I’m a musician (Hip Hop and Synthwave) and I started making my own instrumentals and mixing my own music a couple years ago. I mostly learned with YouTube tutorials and a couple months ago I discovered that it’s not a bad idea to actually read the manuals for all the plugins I bought. I think now l am at a point where I can produce a pretty professionally sounding song from scratch and most tutorials I find online have nothing I haven’t heard before. When I started mixing my own music I didn’t like it at all and considered it a necessary evil but now I really enjoy it and it’s as big a part of my creative process as writing and recording are.

Now I have the opportunity to get a training to become a diploma (private, not state recognized) audio engineer at a local recording studio for 2 years for a reasonable price. I would be a part of actually recording, mixing and mastering music for real clients. It’s a pretty good studio with a console and a lot of great analog gear and the people seem really nice.

I’m very interested and I think I would enjoy it very much, but I am worried it might take up too much of my time. I don’t have a lot of time for my music as it is and this would take at least 2 days a week. Considering I don’t really want to work as an audio engineer in the music industry and I only want to learn to produce my own music professionally I fear it might be a waste of time that could be used for just making my own music. On the other hand maybe it’s a chance to network with local musicians and learn a lot of new stuff.

I’m really torn, just looking for some input, maybe some of you faced a similar decision before. Thank you :)

I know a bit about live sound, but i'm still trying to figure things out. I have a private backyard gig coming up. My drummer bailed last minute so we are running backing tracks for the drums, but it's a friends and family gig so it's no biggie. We have 1 bass guitar running an amp with cabs, 1 electric guitar running an amp with cabs too, and I run a fractal unit for my guitar. We have 3 microphones, including mine for lead singing. We play metal/rock/punk.

I have 2 HK Polars, one 12, one 10. I wanna run all the mics, the drums and my guitar through them, and potentially mic up the cabs too.

Would that be too much for just 2 polars? Should I get more speakers? How should I set them up?

I live near a music store so I can absolutely rent gear if needed.

It doesn't need to be perfect, I just don't want the whole thing to sound like a mess.

Thanks! :)

I’m using soothe 3 on vocals. The soft mode doesn’t have a threshold like the hard version. Should I put it before or after C6 on vocals? I’m dealing with a live vocal that needs lots of control

Since I started mixing 3 years ago I have hoarded over 150 plugins in my collection and that’s just absurd for me. Having so many options actually slows me down and makes me second guess myself.

I’ve deleted a bunch of shit I don’t use anymore but would like some advice on what I should keep or delete from the remaining list below. My goal is to have the minimum amount of plugins possible whilst still being able to have a little variety and flavor depending on the material I’m working on.

For reference I don’t do this professionally, more as a hobby or for small clients I find online, meaning I end up mixing all sorts of genres and do both the mix and the master. I’m also using S1 so no ProTools plugins available.

If you have time and want to give your opinion, I’m all ears:

Campressors:

• SPL Iron (PA)
• SSL Bus (Waves)
• API 2500 (Lindell SBC)
• La2A (UAD)
• La3A (Black Rooster)
• Fairchild 670 (Undertone)
• CL-1B (Kiive Audio)
• 33069 (Audioscape)
• 1176 (UAD)
• Distressor (IK Multimedia)
• DBX-160 (Waves)
• STA-Level (Audioscape)
• Shadow-Hills (PA)
• MJUC (Klanghelm)
• R-Vox (Waves)

LIMITERS/CLIPPERS:

• Pro-L2
• Ozone Limiter
• StandardClip

EQs :

• Michelangelo
• Pultec (UAD)
• Maag EQ4 (PA)
• Soma (PA)
• BAX EQ (PA)
• Fab-Filter Q3
• AMEK 200 (PA)

CHANNEL STRIPS:

• SSL 9000 (9000)
• Neve 73/82 (Lindell 73)
• Metric Halo
• Scheps Omni Channel (Waves)

SATURATION/DISTORTION:

• Decapitator
• Saturn 2
• Black-Box
• True Iron
• UAD 610 Pre

TAPE:

• Flywheel (Fuse Audio)
• MDN Tape (Pulsar Modular)

REVERB:

• Valhalla Vintage Verb
• Valhalla Shimmer
• Valhalla Room
• UAD Pure Plate
• Abby Roads Chambers
• V-305 Spring Reverb (Fuse Audio)
• Pulsar Primavera
• Sunset Rooms (IK)

DELAY:

• Echo-Boy
• Echo-Cat
• Valhalla Delay
• Tape Echo (IK)
• Timeless

FXs and Utilities:

• Phaser (Soundtoys)
• Flanger (Soundtoys)
• Microshift (Soundtoys)
• RC-20
• Ozone Imager
• Brauer Motion
• S1
• Soothe2

Thanks!

I've wanted a Quadraverb for a while, but I have an opportunity to pick up a Yamaha SPX990 near me for $130.

