[jakanz]

Originally Posted by LeifH12345

I would just try experimenting a bit and see how it sounds to your ears. Don't trust an early mix!

Do you know if the multitracks are completely raw, or could they have the effects added by the live engineer?

There's no real right or wrong answer here but I would agree on starting with a drum mix. Depending on the quality of the captures you may want to add effects to each drum feed/mic.

What kind of music is it?

There's probably some youtube videos specific to what you're looking for, mixing in Reaper, mixing live rock/jazz/etc.

Ken Andrews is a respected rock producer/mixer with some good ProTools mixing videos. Check out episode 2 for example.
https://www.youtube.com/@KenAndrewsMusic/videos

Big thanks!! Yeah, admittedly one of my first instincts was to just get started and see what sounds good. I don't really need any audio engineering theory necessarily, just the knowhow and general guides.

The multitracks are completely raw, straight from the lines before any racks were applied. They were captured via SD card, not USB or XLR output.

The diversity among what I've captured and archived varies very widely! From noise, drone, simple rock, grunge, ska, pop punk, et cetera. I've avidly listened to these genres so I understand how they should generally sound, and I certainly don't expect anyone nor everyone to know instinctively, so there's at least a positive to this story in that I know what my goal is.

I might get started on mixing with REAPER once I get some proper free time. Unfortunately my work life has taken away a lot of my chances to process and share my tapes. I might instead do them in batches, where I work on a set of a few shows at a time, then release them all at once. The process of mixing then exporting then tracking... it's something where things can be done one step at a time, altogether. (Perhaps that explanation was shoddy but the idea is bright!)

I'll have to check out these videos soon though! Many thanks for the suggestion.