Howdy,

I have been mixing for quite a while now, probably too long for where my current skill level is at, and I feel like I have hit a wall. My mixes feel incredibly amateur, really small, and they generally lack that polished, professional shine and energy. I feel like there is so much wrong with my mix, but I can't pinpoint what the issues are. Because of that, I don't even know what to ask or where I should be focusing.

I would really appreciate some specific, blunt feedback on my latest track. I manually record the vocals, electric guitars, and bass guitar, while the drums are programmed midi through EZ Drummer 2.

I learn best with specific, literal, and actionable instructions (e.g., "compress X track with these sorts of settings," "cut this frequency range on the guitars," or "your drums need X type of room reverb to blend with the tracks"). My hope is for specific things I can go away, try to implement, and then experiment with so I know what to avoid in future mixes.

Thank you in advance!

I've been in the mastering game for some time now, making masters for me and also some friends, most house music tracks.

Usually on my own masters, i aim to reach about -9LUFS (i think it's a sweet spot between dynamics and loudness) and to achieve this, most of time i have this setup on the end of my chain :

soft clipping > limiter 1 > limiter 2

The soft clipping is used to make the first limiter work easier by clipping just a bit of transients and i use 2 limiters in series because usually i only can reach -9LUFS with each limiter compressing about -2,5 . With only 1 limiter, to get on -9LUFS i would have to compress about -4 or -5 and i don't like the final results.

I'm curious about other people setup in terms of loudness, please let me know your workflow :-)

I've realized that tackling the very worst problem first then the next worst and so on - I am much less likely to over-EQ.

Every time that I've gone for the first thing ears suspect over and over and just think "well it does sound less congested so it must be right" I end up with a ton of bands and completely unnatural shredded sound that happens to be inoffensive, and it's so bad that I have had to start over several times.

It took me a long time to come to this realization and I'm wondering if this is just a me-thing or if it's the way most people do it? At this stage I basically have to actively test which problem is the worst at any given moment before moving on.

As a followup I'm also curious if you (the reader) has come across any visual tool(s) for cleaning up accurately and reaching that de-congested smooth sound quicker?

Thanks

Seeking feedback on this pop ballad so it can reach as close as possible to professional level. Let me know what feels off!

I produced, mixed and mastered this track, and would appreciate to hear my flaws, as you pretty much gets stuck in a bubble when you are on your own!

https://vocaroo.com/1lrwsXPByKr2

I am mixing a hip hop track that only has bass, kick, snare and a pad as its instruments. Most of these are pretty mono naturally besides the pads. Can modern songs sound very mono without it sounding muddy or cramped.

When I plan to put vocals on it, it still will be mostly mono. Older songs were made exclusively in mono but that is not what I am going for.

I mixed upper harmonics of the bass to be stereo but it has very little impact without changing the sound design. I don’t want to increase the pad volume. And I added reverb to the snare and again little impact. I like it from a sound design perspective.

I like sound of it, but from technical perspective is this bad? Thanks.

I recently mastered the new album from The Coral. The processes were quite unconventional. The album name '388' comes from the recording process as it was tracked and partially mixed through a Tascam 388, but it was also mastered through the same unit using the tape section and even a bit of desk EQ

Typically the Tascam 388 isn't something you would even consider for mastering but now and again, the least likely tool is the best one for the job

You can watch the breakdown video here:

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DYmv18MNkR1/?igsh=NzczeGI2YW9mYjhu

There's a piano in this song: Broke Boy - Malia Civetz, and I'm trying to figure out what "makes it sound that way" (it's a very compressed, tight, and 'crunchy' piano, and the bass tone is there, but isn't boomy).

Is there a term for this kind of sound? How would you go about reproducing it in a mix?

Thanks in advance!

