20 Tips For A Better Mix!
1. Reference on other systems.
You may have an awesome set of headphones and a pair of monitors that would make Skrillex weak at the knees, but what about casual headphone users? Or people listening in the car? Listening to your mix on as many playback systems as possible will help you learn more about your mix, and make it sound as good as it can across the board.
2. LOUDERRRR! (Or not!)
Listening to your project at too high a volume is bad for two reasons. First, it can be damaging to your hearing. Listening above an average level of 90dB will wear your ears out much quicker, and sustained listening at that level could cause permanent hearing damages such as partial deafness or tinnitus; which I don't need to tell you, would suck. Secondly, listening to a mix really loud will give you a false sense of how the mix sounds because of the volume.
3. Shhhh ..
A kind of add-on to point 2, but with a different angle, so it's a new point. Listening to your mix as quiet as possible every so often will help you identify problems easily. When a mix is way down low, the loudest instruments and/or frequencies are the only ones you can hear properly. Is that lead drowning out the snare? I couldn't tell at higher volume (see 2), but now I can! Yay for being quiet!
4. Monitor with your ears, not your eyes.
Looking at the meters bouncing up and down may help you to catch clipping you may not hear, but beyond that they shouldn't be used. Focus on how it's sounding, and not how your meters are looking. Nobody is on their iPod trying to imagine how level the mixer channels might be, so why would you focus on them? Just close your eyes and listen through the whole thing. Turn your screen off. Anything to not distract yourself with the pretty moving lights on the mixer.
5. Sum it to mono.
Mono systems still exist, so checking how your mix sounds in mono is worthwhile if only to know how you'll sound in someone's car, etc. Obviously, this applies mostly to sounds that are panned out in the stereo field, so listen out for those especially.
6. Context is everything.
I'm guilty of this one, and I mentally slap myself whenever I catch myself in the act. Stop soloing things! It doesn't matter how awesome that snare sounds on it's own, because in the full mix it's gonna sound entirely different. Sure, solo things to check for little blemishes like clicks at the end of samples, or to see if an effect is actually making any difference to the sound; just don't work on it soloed the whole time.
7. Limit your limiting.
DO NOT MIX A TRACK WITH A LIMITER ON THE MASTER! Seriously. Don't do it. If your master is clipping, you need to make more room within the mix. EQ clashing frequencies, add some compression where required, and bring your master volume down. This one is especially prominent for FL Studio users as FL opens with a brick-wall limiter on the master. Turn it off, or find the setting in the options to stop it opening a new project with a limiter.
8.Compress to impress! (But don't overdo it).
Compression is one of the most valuable tools when it comes to mixing, but heavy use can oh-so-quickly add up to a dull, flat, lifeless mix. No dynamics leads to a very boring and one-dimensional final mix, so use compression sparingly when you apply it.
9. Compress for dynamics.
Compression isn't just useful for levelling out the volume of stuff; it can also be used to inject some dynamics to an otherwise dull element. Take drums for example. Setting a slow attack time will give you a punchy start before the compressor kicks in to reign in the end of the sound. Easy but widely missed technique for big fat drums!
10. Group your dynamics.
Compressing a group of instruments rather than each one separately will achieve more natural results, as each sound will be uniform with eachother. Even if you're working on EDM – which is unnatural – the human ear is still receptive to things that sound “as they should”. Trying sending your drums to a buss and then compress that. This also saves a lot of time.
11. Gain structure.
There are things in your mix that you are going to want to hear more of. But rather than turning these elements up, find some elements around it that are fighting for space, and turn those down. This way, you're not cranking gains and you can keep a healthy gain structure with no risk of clipping when you turn stuff up!
12. Panning.
Don't keep instruments in the same pan position. You're more than likely going to want all the important stuff centre panned; that's the kick, snare, lead/main bassline, sub, and vocal line if you have one. That leaves all the decorative sounds, parts that aren't up-front in the mix, maybe some the percs, or anything else you can think of; to be panned. Panning is great for creating an effective stereo image, but don't leave two things in the exact same place. Not only is that a waste of the stereo field, but panning apart makes for a much better definition between elements.
13. Stereo reverbs.
Mono reverbs are boring. Feed them from stereo sends for a much nicer sound and a more defined stereo image. Good stuff.
14.Limit your reverb count.
Too many different reverbs in a mix can totally ruin the overall sound. A reverb is designed to emulate a space. If you have your drums in a cathedral, half your bassline in a stadium and half in a kitchen, leads in a drum room and vocals in a tunnel; your mix will sound horrific. Group stuff up and send them to busses. Restrict yourself to two or three (at most) reverbs in a mix. You can go over that in some special cases, but it's advisable not to. Remember, the human ear likes natural mixes.
15. EQ the reverb in the mixer.
Chances are, the EQ built into your reverb unit of choice is not as good as an actual EQ. Just throw an EQ on after the reverb.
16. Adjusting your EQ bandwidth.
Widen your Q for boosts, tighten it for cuts. It's much more prominent when a wide range of frequencies have been reduced than when a wide range have been boosted. Using the Q wisely will help achieve much nicer sounding EQ using less bands.
17. Cut before boost.
It's much better to EQ away what you don't want than to boost what you do. Boosting the frequencies you want to hear will bump up the gain (because that's what EQ does) and may well end up leaving behind unwanted artifacts such as clipping distortion or booming. Cutting away frequencies leaves you with the wanted sound more prominent, and plenty of gain to play with.
18. High and low pass filtering.
Slap a high-pass filter on everything that is not bass related. This will clean up your low end significantly. Conversely, low-passing your bass elements will clear up your high end. Super simple stuff, but it's surprising how often people forget.
19. Phase reversing.
Not really a mixing tip per-sé, but reversing the phase of a piece of audio can give really nice results and may sound better than the original clip. That in itself could make mixing easier. Try it. It takes seconds to do and you can always put it back if it's no better!
20. Resolution.
Finally, make sure your settings are optimal for ensuring high quality audio. You should be working with 24-bit .wav files (more headroom than 16-bit) at a minimum of 44.1kHz sample rate (good range of audible frequencies) until you export. The standard MP3 quality is 320kB/s. MP3's can be higher than this, but some playback systems won't support it. You can go down to 256kB/s without noticeable loss in quality, but stick to 320. Also, avoid dithering until the very final rendering of your project. Dithering creates a small level of noise to “glue” audio together. If all your stems have dithering, and then the final product too, you may end up with unwanted artifacts.
And there you have it, 20 tips towards a better sounding mix!
Please note that this isn't a definitive guide to mixing. Some tips will work in some situations, others won't. Sometimes, you can “break the rules” set down here and it will sound excellent and sometimes these tips won't even apply.
Either way, I hope they were helpful!