Audio Mixing Tips and Secrets a Professional Audio Mixer won’t tell

Audio mixing is the heart of the music production. It is where the “overall” sound of the album is being shaped or crafted. Although you might say that its mastering that will be the one to transform it into “hits”. The importance of proper audio mixing is also a factor in any mastering success. Remember the “garbage in- garbage out” analogy. Even the best mastering engineers cannot fix a garbage mix. So what’s the professional technique in mixing? What are these tips and secrets that a pro mixer won’t tell? Below are important rules, skills, techniques that you need to know if you need to drastically improve the quality of your mix:

Tip#1: Cut more — Boost Less in doing any EQ adjustments

Analogy: Let’s illustrate this tip with a practical/real-mixing scenario example; supposing you start to mix a certain project. The moment you played it; you observed that the vocals are substantially buried in the mix because of the guitars. Beginners in mixing approach this problem by boosting the vocal sensitive frequencies which is 2000Hz – 3000Hz, Q at 1.0 with +3.0dB to +6.0 dB for example. So after boosting those frequencies, he/she will again review the mix. Then the mixer noticed something. The guitar overall volume level is now low in the mix and the vocals starts to become very dominant. To compensate for vocal dominance, beginner mixer will increase the track volume of the guitar (no EQ adjustment on the guitar). Guess what happens? The vocals again are drowned in the mix because of the guitar loud volume.

Conclusion: Boosting can hardly solved any EQ mixing issues. It’s why if you see a professional audio mixer doing a mix in a console or in a DAW; you might be surprised that a pro mixer will do a lot of “cutting” as compared to “boosting”. So how will a pro-mixer approach the above situation? First, since the vocals are drowned in the mix because of the guitar. A pro-mixer will simply cut the “vocal sensitive” frequencies on the guitar, so in this case the 2000Hz range. The following EQ setting will be applied on the guitar: Cut -6dB; 2000Hz Q=1.0. If the vocals are still drowned a bit, the cut can be increased from -6dB up to -9dB; until the vocals starts to shine out of the mix. So what about the EQ vocals? In some cases, the mixer might only apply a very slight boost on the vocals at 2000Hz to give it more clarity, so in this case: Boost +2dB, 2000Hz Q=1.0. The result: Vocals and guitar are now started to blend nicely in the mix. Of course the above technique illustrates the classic problem on vocals and guitar, the technique/principle can as well be applied to any musical instruments that includes the kick drum and the bass.

In the screenshot above, the kick and bass frequencies have each own location in the bass frequency spectrum resulting to clarity after cutting the kick drums bottom to give way for the bass guitar. Read here for more tips about mixing bass guitar/kick combination.

Tip#2: Apply Panning creatively and “realistically”

Back again to the previous example; supposing a beginner in mixing is doing a mix of a project for a rock band. After adjustments; the mixer noticed something odd. The mixer sounds so dull both in the headphones and the studio monitors. What’s going on here?The problem is that the mix has a very poor stereo image or no stereo image at all. It’s because all the tracks are placed on the center of the mix, resulting to very dull and “unrealistic” sound of the band. So how will the pro-mixer deal with this issue? First, the mixer imagines the mix as a live band playing in front of him/her. So the guitars are both in the left and right of the stage. In this case the left guitar will be panned on the left at 70% while the right guitar on the right at 70% for example. The vocals and bass is on the center as well as the kick drums. Cymbals and hi hats are slightly off-center; etc. You can search this website for some panning tips. This is how it looks like:

Tip#3: Well-treated room acoustics and using flat freq response near field monitors

Accuracy in mixing decisions depends on how well treated your room acoustics as well as the quality of your studio monitors. A combination of both provides the most “honest” result. This means, what sounds “good” in your studio will also sounds “good” everywhere regardless of any audio players/monitors. In any mixing, a decent set of studio monitors not only includes the near field (left and right) but a subwoofer as well for monitoring deep bass frequencies.

Tip#4: Pro-mixer doesn’t monitor very loudly

To someone new in mixing, monitoring very loudly is very nice. It’s because you can really feel the mix, the loudness and the punch. Actually the pro-mixer does the opposite. In a professional mixing session, the volumes are played at a “normal” level. This means not too soft or not too loud. If max volume is set to 100%, then it’s set in the middle (50%). The primary reason is the “Fletcher-Munson equal loudness contour”. It reveals that human ears are actually not linear when it comes to perceiving bass. This means that if you are monitoring too loudly, you will be tricked into believing that the audio material under mix has a lot of bass energy. This again results to some wrong EQ adjustments; as a result you will apply EQ to cut the bass because you perceive it to be strong. Actually the fact is that the bass are not strong at all, it just because of the Fletcher-Munson and as result of monitoring very loud. Your mix result in lack of bass because of unnecessary cutting. Because of this fact, the pro-mixer will monitor at medium levels, the same levels that a normal listener will do.

Tip#5: Mixing is not mastering

Again, some new in mixing are tempted to make their mix as loud as possible to impress the band or their clients. Actually making your mix very loud is not what the pro-mixer will do. It’s because making the material loud is not a mixing engineer job. Pro-mixer will instead focus on balancing the levels between instruments/tracks; carefully apply EQ and compression to make the mix as best sounding material as possible but NOT loud.You can read this important tutorial on how to prepare your mix for mastering.

Tip#6: Knows how to use the compressor intimately

Compression adjustments are actually very helpful in shaping the sound. For example, you might find the vocals levels to be too inconsistent (ranging from very soft to very loud at times). For better sounding vocals, you need to apply compression. As a result the vocals are much more uniform in levels.

Tip#7: Uses only a “small” amounts of reverb

Modern recordings often use very small amount of reverb. Beginners are often tempted to apply more reverb because they think it can make their recordings sound very professional. It’s actually the opposite. More reverb- more mud- less punch. Try listening a modern rock, country or pop commercially released CD and you will be amazed that all of them only uses a small amount of reverb or even negligible at times.

Content last updated on June 14, 2012