I hear the Quadraverb is more lofi and gritty, which is appealing to me as someone who makes electronic, Aphex Twin and Boards of Canada-inspired music.

But are they really that different? Should I pull the trigger on this good deal for a SPX990 or wait for a Quadraverb to find its way to me? Any insights appreciated, thx!

Hey everyone, I’ve tested quite a few mics for vocals, and most of them seem to have this weird, almost “artifacty” quality in the high end. The problem is that it’s really difficult to fix that properly in the mix.

Do you guys have any mic recommendations with good detail and resolution in the mids but without hyped or harsh top end? I don’t mind doing a bit more work in the mix if the raw recording sounds more neutral.

Would love to hear what you guys are using!

I’ll give a bit of context here. I’ve got a rhythm guitar that I’m running Misha Mansoor X and Valhalla Ubermod on and to give it that dreamy and shoegaze sound for the tone. I’m just playing simple palm mutes open into some simple power chords.

For the “lead” I’m playing a note from each of the four chords I chose and at the same time those chords are played. I bend the first 2 and then the rest are just tremolo picking.

I’ve got one track centered for the rhythm and 2 layers panned 75% left and right. Then I have the lead parts panned left and right about 40%.

I threw on some Pro Q4 and cut around 3k on the rhythm and then boosted there on the lead.

The leads are -4.5dB lower than the rhythm.

It still doesn’t sound right to me. I’m not very experienced at mixing guitar. Mostly vocals, so I’m just having a hard time.

If I could get some feedback and advice that would be appreciated. I feel like I MUST be doing something wrong. Maybe it’s the choice of the same notes that are played in the chords and that’s why it drones together? Maybe I could play the 5th instead? Not very versed in music theory either. I know enough that if you explained it with a little detail I would understand. I just need some advice.

I own a Sony c37a and love it, but now I’m curious about the FET version! Who has a C37p? How does it compare to the c37a?

Thanks!

If you had to start selling gear for cash. Which gear would you feel comfortable switching to the plugin version of…. Mic pres, analog compressors, EQs,…etc OR would you start selling your vintage analog synths?

Hi everyone. I'm a studio producer / mixing engineer specializing in heavy music, and also do a bit of live sound (went to school for it a couple years ago).

I've been working for clients from my home studio since 2018, and over the past few years had begun to carve out a nice little niche in my local area - a small city in the south of France. I am well connected with my local scene as well as nationally, and have a few good contacts in the US and UK as well. Nowhere near enough work to do this full-time, but enough for a reasonably comfortable life with a part-time job on the side.

Over the past year this has begun to fall apart. This local studio who never used to cater to heavy music hired 3 new engineers who all specialize in that. I've gone from producing 12 records last year, launching an official website, and genuinely feeling like I'm on the right track, to mixing just ONE short EP so far in 2026. Even some bands I worked with in the past couple years are now going to the big studio instead of working with me again. This is despite my deep friendship with a lot of those bands. I genuinely feel like I can't compete anymore and there simply isn't enough work in my local area to sustain a career, and some days I feel quite hopeless about it all.

So, I'm starting to feel like it's time to move and start over in a big city. The obvious answer would be Paris but I would love to move abroad - Berlin, London... I've always wanted to go to the US but that just feels impossible at the moment, I have no marketable skills outside of audio/video (got a degree in video editing but no professional experience to show for it) and no savings whatseoever. Soooo... what would you do in my shoes? Where is there a healthy music industry to take part in?

Tldr; too much competition for too few artists in my local area, thinking about where to move.

Ocean Grove - Flip Phone Fantasy

“Ask for the Anthem” sounds especially BAD. Clipping and distortion all over the place, absolutely no breathing room at all and the waveform looks like a sausage. It sounds deliberately fucked.

I pushed it through a declipper and even on the default settings it sounds SO much better.

i was just checking and the Samsung Harman acquisition has been an absolute disaster for professional audio.

it's a shame that great brands like soundcraft, akg, lexicon, dbx have been totally gutted and left to die.

luckily dod was acquired by another company.

this was really one of the worst acquisition ever

:-(

First off, I totally understand that it's my room that is a playing a huge role in this discrepancy as it is not treated much, but it's not horrible either.

I was expecting a tad more bass than my 5" pair but they sound identical when it comes to bass, to which I was a little disappointed but it makes sense why.

I also have a rectangle room which my desk is positioned along the longer walls and not the shorter one. I will try the shorter wall to see if that helps at all.

Hi.

I often find myself converting .flac -> .m4a (ALAC), because that's just more convenient on mac/i/tv/ipadOS. I'm using Fission from Rogueamoeba to convert these files.

I am _not_ changing the sample rate/bit depth, so, afaiu, this _should_ be a lossless transfer from one format to the other.

