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How to Sabotage (Or Save) Your Mix

As a mastering engineer, I’m given a chance to see firsthand how scores of mixers from around the world approach their craft. I’ve been able to compare and contrast different approaches taken by mixers – sometimes on the same song – and have been able to hear what works and what doesn’t from both a high-level and granular perspective.

After a few decades of analysis, iteration, and errors, I don’t yet have the answer to How To Make A Perfect Mix, but I have learned a bit about what does *not* work, or does not translate well in the real word, during the mixing process. From this vantage point I have compiled a few guidelines that will ensure that your mix reaches only a fraction of its sonic potential.

Are you ready to learn how to sabotage your mix? Let’s begin!

Mix for Yourself (Mix For Your Audience)

It can be difficult to separate yourself from the mix, especially in the early stages of your career. But unless you’re making the album to listen to at home for the rest of your life, you should be mixing to suit your audience (or your client). If someone is paying you to mix, you are mixing for them, not you. 

Typically you should be mixing to make the listeners feel something. And if that’s all you end up with when you are done, you’ve done more than most. People will forgive all sorts of sonic issues with a mix, but if they don’t feel anything when listening to it it doesn’t matter how pristine the mix is – they’re going to hit “skip”.

Keep it Safe. Keep it Secret. (Befriend Trusted Ears)

Ask your peers (other engineers or musicians you work with) to listen to your mixes – early and often. Don’t be precious or prideful. Remember the goal: to make someone feel something, to make your music sing the song it was meant to sing. Check your ego at the door, and seek real world feedback.

Solicit non-producer friends with no attachment to the song who will give you a flat A/B preference between mixes, or give you a general “feel” impression of how a mix sounds to them without being technical.

A mastering engineer can help spot issues with your mix, your vocal chain, and even your recording environment. They can reference your mix in an environment where they have heard thousands of other tracks, and give you confidence and guidance in your decisions. Establish an ongoing relationship with a trusted mastering engineer.

Make It LOUD (Don’t Worry About Loudness)

CDs largely created the loudness wars. CDs are all but dead now. There’s no inherent need for your mix to be as loud as possible. So why are we doing it? More to the point, why are YOU doing it?

There are loudness guidelines and even loudness standards, but they are fluid, currently quite messy and confusing – even conflicting – and disparate.

Each song has it’s own loudness sweet spot, informed by harmonic content, style, context, medium. You should seek to find this sweet spot, and not worry about how loud your mix is relative to another track – especially in the mixing stage.

Music that is too loud can clip and cause more audible distortion on lower quality DA converters. Leave some headroom in your mix.

A mix that is part of an an album, but is mixed too loudly, will often necessarily set the tone for all of the rest of the tracks during the mastering process. Do you want your ballads to be at FF? Or would you prefer to have options during the mastering process? Why limit yourself?

Currently the loudest music can actually be penalized by different streaming services by being turned down. Conversely, a track that is more dynamic may be end up being streamed at a louder apparent volume.

Turn up your monitors, or the headphone send within your OS or DAW. Find the sweet spot where things feel “loud” enough to you, but the meters are not getting slammed inside your DAW.

Let your mastering engineer handle making the track loud, if that is what it needs. Your family doctor could probably do a facelift for you, in a pinch. Do you want them to?

Make Sure You Can Hear All The Parts (Don’t Turn Up All The Things)

Don’t be a slave to the arrangement. No one cares about your ostinatos or that sweet aux line you wrote. No one cares that you spent six hours making the snare drum perfect. People care about how music makes them feel, and too many stimuli can make it difficult for a listener to connect with your mix in the way you hope they will. It can make it harder for them to feel something. Your time and energy (and budget) are also limited. Focus your efforts on what matters most.

With some exceptions, you should generally focus on the lead and rhythm section first. These elements are often what will drive the song, and what most people will react favorably (or not) to. Other parts of the arrangement, most often, should compliment the lead and rhythm section.

Headroom in a mix is zero sum. There is only so much frequency content you can fit into your available space. Gain staging becomes increasingly critical as the mix gets more and more congested. Take as much care as possible to not mix yourself into a corner in this way.

Try starting your premix with all the faders down, and bring them up one at a time, quietly. Set up the premix with the dim button on your console engaged, or just turn down the volume knob. Carefully add elements, remove them, and see how they effect the mix as whole. How do they make you feel?