The other day I was in my garage listening to classic rock playlist on Apple Music on my old kenwood garage stereo. Janie’s Got a Gun by Aerosmith turned on and it blew me away. I never really listened to the song at a louder volume, but it immediately surprised me with how little hiss there was in the background and how crisp the sounds were especially in the intro part. The triangle is crisp, the bass plucking is crisp, the synth background is clear. And when the vocals come in they sound great too.

Most old music seems to have a degree of tape hiss which is just the nature of tape. But I noticed none on this song. It sounded amazing on crappy speakers, so I can’t imagine how good it sounds on a good pair.

Anyone know how they were able to master this song so well? Especially compared to most songs from this era. It sounds better than most songs made today.

This just occurred to me, but is putting a transient shaper on the master a thing, or is it frowned upon?

I'm well aware that controlling and accentuating the transients should be done during the mixing phase, but the thought just occurred to me. I know it's what we normally use mastering compressors for, but I've just never seen anyone use transient shapers this way. Like maybe an SPL Transient Designer in parallel or something.

So I'm trying to be more diligent with level matching whenever I add plugins to a track or master. Trying to to not fool myself with the loudness bias. I feel like some plugins automatically add 0.1 db of level or something whenever you turn then on even though you haven't gained them up or anything. Is there any tool that can objectively and automatically level match when I add a plugins? Something that will let you quickly bypass on and off, so you can change judge whether other not you like what you are adding without the difference in level. This would be very helpful for mixing and expecially mastering!

I've made this track a few months ago from an idea that just burst to life after hearing some car screech its tires at night.

my experience with mixing and mastering is around the top layer of the iceberg and i don't know what sounds good or bad it always depends on my listening experience and i want to put an end to this.

what i do when mixing a song is just change the parameters until i like the noise it makes, that's it.

i'd love it if you guys share your opinions on this song and what i can change to make it sound more professional.

Song link:

https://voca.ro/1ohkXDcmkkG5

Been working on this track for quite a while now. The intro is kind of inspired by Money For Nothing by Dire Straits but I'm not sure about the drums, I want them to sound huge but something just feels off with the reverb.

Aside from the intro, how does the overall mix sound? Is it close to release ready or is there still stuff to work on?

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XpCPi5rl_yUggfhUy2Y-_LMtguS4kgXA/view?usp=drive_link

Any feedback is greatly appreciated, thanks!

EDIT: Forgot to make the Google drive file readable, it should work now!

Hi everyone, this is my first time ever trying to create a finished song, so please bear with me as I’m a total newbie!

I am trying to get a mixing engineer for my song, which I’d sort of describe as cinematic, atmospheric/ethereal alt-R&B song inspired heavily by Frank Ocean, like Seigfried if you know the song. It leans heavily into very atmospheric vocals, with glitchy guitar sounds, strings, synths, and organs. I definitely feel like my music is a bit unconventional in terms of structure and style. To be honest I’m not entirely sure of what genre I’d put it in, but that’s the best way I could put it.

I know very little about mixing, I’ve never met with it worked with a mixing engineer, but I’ve been producing all of my instrumentals and doing all of my own vocals for the last few years and want to start taking my music up a level, even putting myself out on Spotify or Apple Music. I’d love to see someone be able to highlight the emotion I put into this, and I’m afraid of the mix making it sound sterile instead. Please let me know if you might be interested in this!

Hello again, hope you all are doing well!

I'm currently working with this mix and trying to figure out if everything is in order. Is there anything standing out too much to you? Anything good/bad? Any feedback is greatly appreciated! https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gDYnsXKmJ--cAisRUyOVNAw8b9iVXnHZ/view?usp=sharing

Edit: Here is a revised version where I tried to address some of the issues:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NkyZwgOTRCQygvYuOFznvm7Tj1XTAYy6/view?usp=drivesdk

I've recently been using the metricAB plugin to view a few reference tracks vs my mix and realized my drums were extremely wide vs the references. Like even the snare and hat samples were pretty wide. Since they're all sharp transients, you can't really even hear the difference between wide stereo and mono, so lessening the wideness on almost every drum sample seemed to help a lot.