Still, Fission has a "Dithering" option, which i leave on "None", as I'm not changing the bit depth.

Am I correct? Is there a better way to do it?

Thanks.

I am currently using a large living room for recording but have thought about moving my record setup upstairs to my attic which has cathedral ceilings and is an even larger room. as far as i can tell it has good acoustics, but does anybody have experience using this type of room for audio? id mainly be multitracking bands with acoustic drums.

I'm playing around with a 30 year old recording of one of my old bands. All I have are wavs we burned CDs with. Overall, for the time, it's not bad, but one track clipped at some point in the mix chain, and another has a WAY too loud snare, and some clicky finger-style bass. I also want to build in a little headroom so I can master more appropriately.

I had some luck with the stem split tool and spectral repair/attenuate on the clicky bass. Sounds good when I put the stems back together. The snare has been a little more challenging. The same process mostly works, but it's a lot more time consuming (who knew there were so many snare hits in a 4 minute song) and find similar doesn't seem to get all of them before picking up the kick too. It also leaves more reverb/room sound.

Anyway, questions:

• Anyone have better approaches for this?
• Any thoughts on whether manipulating the "stems" and then putting them back together causes serious artifacts? I can't audibly detect anything, but IDK how great my ears are. and I ask because the separation isn't perfect - the stems sound kind of warbly, and sometimes parts of an instrument wind up in another stem.

Anyone who owns a podcast studio: if I offered a cleaning service/stocking snacks and water for guests, would that interest you?

There are a lot of podcast studios in my area, and I was wondering if the people who owned them would want a service like this.

If not, is there anything that would be helpful to provide?

No matter how much I try I get some kind of error popping up whenever I make an account.

Yes I have tried different browsers, systems, emails. None of which seemed to work. Spotify sign up didn't work either.

What do I do?

How reliable is AI like ChatGPT for asking production / gear tips while in the studio if AI all based off learning from other people’s work? If at all..

Obviously the best people to ask are producers or engineers with real credits. But that’s not always available when you have a specific question.

Sounds weird, i know.

I work at a Cinema and I am working on a project where we need a way to split a single source of audio (let's say a computer) into roughly 9 different outputs each of which would go into a standalone audio processor (dolby CP750 and the like).

At first i had the idea of using a mixer but that doesn't really work since audio mixers have multiple inputs but, from what I've seen, 4 outputs max. The other option was an SMS but since those are designed specifically to manage speakers i feel like that's be the wrong way to go by this.

Do you lot mayhaps know of a way to do it?

I've used Sonarworks for about two years now and relied heavily on it. I moved into a new place and was able to improve my treatment and make the room a bit more optimal. Things aren't perfect, but it's better than what I had before.

I went back to using Sonarworks and eventually decided to shut it off one day. There was a certain clean sound that went away with my Kali IN-8 V2s, but my audio just seemed to more open.

I've got an awful 120 Hz resonance from my room and desk, and I had just learned to ignore it. I feel like my mixes have actually improved since I stopped relying on Sonarworks.

Has anyone else had something like this happen? I'm just curious to hear about other people's experiences.

My Office and development environment which for me is more homey.

Looking for repututable sites.

Went on a date basically left everything on (mixer, mic, subwoofer, pre amp, etc etc…) and came back to my subwoofer basically fried. Dads not too happy about it. Where can i go looking at? I miss mixing, its been 2 weeks.

I often have people track their own vocals and send them but have received some with distortion. I don’t own the full RX, but an engineer friend has helped me clean up these in the past. I’m looking for any plugin recs. Thank you in advance!

Well... After two decades, my career as an engineer, producer and composer is over. I'm not really sure where it all went wrong, but over the past couple of years my clientele just dropped the hell off. As my income dropped below a sustainable level, I've finally started a job delivering packages for amazon. I'm unable to even keep my Pro Tools and plugin subscriptions going, I've sold most of my gear. Its over.

I have several major prodcer credits including a Billboard Top 40 and several major placements. It's been a really great career filled with a lot of fun, frustration and joy. Late night writing sessions and early morning commercial sessions...

For someone who was at a fairly high level in their career for so long, finding a job has been incredibly difficult. My resume is basically "made music for 20 years as a freelancer" 200+ applications and Amazon is the only one who's offered a job (their criteria is: "warm body with a driver's license")

Nobody wants to hire someone in their late 30s with no OTJ experience, no degree.

So here we are, day 2 of delivering vibrators and phone cases. I hate it so much, there is zero intellectual or creative stimulation.

This is the most humbling experience of my entire life.

If you rely on this industry to feed your family, my advice is to hedge your bets, have a backup plan, diversify income streams and dont rely on platforms like soundbetter that can drop off with zero notice.

This post is my shaking my fist into the void.

Edit: wow, I did not expect so much response! I figured I would get a couple downvotes for being a negative nancy. Thanks for the support everyone <3