Monitor Your Mixes Just One Way (Listen To Your Mixes In Many Environments)

Do you always listen to music in the same place, on the same speakers? No one else does, either. Audition your mixes on multiple monitors/headphones and in different rooms if possible.

Do you always listen to your music at 11? Well, you shouldn’t. Everything sounds good at 11 (until you can’t hear anymore). Monitor your mixes at the lowest possible level until (or even through) mix down stage. This will be challenging, but will almost certainly leave you with a better sounding mix.

If you’ve been mixing loudly, and think you have it perfect, reduce the volume by 70% and listen again critically. Can you still hear the lead? Can you still hear the bass? Is anything poking out? Does the mix ONLY sound good loud? If so, consider doing a save-as and taking a look at your gain staging.

Fall In Love With the Solo Button (Work in Context)

A common tendency in mixing is to solo a part, get it sounding good, then solo the next part and do the same. Once you have all the parts sounding great on their own, you pull all the faders up and suddenly … nothing sounds good.

Before soloing a part to work on it, ask yourself: is anyone ever going to hear this part in isolation? Does this part exist outside of the mix, such that changes made to it will not affect the rest of the mix in any way? No? Cool story. It’s hard to do, but resist using the solo button too much.

More Low End Is Always Better (Get a Handle on Your Low End)

Low frequencies have a lot of energy, and take up a lot of room in a mix. Too much low end is a surefire way – maybe the best way – to quite literally limit the sonic potential of a mix.

Don’t just boost low frequencies. Make judicious cuts as well. Carve out space for the low end so you aren’t trying to cram it on top of the rest of the instrumentation in the mix. You may find that if you create space for the low end, it will fill itself in the mix organically.

You can’t hear what you can’t hear. If your room isn’t reliable and you don’t want to rebuild it from the ground up, or if you don’t have full range monitors, get full range headphones and check your low end using them. Use visualizers (most modern EQs can serve this function as well) as well to confirm or correct what you are hearing.

Don’t Worry About The Groove (It’s Called a Rhythm *Section* For a Reason)

In a typical song, the bass drum and the bass should work together to make the mix move. Make sure they are not fighting.

Make sure your bass drum’s fundamental is the right frequency for the song. 50-60Hz is usually in the ballpark, but sometimes higher (and not lower) is better for a given song. Experiment with changing or supplementing the fundamental of the bass drum so that it feels right, and works well with the bass guitar.

If you are using octavized vocal bass (i.e. in contemporary a cappella mixing), decide whether you want the listener to hear it, feel it, or both. The decision should be made early in the mixing process, and should be informed by the desired aesthetic, the context of the record, and any other factors you feel important.

Take Shortcuts And Trust Your Presets (Don’t Mix Into A Limiter or Multi-Band Compressor (unless you do))

Be patient with your mix. Let it evolve. Don’t try to make it sound “finished” too quickly.

Plugins can do some pretty amazing things, and it can be tempting to try to take shortcuts. Putting a limiter on you master fader to catch peaks as you mix is fine, but don’t master-mix (mix into a MBC or limiter on the master fader as an effect or to try to make it sound “commercial” quick and dirty) unless you’re really, really good at it, or unless the style or music or budget calls for it.

Master-mixing means that if adjustments have to be made within the mix, the entire mix buss often needs to be adjusted as well.

Getting the “commercial” sound you want without incurring unwanted sonic costs – like distortion, pumping, brightness, flatness, collapse of the stereo image, etc. takes time and expertise. Taking shortcut might get you to 80% of where you want to be, but that 80% could be a hard ceiling. Is 80% good enough for you, or would you prefer to utilize 100% of the mix’s potential?

If Your Mix Doesn’t Slap Harder Than The Hot 100, Is It Even A Mix? (Don’t Compare Your Mix to Music That Has Already Been Released (until it’s time to))

Focus on making the mix sound good and on making all the parts work together to deliver the message you’re trying to communicate. 

Use other mixes for inspiration, but don’t compare your mix to something on the radio and try to make it sound exactly like it, especially early in the process. 

Did you spend $100K on your track? Did you spent $10K? The artist you are comparing your music to probably did. Compare apples to apples – or invest more time and/or money.