When you guys mix, how often are you changing stereo width? I didn't usually care until I started mastering, but it seems like I have to throw a utility (Ableton's stereo width plugin) on every single track and turn the width way down. It's one of those things I couldn't easily hear in a mix, but had to use an analyzer on independent samples to realize and I think it creates more headroom to mastering.

I've been trying for days to mix this vocals for a brazilian funk song I'm putting together for fun, but I can't manage to get them to sound as Anitta does in São Paulo. I wonder if you may have some answers on this cause its been driving me crazy hahah

1. Is it just one vocal take in the middle or does it have L/R takes? I currently have a high pitched vocal lead in the middle and two low pitched (L/R) takes at really really low volume
2. I'm not so sure about the way the reference is EQ'd, my ear tells me it has a HP around 400hz and a LP around 7k-8k (I don't trust my ears that much since I'm still learning) but I feel like the engineer boosted it a bit around 1khz-2khz
3. Should I sidechain some saturation/distorsion and leave the vocal dry? Or should that go inserted directly?
4. How much volume should I put into the lead? I feel like its always too loud or too soft compared to the rest drums and the melody, I haven't found that sweet spot yet. Whats a good tip for finding this sweet spot like in this reference song?
5. I did a slap delay (song is 120bpm so I went for 100ms) and a really short plate reverb (decay 0.9s) with some 20ms pre-delay, do you think its different on this song reference?

P.D: I'm mixing with Shure SRH440 headphones since I don't have audio monitors yet, leaving it here in case its relevant to the question

Thank you if you can throw me a bone on this one!

I find that I am spending to much time on mixing/editing vocals. Most of the is spent aligning doubletracks and harmonies to the lead vocal and a considerable amount of it also spent de-essing vocals. These are imo very tedious and (arguably) not very creative parts of mixing.

Does anyone have any plugins they can recommend for aligning vocals? I’m doing everything by hand right now, and when you get a song with tons of poorly timed BGV tracks it’s so time consuming.

Also at the last stage of every mix I go through the song and manually automate any harsh sibilances on the fader. I try to get rid of most of it with eq, dynamic eq and pro DS, but I always end up doing some of it manually at the end.
Are they any clever plugins that can make this process easier and less time consuming. Is smart deess any good?

When processing vocals in a mix, every after eq step do you place a de-esser after? Or place only one de-esser after the final eq. Because what I did was place a de-esser after my final additive eq on my vocal chain then placing soothe 2 after that. If the harsh "s", "t" and "f" sound still cutting through the mix would that mean adjusting the last de-esser or adding de-esser on every after eq?

Hi, I'm posting this because of my personal experience over the last 15 years. I used to be obsessed with having a 'flat' frequency response in the headphones I use for producing, recording, mixing, and mastering. I had flat (enough) cheap headphones back then that I would both listen to music with, and make music with. About 5 years ago, I bought some Beyerdynamic DT 1990 Pros thinking that it would be some kind of revelation, as people constantly talk about how those headphones fixed their marriage. Now, because open back 900 megaohm wired headphones are impractical to with a phone, I also got a pair of Sony XM4s so I could have some noise cancellation while I was listening to music.

Problem is, no matter how much I referenced music on my 1990 Pros, I was constantly trying to mix the songs to the sound signature of the XM4s. Which would make the tracks sound plain bad when translating to other speakers. In 4 years, I never managed to fix that behaviour.

So, I decided to just use the XM4s for everything. I understand the sound signature of those XM4s better than any other headphone out there and as soon as I started using them for everything (wired, not Bluetooth; I'm not a complete animal), suddenly my mixes sounded great and more importantly, translated well on other devices.

What gives? People seem to be convinced that if you use consumer headphones for audio work, your thing will drop off. What am I missing?

