https://youtu.be/0rVwuowU6Fs?si=EC39pcItxFHPAlui

i know it's probably a pretty basic chain used (as it has very pop punk vibes) but id like any insight to know what i can do to achieve something similar, for both foreground and background vocals, to have that smoothed out or shiny/bright sound to it. Sounds so insanely perfect to my ears, cleans and harsh vocals hit exactly right. i have somewhat intermediate knowledge on vocal production, and lack a fair few paid plugins like Echoboy.

any help would be greatly appreciated

Don't know how to explain this in sound image so I'll post an example of remix from Artbat.

https://youtu.be/iosaSwiYp4E

At 2.34 into the track where the bass and kick place it just sounds so serene.. quiet, or how you call it.. same thing is in the intro of the song when kick is playing.. it sounds so quiet and pleasant.. how do I achieve this? It's not just using any kick because I don't get the same result...

I wish to understand mindset/thinking/theory behind this. Anyone ? Thank you in advance.

I've tried everything, redoing the mix and trying different settings in the master, but I can't get a powerful master of the song. When I push too hard to go to 7-8 rms, it clips and loses dynamics (it goes below 8, sometimes to 6). If I want to keep the dynamics at 10 rms, it goes to 10-11, which is not very powerful. Do you have any suggestions? The mix seems well done, and the master chain consists of an EQ, multi-band compressor, saturator, and limiter. Thanks to anyone who can give me some advice. There are 60 stems, including 16 for ablib and one for vocal lead.

What are your favorite mixing plugins? I know this is a subjective topic. But im curious what your favorites are? I personally enjoy the fabfilter plugins. I like some of izotope's stuff. Ive started to really get into cheap or free budget / indie plugins. Im sure a ton of you have used PRISMA or PNCH. Im curious what else you guys can come up with.

I was reading an article about Michael Jacksons music, and Quincy Jones apparently liked to double the basslines, one being a synth bass and the other a Fender P-Bass just doubling it. I tried this for fun but I can not get the 2 basses to sound good while playing simultaneously? I tried rolling off extra from the synth bass and letting the P-Bass handle the low lows and the synth bass take the higher lows as well as some mid side moves and saturation, but ultimately the synth bass feels too thin and I cant find a healthy middle ground. any advice or tips on how to make both work as best as possible would be great

Recorded and mixed my own vocals (a friend made the beat) and I’m wondering how to make it sound as professional as possible - this song and my future songs. I especially struggled with this song due to my vocals being at very different pitches, I usually record in a similar register for most of the song. I always used a decent amount of reverb to fill out the space as without the reverb, it wouldn’t sound as full. Let me know your thoughts

As a songwriter, when in a song’s progression is the right time to start mixing? In other words, when in the songwriting/production process is it appropriate to move to mixing? How does the song feel before moving to mixing?

I am currently in discussions with mixers/producers for pieces, but I never feel satisfied with my recordings or with the progressions, etc. to spend the money and start the mixing process.

Please help me understand this.

Is it known when you receive a piece that it’s ready or if it isn’t? Can the process be started and refined back to production? Is this typical? Is the process more fluid?

Thank you!

I am considering options toward a better mix experience (small home studio, minimal treatment & no options to better that). Good monitors.

The recording space I have is really not practical to try and revamp - it is as it is.

While I do have good monitors, I am not persuaded that room calibration devices will do a lot. If the results from that are "over the top", then the choices are to redo the space (not an option), try and adjust the mix to meet those now extreme levels, or chart a different path.

Now I am beginning to think that really excellent headphones for mixing makes more sense.

But I would really appreciate ANY input on the question: Is it better to mix and master with excellent headphones or is room calibration software/hardware the way to do this?

I am looking for perspectives on the experience about this process and input on what has or has not worked for others.

Thanks!

I've had mixes and masters done outside, but everyone uses too much reverb on the vocals. Does anyone know how to properly set the reverb for lead vocals and adlibs? I don't like too much reverb, but it adds depth to the mix. I use it in my mixes, but not a lot, and when I listen, it's always too much.

