20 Tips Towards A Better Sounding Mix

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20 Tips Towards A Better Sounding Mix

Postby S.P.P » 27 May 2014 09:25

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!
Last edited by S.P.P on 27 May 2014 20:03, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: 20 Tips Towards A Better Sounding Mix

Postby CitricAcid » 27 May 2014 09:48

Learning all these lessons through trial and error sucks. Take Pyre's advice everyone. I wasted all kinds of time learning tips 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 15 the hard way.
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Re: 20 Tips Towards A Better Sounding Mix

Postby PropellerEscape » 27 May 2014 09:58

This was hella helpful Pyre, thanks for posting :3
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Re: 20 Tips Towards A Better Sounding Mix

Postby Stuntddude » 27 May 2014 17:18

All of these are good tips, in my opinion, except for one. I'd disagree with #7 for the sole reason that the fruity limiter is extremely useful visual tool, in the same way as the EQ 2 - it's useful just to have them there on the master channel while you're mixing just to have the visual feedback, and there's really no reason they'd get in your way unless you were being extremely and deliberately stupid about using them.
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Re: 20 Tips Towards A Better Sounding Mix

Postby S.P.P » 27 May 2014 19:54

I don't see why you'd need a visual tool for checking a mix really. The gain meter is the only thing I can imagine being needed, but who am I to tell you how to do it so long as it work for you.

As for having the Parametric EQ 2 on, I can tell you that's bad. It colours the sound even if you leave on the blank default setting,and the spectrum analyser doesn't really give you a great image. I would HIGHLY reccomend checking out Voxengo Span. It's a free spectrum analyser, and it's awesome. :3
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Re: 20 Tips Towards A Better Sounding Mix

Postby Stuntddude » 29 May 2014 07:02

You know you can turn the effects off for both the EQ and the limiter with the "mix level" knob, right? That isn't even a real problem.

Thanks for the tip, though, I'll check it out.
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Re: 20 Tips Towards A Better Sounding Mix

Postby CitricAcid » 29 May 2014 07:52

Pyrelight wrote:I don't see why you'd need a visual tool for checking a mix really. The gain meter is the only thing I can imagine being needed, but who am I to tell you how to do it so long as it work for you.

As for having the Parametric EQ 2 on, I can tell you that's bad. It colours the sound even if you leave on the blank default setting,and the spectrum analyser doesn't really give you a great image. I would HIGHLY reccomend checking out Voxengo Span. It's a free spectrum analyser, and it's awesome. :3

I imagine that you only need to worry about a plugin coloring your sound like that if it's doing analog modeling. I don't know if EQ2 does, though. A good way to find out would be to send a signal to one bus that has EQ2 on it with the settings zeroed and one bus that is empty, invert the phase of one of them, route them both to the same output, and see if you get total cancellation. If you don't, then EQ2 does add color even if the settings are zeroed.

In any case, it is probably bad form to have anything on the master bus prior to the mastering stage of production.
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Re: 20 Tips Towards A Better Sounding Mix

Postby S.P.P » 29 May 2014 12:25

Stuntddude wrote:You know you can turn the effects off for both the EQ and the limiter with the "mix level" knob, right? That isn't even a real problem.

Thanks for the tip, though, I'll check it out.

Ah I misunderstood. Because I was talking about not mixing with the limiter active, I assumed you were talking about having your effects active too. Yeah there's no harm in that for sure but I would personally rely on my ears more than my eyes. :3
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Re: 20 Tips Towards A Better Sounding Mix

Postby SevenUpPony » 08 Nov 2014 21:24

Haven't been on the site in awhile but these are definitely useful tips thanks Pyrelight!
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Re: 20 Tips Towards A Better Sounding Mix

Postby NightmareRare » 12 Nov 2014 06:26

I love posts like this that sum up about 3 months worth of trial and error, hahaha! Would have saved me a bit of pain to have read this 8 months ago, oh well learning experiences rule!
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Re: 20 Tips Towards A Better Sounding Mix

Postby JSynth » 01 Dec 2014 19:56

Dumb question.
How do I know when I am listening to something at 90dB?
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Re: 20 Tips Towards A Better Sounding Mix

Postby Stuntddude » 01 Dec 2014 21:05

Short answer: you don't.
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Re: 20 Tips Towards A Better Sounding Mix

Postby MrBronyPlan » 01 Dec 2014 21:40

JSynth wrote:Dumb question.
How do I know when I am listening to something at 90dB?

you'll be deaf
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Re: 20 Tips Towards A Better Sounding Mix

Postby FLAOFEI » 02 Dec 2014 17:38

MrBronyPlan wrote:
JSynth wrote:Dumb question.
How do I know when I am listening to something at 90dB?

you'll be deaf

You most definatley won't go deaf from 90dB. If you wanna go deaf from listening to something your wanna go for something WAY higher. Like 150dB maybe. Officially anything above 120dB can give you permanent damage even when listening for short periods, but you probably won't go deaf. (trust me, I have a dB meter, loud speakers, and poor judgement. I've tried)

I'm inclined to agree with Ddude, but not realy. The point of mixing below 90dB is that shouldn't be particularly loud. The point is to keep the volume down. Nothing magical with 90dB.

The easiest way of 'knowing' you're under 90 is that you don't think it's loud. If you're thinking 'Wow, this sounds real nice and loud' you may want to turn it down.
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Re: 20 Tips Towards A Better Sounding Mix

Postby S.P.P » 03 Dec 2014 12:38

Prolonged exposure to levels exceeding can infact damage you in the long term.
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Re: 20 Tips Towards A Better Sounding Mix

Postby Mr. Bigglesworth » 06 Dec 2014 11:33

It takes about 2 hours of exposure to 90 dB to receive permanent (however, not severe) damage to your hearing, go beyond that and it's a matter of minutes. By contrast, at 85 dB you can go for 8 hours before you'd receive the same amount of damage. Just pull your master fader down by -4 dB and you'll never have a problem. You'd think your hearing would just get quieter, but no, you lose high frequencies and honestly, having seen older engineers with this problem, it's something you should do everything to avoid.
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Re: 20 Tips Towards A Better Sounding Mix

Postby Reaux » 22 Dec 2014 04:18

I was surprised to find that I follow the majority of these tips already, and I always kick myself for being bad at mixing. Perhaps I'm not as bad at mixing as I thought. Great post, yo!
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Re: 20 Tips Towards A Better Sounding Mix

Postby Stuntddude » 23 Dec 2014 23:51

To be fair, following rules doesn't mean you're good at something, and breaking them doesn't mean you're bad.
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Re: 20 Tips Towards A Better Sounding Mix

Postby Reaux » 24 Dec 2014 04:24

True but following certain guidelines helps you grasp a firmer understanding of what you're doing, which can help you improve greatly with experience. Up until about 4 months ago, all I did was adjust the volume some and throw a multipressor on the master to make everything as loud as possible without clipping.
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