mono, then you likely have a phase issue in one or more of the tracks/sources.
Something else that can come up is that many sound engineers will play with the phase in their live mix to get certain things to stand out. This can be on their house/2-mix or on individual tracks. If you are also recording that 2-mix, you can end up with even wilder phase issues from recording a phasey mix. There is no simple solution, you must use your eyes and ears to determine if a source is correctly in phase and if it needs to be corrected. You can actually see if a source(s) is out of phase. If you zoom all the way in to the waveform....the peaks and valleys will correlate between the sources if it's in phase, and will be opposite of each other if they are out of phase. Sometimes just nudging the waveform one way or another will correct the issue. Studio Engineers do this all the time, especially with drums.
I personally use Nuendo with all sorts of plugins, so all of my recordings usually find their way in there and I use a various set of tools to improve sound on two and four tracks live recordings.
Some of my favorites are PSP Vintage Warmer and Antares Tube to fatten things up, Various Waves plugs for things like compression and eq. I also like the various stereo expander plugs, which are really helpful to expand the stereo field of a flat or narrow recording. Once I get all the edits, compression, and eq they way it sounds best to me, then I'll throw on the Waves Multi-L3 plug to polish and glue the mix and resample/dither down to 16/44. I like the warm/cozy setting on the L3, but you have to experiment with settings as not all of them will compliment your mixes.
I've been playing around with various limiters lately and just haven't been as happy with any of the others as I have been with the L3.
Good luck and Cheers, Phil