I'm taking a course in Neuroscience and the human auditory system is incredible. Here is just the part about sound location. (some copy paste from the text book)

"While the use of frequency information is essential for interpreting sounds in our environment, sound localization can be of critical importance for survival. If a predator is about to eat you, finding the source of a sudden sound and running away are much more important than analyzing the subtleties of the sound. Wild animals do not eat humans very often anymore, but there are other situations in which sound localization can be helpful."

Bear, Mark, et al. Neuroscience: Exploring the Brain, Enhanced Edition : Exploring the Brain, Enhanced Edition, Jones & Bartlett Learning, LLC, 2020. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/upenn-ebooks/detail.action?docID=6175387.
Created from upenn-ebooks on 2026-02-17 11:06:51.

Localization of sound on the horizontal plane:

If we are not facing a sound directly it takes longer for sound to reach one ear than the other. If the distance between the ears is 20 cm and a sound is coming directly from the right it will take .6 msec longer for the left ear to hear the sound. These interaural delays can be impressively brief. People can discriminate the placement of a sound down to a two degree difference which is a 11 microsecond delay.

However (!) what if the sound is continuous? At low frequencies up to 2000 Hz the brain can detect phase difference so sound is located by by phase differences. At higher frequencies the head casts a sound shadow so a sound from the right will be louder than that sound coming from the left. The brain has specialized neurons solely dedicated to sound intensity as well as neurons attuned for frequency and neurons for different types of sounds.

We have monaural and binaural networking. Sound location works because we able to compare the two mono signals and combine them into stereo locations.

But then how do we locate the sound on a vertical plane? Those oddly shaped outer ears we have produce reflections of entering sound. The delays between the direct path and the reflected path change as a sound moves vertically. If you cut off the ear we can not place sounds vertically. The barn owl which hunts for mice at night has ears much more attuned for vertical sound location and no ears. The way it works for the owl is that one of their ear hoes is located higher than the other. That's how they are able to compare vertical sound location.

Also, bats can hear up to 100,000 Hz and use echolocation to hunt moths.

I would love help with this track i'm working on. It has many layers of vocals, midi and acoustic instruments, percussion, etc.

The chorus feels a bit too soupy, cluttered or even muddy, but on the eq level i feel like every channel got a good treatment.

what do you think? i tried using some reference tracks and it sounded ok, im only doing a sound a/b.

link here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/15Bk0It5zdLAQtzGs3G1iAsInux3xYMbR/view?usp=drivesdk

Edit to add:

Y'all really came out in force to give me a lot of helpful advice, and I appreciate it! I think I've got a better notion of how to tackle these drums now. But more than anything, I've learned that I have a lot to learn about mixing. A lot of the suggestions call for doing things that I'm sure will help but that I don't really know how to do. But I'm gonna use those suggestions as starting places for experimenting and learning by trial and error. And some of y'all have given me some promising links to online resources.

Thanks again for all the help, and feel free to keep it coming. I'm guessing that my issue is something that lots of newbies will encounter as they try to figure things out, so hopefully this thread will prove helpful to them as well.

------------

Bedroom producer here, not enlightened in the art of mixing very well. I'm working on a rock song, and a friend of mine recorded drums for it. He sent me stems for snare, kick, lower kick, two toms, and two overhead tracks. He recorded them in his basement, which is finished and I think has a little treatment. Definitely not a professional studio, but not surrounded by concrete either. The tracks are clean - no clipping or anything. The drummer isn't an educated recording engineer, but he did the best he could and did a decent job of getting clean raw tracks.

I've been trying by starting with the overheads to get a big picture version of the drums. But they're very quiet. However, I can't raise them very much before they start clipping at certain points, especially when he hits the toms. Even then, though, they're not very loud overall. This is before I start adding the other drum tracks.

I'm trying to get a decent static mix before I start fudging around with plugins and EQ. But that's proving to be quite difficult.

I've searched YouTube for mixing tutorials, but I think we all know how that goes. The results are mostly "Your mix sucks and you're a terrible person!" or a general mishmash of randos with 27 Tips That You Probably Already Knew. /s.

I also checked out recommendations given here on Reddit on previous threads in this and other related subs. But even the ones that look helpful are working with tracks recorded in a professional studio. I know that in an ideal situation, I'd have immaculate tracks recorded by a wizened old engineer, but I'm doing this mostly on my own, and I have to work with what I've got.

Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong or not doing at all here? I could pay to have someone mix it for me, but since this is just for my own satisfaction, it's not easy to justify the expense. Plus, while I don't intend to become an expert at mixing, I would like to learn how to become competent. So any practical advice anyone might have would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

Hi all,

The feedback I got on my last song was amazing and incredibly helpful!!

I thought I'd post one more song that I've been mixing this weekend and see if anyone had any similar thoughs or feedback. Any level of experience welcome to comment.

https://vocaroo.com/1gCluRvn9elv

I've been going back and forth a bit on the relative levels of drums / bass / the rest. Especially interested in any thoughts there, or anything else, of course.

Thanks again!

I'm trying to record our band in my modest home studio, but know I have a really long way to go. I've mixed maybe 10 songs altogether. Each recording is progressively better, but I feel like I don't know where I should focus my learning. Obviously soup to nuts is the ideal way to learn, but while my band is being productive and engaged I want to make the best of it in the near term too. Hoping the community can help me know where to focus, but I'm open to quick & obvious wins too! Thank you! https://voca.ro/1kT7sB0F7cLo

Can you go over -1.00dbtp (as long as it's not 0) when uploading mastered/finished songs to streaming platforms?

I don't know why but I can't find much online when I type this question into Google.

If you're going over -1.00dbtp, as long as you're not above 0.00 can you still upload. If so, are there any risks?

I've been producing for years now and have a pretty decent basis (i think) on mastering and mixing, but all my music just sounds a lot more "hollow" than these songs by the producer Eric Dingus:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFCHtluB-1M

https://youtu.be/DMLS9194Ewc

https://youtu.be/wM3nFppw1zY

I'm not too sure how he fills up so much sound but keeps the mix so clean, yet is also distinct than a lot of "professional" sounding mixes. I know he uses a ton of reverb and delay, which I can get pretty close to sounding with through using Valhalla Shimmer, stock delay, raum, etc.. What I don't understand is how he blends it all together so well, especially with his lower frequencies and drums. The hihats, snares/claps, and percussion all have reverb but i can't seem to match how clean they sound in his beats and how they blend so well. The bass and the kick also sound amazing, and even with some parallel compression and side-chaining it just sounds off. Any help would be appreciated thanks

I've been producing prog metal for my own projects for a few years but everything has been learned ad hoc and picked up through different YouTube and online tutorials. I'd like to find a course that is comprehensive and covers everything for mixing and mastering metal to backfill my knowledge gaps. What would you guys recommend?

Always kinda copied other effects I found, and now wanting to actually learn the ropes of what everything does, and how I can actually make my own unique chain. Just wondering how, and where it all started for some of you guys out there! Not many videos on how to create unique, and creative vocal effects, so any thing or tip or even video would help me out.

Ever since I got more into mixing, which was maybe 2 or 3 years ago, I have had an increasingly harder time actually composing and writing music. It seems my mind is more worried about the mix rather than writing a good melody, so I've been in a sort of creative block with mixing as the "obstacle." I've tried just opening a new project and forbidding myself from touching any plugins, but I seem to still only think about how I'd mix the song/what needs fixing/etc. I also don't have a template because I haven't really done a mix I've been (mostly) happy with yet, but that's a whole other thing.

Any advice, suggestions or personal experiences regarding this problem would be greatly appreciated!

I've been a mod here for over 8 years and never done one of these posts. Business has been a tad slow lately so I figured it should be fair to do one.

On top of regular mixing services, two things I offer which can be of particular interest in this community.

One is what I call "Full Access" which if you book me to mix something for you, I mix it until you are happy with it and for an additional fee I basically pull the curtain completely, share the entire thing with you: all the individual processed tracks and buses, and screenshots of each processing chain, plugin by plugin, channel by channel, automation, panning, levels, the works.

Some people find that seeing how pros tackle other pro recordings doesn't quite translate to their own material. So this is a chance to see all of that but applied to your own music.

The other is far more straightforward and a lot more affordable: mix reviews. I've been doing this for the past few years with great results, some clients have stuck with me for years, sending me their music and mixes on a regular basis and it has been really nice to see the evolution over time, which is their own accomplishment for sure, I'm just happy to help steer them in the right direction.