Has your track been mastered? The track you’re comparing against has. The time to compare your music – if you are going to do so – to sensible reference mixes (as in, those whose investments of time, talent, and money mirror your own), is after mastering.

Make Everything Perfect (Perfection is Only Perfection If It’s Actually Perfect)

If you EQ, compress, and limit your mixes to within inch of their life, you’d better get it right.

You can’t undo too much high end. You can’t undo over-compression and limiting. And you can’t regain the lost potential of a mix that has been over/coarsely cooked.

The best mixers often leave the different parts of the mix a little rough around the edges. Sometimes a mix will appear dark and quiet at first, but will completely open up in mastering. Similarly, sometimes a mix will feel as though it’s more of a bunch of instruments being played in similar but not quite the same room. These are often the mixes that come together best in mastering.

When It’s Mixed, It’s Done (Master Your Music)

You’ve invested days, weeks, months (years?),  untold dollars, and probably more than a few tears in the mix. It’s a distinct possibility that you may have tunnel vision at this point. If you are the only one who will hear your mix, maybe that’s ok. If you want your music – and your message – to be heard and appreciated by others, you’ll want to hedge your bets.

You don’t know what you can’t hear. If your monitoring environment isn’t ideal, It’s likely you are mixing to the room, and the room’s issues will be baked into the mix. Further, your speakers may not even produce the entire frequency range.

You don’t know how your music will translate online, or on other speakers (unless you’ve done extensive testing). A mastering engineer does, or at least can make a better guess based on current standards and information.

An objective mastering engineer can be one of the most cost-effective, bang for your buck investments you can make in the entire production process.

Now that you know how to sabotage your mix, you know to avoid these pitfalls at all costs! If you think of making a mix or a record as one big gamble you are making, you want to maximize your odds of success. Don’t leave money on the table. Leave a little room for magic. You don’t know what you could be missing!

— Dave Sperandio is the owner of Vocal Mastering, based in Durham, NC.

Mastering Explained

When it comes to audio mastering, there’s is often confusion about what the process entails, how it is different from the mixing process, and why it is a critical final step in making a recording objectively the best it can possibly be. A quick internet search turns up a lot of useful information, but frequently I find that clients are not fully clear on what goes into the mastering process, how it can affect their recording, and how mastering can affect the listener’s perception of a recording.

I’ve written before about what mastering is (and isn’t) and why it’s important here; if you’re completely unfamiliar with the ins and outs of mastering or you want more information after reading this, you can find more detail on my website or on YouTube. Here’s a quick recap:

What is Mastering?

Mastering has 3 main parts:

  1. Correction of sonic issues
  2. Creative enhancement
  3. Creation of media for distribution

Some other things mastering is:

Mastering is the final stage of audio production.

Mastering is a mix or an album’s final opportunity for quality control and corrective measures.

Mastering is a recording’s last opportunity for creative input from an objective, experienced ear. Someone unattached to any previous sonic decisions and able to assess and process the recording from a fresh and informed perspective, in a critical listening environment.

Mastering is the last chance to make sure a recording sounds as good as possible – on as many systems and in as many listening environments as possible – before its release.

But what does Mastering do?

Mastering reduces the friction between your vision and the listener’s perception of it.

What might that friction sound like? It might take the form of subharmonic low frequency content that causes distortion on a listener’s system. It could be annoying mouth or room noise in quieter parts of a song. It might be the bass fighting with the kick drum, or the backing vocals drowning out the lead, or a resonant frequency in a singer’s voice poking out at the wrong time. Or the drums getting squashed during “the big section”.

Any of these things (and many others) can be distracting and cause a suspension of disbelief for the listener, making them forget how the song is supposed to be making them feel. Mastering can help ensure your listeners remain in the moment from the first note to the last.

My mixes already sound good. Why do I need mastering?

You’ve put hundreds or thousands of hours and dollars into your recording. Pushed yourself harder than you ever thought possible. You may have shed a few tears, healed a few wounds, made a few new friends along the way. You’re invested in bringing your artistic vision to life, and in making sure that vision is received as you intend it to be.

YOUR RECORDING IS SOMETHING THAT WILL LIVE FOREVER. ONCE IT’S OUT THERE, IT’S OUT THERE FOR GOOD. ARE YOU CONFIDENT THAT YOU KNOW HOW YOUR MUSIC WILL BE PERCEIVED BY THE AVERAGE LISTENER?