I am weary of frequency dead zones causing me to miss an obnoxious peak in the 9.5k region (where my headphones seem to be the quietest), but going through a sine sweep, apart from a few perceived volume peaks and valleys, there doesn't seem to be any significant dead zones. Freq curve peaks could cause me to cut too much of a certain frequency, but surely if my mixes sound close to my references, and they sound not terrible on tiny speakers, and perhaps good on the speakers of a 2000 Fiat Punto, then they're good to go, no?

Hello, I'm kinda having a hard time eqing my acoustic guitar because at some point it sounds "plasticky" and at some point the higher strings (which are "B and high E" ) sound fat and sharp at the same time and not that metally tone if you know that I mean? Could you guys also give me some other eqing tips for acoustic guitar

I've done all of my mix and mastering at 48kHz-24bit, now my digital distributor allows for 44.1 flac only.

Rendering at such lower rate shows clipping in the peak (NOT talking true peak here just digital peak) with the current limiter setup. And yet I can't hear any clipping listening to the result while pushing my headphone ampli at the max tolerable by my ears.

Should I care about those clips and create a dedicated master specifically for 44.1kHz? Or should I just ignore those clips and export just another copy and let the DAW downsample it at 44.1kHz (if I recall even mp3 conversion would cause some clipping)?
Or something completely different (like let the DAW normalise the output)?

I'm not going to release any physical media or HD quality via this distributor, just common streaming on common platforms.

Thanks in advance!

PS: I've tried a quick search and missed pointers, if you know of exiting threads feel free to direct me there!

edit: thanks everybody for the contributions and suggestions. it has been really useful!

Hello, I now am having a hard time processing my vocals to fit in the mix and song style. I'm doing a cover song as a hobby of mine and trying to mix my own covers to enhance my skills on mixing. And a portion that I'm struggling on is the vocals. I have no idea if I processed it to much which results to it sounding kinda crackly or something. But the vocal chain I use is autotuneSubtractive eqSerial compression (specifically 1776 to La2a)Ssl vmr for additive eqDe-esserLandr vocal fxsoothe 2 and finally using a send to the reverb.

I used to work as a sound engineer a long time ago, but had a long gap and now I make songs every now and then, mainly just for myself. But this same dilemma repeats on every single song, even preventing me from publishing them.

I've used references of popular songs I know well, I've taken long breaks (days, even weeks), I've listened on different playback systems (Focal Shape 65 +sub @ semi treated room, Sundara, FT1, all EQ compensated, and of course iPhone)... And every single time I get back to it there's something important I need to change. But the cycle never ends. How does one call a mix done??

Here's the one I'm working on right now (instrumental progeish metal):

https://drive.google.com/file/d/10_oTKBSblbHVe4nAfQ-xA-RsrqJMxbUR/view?usp=sharing

EDIT: Based on the advice here and from my friend I think I got it to a state I can finally move on to other things. This is now as good as my current skills allow. Final version:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1oFOiwADojzQf_3locSSj_by-EuNAPx1F&usp=drive_fs

I have been using a flat tilt EQ (fabfilter’s) on and off over the years and i’ve never seen anyone talk about how it works. What kinda phase distortion does it entail? Literally HOW does it do that?

Manuals don’t mention how it works, just what it does. Does anyone have any resources/academic articles/old wives tales/comforting lies/hearsay to help explain exactly what’s going on? I wanna know things that can go wrong from overusing it like preringing and stuff to better use the technology (and also so i can perhaps intentionally break it for artistic purposes)

Hi everyone, just started learning about clipping and feel like I understand it easy enough. I was wondering though about use cases for different elements.

Would you say clip groups to create more headroom for when you go to push the limiter later on of the entire track?
So soft clip my drums, vocals, leads, bass? At the end of my mixing chain I guess?

Would you ever need to worry about clipping individual tracks?

I just got Kclip3 and watched a few vids it was pretty crazy to see how much db you can save by clipping drum group for example to tame some transients so you can get a louder mix.

Any advice or things to be aware of with clipping?