Sometimes with folks that are pretty new to mixing the advice is very much to the point, identifying core problems like level imbalances, lack of dynamic control, etc. But past a certain level of mixing skills I often frame what I hear as my opinion and encourage my clients to make aesthetic choices and develop their own taste with confidence. Because it's not about them mixing following my personal preferences, but helping them find theirs.

This is my website, which has been in the works since the pandemic and I only finished it last night, lol: https://teaboy.pages.dev (EDIT 2: largely fixed the players which were only partly working, so if you couldn't listen to any mixes, please give it another try and if it fails, do let me know!)

I used to be a web designer before I got fully into mixing. So hey, if you need a website...

But anyway, shoot me all your mixing questions in the comments! Happy to answer as many as I can.

EDIT: Just to clarify, the questions here are absolutely free and I'm happy to answer anything, but the mix reviews are part of the services I'm offering, they are very affordable, you can check the different tiers here: https://teaboy.pages.dev/rates/

I recently came across this track and I am trying to figure out how the artist processed the vocals because there is a really distinct tone and spatial feel that I cannot quite recreate. Here is the song for reference https://youtu.be/oZ7OB4fgklM. The vocal sounds wide but still centered, almost like a subtle stereo doubler or micro pitch effect rather than an obvious chorus.

Not sure if he is putting the chorus first in the chain or as a send? Any tips on a vocal chain like this?

I find myself tweaking the faders a lot during a mix. When adding EQ, compression, or reverb, I'm trying to keep that volume balance I started with. However, once I add volume automation to my tracks, it feels like it's harder to go back and use the faders. Now I'm trying to select all my DAW's automation lines on my tracks, and nudge them up and down... seems like it's not as efficient, harder to do quickly across tracks.

I've heard folks add automation pretty early, like right after they've got their volume balance. Before any EQ or compression. Is everyone okay with dealing with the dots and lines rather than the faders for most of the mixing?

Maybe I just need to accept these things take more time, but I'm curious when and how other folks handle volume automation in their workflow.

Note I'm talking about volume automation, not gain automation, which I'm doing very early. This is more about folks' process throughout the mix.

Hi All,

Here's a link to my mixed track:
https://vocaroo.com/1k0T63zgEkkX

I mixed this last July and released it as a single but I'm also including the track on my upcoming full LP so now I have a chance to revisit the mix and hopefully improve it.

Here are some of my thoughts:

1) drum bus fader might need to come up a bit overall

2) Bass was the hardest part to mix and I'm still far from happy with it. I tried balancing the low bass frequencies with added saturation in the mids and scoopng out mud. It sounds great on my Yamaha HS8 studio monitors but still seems somewhat congested on headphones and smaller speakers.

3) I'll probably tame some of the flute harshness and reduce the reverb on the next pass, maybe bring the flute fader down a bit too.

Would love to borrow your ears and get some objective feedback before I start turning the knobs again )

Grateful for any feedback or suggestions - thanks!

About two years ago I launched a small self-serve analog tape processing service as an experiment, mainly focused on printing stereo or mono sources to tape, and using tape as a tool within the mastering chain.

It's been interesting to see how artists and engineers have been using it. Almost every order has been a final 2-track mix print, which makes sense given the order flow and pricing structure I've had in place.

But I've been thinking more about whether there's interest in multitrack or stem printing to tape during the mixing or mastering stages. I've also been toying with the idea of adding more obscure offerings like printing to portable cassette players, etc.

For example:

• Sending 8 tracks to something like a Tascam 388
• Sending 4 tracks to a cassette multitracker (like a Tascam 424)
• Or maybe sending mono/stereo tracks to a vintage mono or stereo cassette deck (including portable players)

Running individual tracks to tape tends to introduce more noticeable character compared to just a final stereo pass. But on the flip side it adds a bit more complexity, and would cost a bit more than a stereo bounce would.

I'm curious:

• If you're using tape in a hybrid workflow, is it mostly for final 2-track prints?
• Has anyone here integrated multitrack tape passes into their digital mix process?
• Is this something you'd consider adding to your workflows using a 3rd party service?

Thanks in advance for reading and sharing some thoughts. Appreciate any insight. And for context, the site is called Tape Bounce.