If the answer is “yes”, please show your work. It’s possible to be pretty sure if you put in the time needed to test and retest multiple mixes in a host of listening environments, and to reference your volume-compensated mixes against other material. You’ll also need the tools and time to accurately make the necessary adjustments along the way – without introducing new problems into the mix. And don’t forget keeping up with the latest (different) loudness standards and algorithms for streaming platforms …  It’s a lot of variables to manage, but it can be done.

If the answer is “um … maybe?”, you’re in luck! Mastering engineers have worked on thousands of recordings, often many similar to yours, and can quickly and confidently assess where your recording needs focus – if at all. We can work with you directly before your mastering date, and help ensure that the final step of the audio production process is more “icing on the cake” than “Rescue 911”. We can communicate with your mixing engineer during the mastering process if something would be better fixed with a mix revision. And if after all this your recording still needs something extra, we can provide that too.

Throughout the process, our focus as mastering engineers is entirely on getting imperfections and imbalances out of the way of the listener’s perception of your music, and on presenting your vision to the listener in its best possible form.

– Dave

Bonus

This video gives a great “fly on the ceiling” view of a song being mastered in real time. While the audio isn’t especially useful, each move the mastering engineer makes is narrated with subtitles, allowing you to see what went into the decision making process at every stage. Note how the mastering engineer is constantly referencing the original mix (played at a louder volume) to see if they are improving things, or simply making them louder.



Five Reasons Your Music Needs Professional Mastering

1) You’re too close to the project to be objective.

You’ve spent at least dozens and possibly hundreds of hours working on your recordings. You may have spent a solid week on the hook of just one song. You are confident that you know every note, quirk, and imperfection of your mixes inside and out – and that’s the problem.

Your audience probably isn’t going to care about the little waver in the tenor part in measure 42 of your lead-off track. They’re not going to care that the filter you used on the Rhodes organ has a Q setting that’s a “little too round”. They won’t necessarily care that the cymbals are hard-panned L-R, instead of 75-75. What your listeners will care about is whether or not your music moves them, even if they don’t know why.

After pouring your heart and soul into the project, it’s common for an artist or producer to develop “tunnel vision” and to have a difficult time seeing the forest for the sonic “trees”. You might obsess over something that most audiences won’t even hear, while missing something that others will pick up on during their initial listen-through. Further, if you’ve been working hard on your mixes for days, weeks, or months, you may well have hit a wall; your mixes sound very good, but you can’t make them sound any “better”. You’re not even sure if you need to keep trying.

Every listener has the potential to be affected by a different part of a mix, but often there are certain aspects of a recording that have the potential to be more impactful or distracting than others. A professional mastering engineer has the ability to assess which elements of a recording should be highlighted or augmented (e.g. the vocal/solo, bass, drums, or depth/width) and which should be “fixed” or have less focus (e.g. sibilance, undefined low end, low energy, or “oomph”), and has both the tools and the ability to skillfully and musically make these adjustments.

Perhaps most importantly, a professional, independent mastering engineer brings an objective, highly trained, experienced ear to the project, and won’t be influenced by largely non-musical factors such as egos or decisions made during the mixing process which become so ingrained in an artist or mixer that they can lead to sonic “blind spots”.

2) You can’t hear everything that is happening in your mixes.

This doesn’t mean that you have a hearing problem, or that your ear isn’t “good”. More and more frequently, mixers are creating their music outside of the traditional recording studio. “Bedroom” studios are exploding in popularity as technology becomes more accessible and affordable, even while budgets continue to shrink. This allows for a great deal of creativity – especially when a mixer doesn’t have to worry about being “on the clock” and can experiment to their heart’s content – and often yields some terrific results.

However, unless you’ve designed your home studio from the ground up with an ear towards negating nodes, early reflections, standing waves, and other sonic anomalies, it’s unlikely that you’ll be able to accurately hear everything that is happening in your room – and and in your mixes. This is especially true in the lower frequencies, which are extremely powerful and almost impossible to control with the usual acoustic treatments (foam, blankets, fiberglass, diffusors). As a result, at a minimum your mixes may have more or less low-frequency content than you think they do, and this can cause a number of issues both sonic (such as a “boomy” or “muddy” sound) and musical (fundamentals not ideally balanced).

Professional mastering rooms can accurately reproduce frequencies from ~20Hz to 20kHz, and are equipped with specialized and ultra-precise monitoring systems that will accurately play back these frequencies. In these environments a mastering engineer can quickly and reliably make decisions about a mix, knowing exactly how the music will sound in the “real world”.

3) You don’t know how your music will translate on other speakers.

Recording studios typically have monitoring systems which are designed for recording and mixing playback, not for mastering. These systems may make the music sound great (which is not necessarily a good thing), or not so great (which could be a good thing), but they represent just one sonic “picture” of what a mix sounds like. Even when a recording studio has multiple monitoring systems (always a good thing), it’s impossible for a mixer to know how the final mix will sound on every system.

Professional mastering studios typically have multiple monitoring systems built from the ground up using high-quality cabling, powerful and transparent amplifiers, clean and consistent power, precision-built converters and routing matrices, and mastering-specific monitors and subwoofers. This configuration allows the mastering engineer to both know precisely what they are hearing and to first “do no harm” to the audio. Ideally, all music being sent for mass distribution should first pass through one of these systems.

Perhaps equally important is the referencing of mixes on “lo-fi” or “limited-fi” playback systems which more closely represent what most listeners will be using to play music in the wild. These systems can include actual worn out, halfway functional speakers, speakers which model a typical car stereo setup, a home theater setup, laptop speakers or other small speakers which physically cannot produce frequencies <100Hz, hyped headphones which impart a “smiley” (higher bass and treble) EQ curve onto the music, or the ubiquitous iPod earbuds.

If you plan to distribute your music digitally or on the radio, your mixes will be usually stripped of certain frequency content (after they have left your hands) during the compression process required to make your files small enough to be quickly downloaded. This is literally a “lossy” process, and it’s imperative that you know what your files will sound like post-compression. Using tools designed to emulate this process, a mastering engineer can ensure that what is “lost” is as audibly minimal as possible, and that your mixes hold up well to the necessary compression and do not end up distorted, tinny, or “small”, and that they stand up well to other music in the marketplace.

Your music has to sound as good as it possibly can on ALL systems and in ALL formats, and a professional mastering engineer working in a properly equipped, dedicated mastering facility can help make sure that it does.

4) You haven’t listened to thousands of other similar mixes in the same environment.

Like many things, creating great recordings is a process that is improved with repetition. As a mixer, your hundredth mix is typically going to sound better than your first mix. And after you’ve mixed a thousand songs, you’re likely to look back at that hundredth mix and wonder “What was I thinking? Couldn’t I hear all the things “wrong” with this “better” mix?”.

If you’ve mixed a few thousand songs of a similar style, or even just sat and listened to a few thousand similar mixes in the same room using the same monitoring setup, the chances are good that you know exactly what a mix of that style “should” sound like in that environment. But what if you haven’t had the time or opportunity to do this?

A professional mastering engineer hears many mixes of all styles, and has often listened to more mixes – by more mixers – than the average listener will in a lifetime. Some mastering engineers specialize in a certain style of music, others work on a more varied mix. Regardless of the style of music, many of the “hits” that the average listener enjoys have likely come across the desk of a professional mastering engineer.

If there’s a question about how a track of a certain musical style “should” sound, a mastering engineer with a great deal of experience with that style of music likely has a hyper-focused and reliable first-hand reference to compare against. In combination with their ears, equipment, monitoring environment, and objectivity, this perspective is a singularly powerful tool – one you want in your project’s toolbox.

5) Professional mastering can make good mixes great.

All of the technical and logistical reasons aside, the ability of a professional mastering engineer to simply make music sound better is perhaps the most important reason to invest in their services.

The most successful music is always sent to a professional mastering facility – for the gear, the room, the ears, the experience, and the perspective found there. The best mixers in the world  – the guys and gals whose work you hear on the radio, TV, and in your iPods – demand that their mixes are passed by a professional mastering engineer before being released. They know that if they’ve made a good mix that could be just a bit better, that mastering engineer will be able hear it and will be singularly equipped to carefully make the adjustments that take the mix from good to great.

And who doesn’t want to be great?

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— Dave Sperandio is the owner of Vocal Mastering, based in Durham, NC.