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Recording & Mixing Masterclass with Darrell Thorp
The BEAUTIFULLY Smooth Cloud 44 Passive Ribbon Microphone
Producing Modern Pop with John McLucas
Legendary Producer, John Kurlander Interview
How You Hear, Before Your Gear with Marc Daniel Nelson
ONE PLUGIN WONDER: Spiff by Oeksound
Testing The Slate Digital VMS ML-1
The Complete Plugin Pack – Eventide’s Anthology XII Bundle Review
10 Best Free Plugins For Your DAW in 2022
Bonus: 5 More Free Plugins! 11. Valhalla – Supermassive Similar to the extremeness found in FreqEcho, Supermassive combines reverb and delay for some seriously otherworldly sounds. Not your everyday effect, Supermassive is best for creating huge swells of lush reverb…
The 10 Best USB Audio Interfaces for Studios
After the computer and DAW, the most important component of any studio is the audio interface. The best USB audio interfaces around come in all shapes, sizes, and prices. Regardless of your I/O needs, you’re sure to find something that…
Mixing vs. Mastering: What Is the Difference?
Mixing and mastering are the two essential processes in polishing and finalizing a recorded song. If you’re making music that you plan to sell, or use to promote yourself (i.e., not a demo), you’ll want to invest some time into…
What Is Stereo Imaging & Why Is It So Important?
What makes a great recording and mix is oftentimes personal preference and subjectivity on behalf of the artist, producer, and engineers. It’s usually a series of small decisions along the way that amount to something great at the end, combined…
What You Should Know About Analogue Summing
As I’m sure you’re well aware, the analogue vs. digital debate still rages on despite digital’s advancements over the years. Whether you grew up working on analogue equipment or simply call yourself a “purist,” some folks still consider “old-school” recording…
Considerations for Mixing with Headphones vs. Monitors
One of the most common questions starter engineers have is whether they should mix with headphones or studio monitors. The answer tends to be that good results are achievable on either, or both. Unfortunately, this doesn’t do much to clarify.…
Mixing with Headphones: What You Need to Know
There tend to be varying degrees of thought on mixing with headphones. Some of us are in bedrooms, our parent’s house, married with kids (not wanting to wake them up at 3am!), etc. It’s understandable that in certain cases mixing…
How to Use Audio Pass Filters in Your Mixes
The most frequently used audio pass filters you’ll come across are high- and low-pass filters. High-pass filters (also called “low-cut”) attenuate low-end below the chosen frequency. Literally at the other end of the spectrum are low-pass filters (also called “high-cut”),…
8 Tips for Amazing Low End!
Top 5 Mixing Mistakes No One Talks About
Get an Analog Sound with this Digital Trick!
Simple Ways to Increase Loudness in Your Mix
By definition, loudness is a subjective perception of volume. It varies from person to person based on a variety of physiology and psychological factors. It’s also frequently confused with physical measures of volume, such as sound pressure level represented by…
Creative Reverb and Delay Tricks for Vocals
Vocals are the centerpiece to any song and generally require a bit more attention than basic rhythm tracks. Since the human voice is the most expressive instrument, you can have a lot of fun mixing them. There’s lots of pretty…
Master Bus Compression: Hardware vs. Plugins
How to Use Parallel Compression
Parallel compression, also called New York compression, is a form of upward dynamic control. An instrument’s dynamic range is reduced not by squashing the peaks, but by bringing up the quietest parts in the material, adding greater detail and excitement…
Mix Bus Compression Tips for Better Mixes Today
Every professional mix/master you’ve heard has benefitted from a splash of bus compression. It adds what we call “glue” to a mix by smoothing out the overall dynamic range of the material. Done well, mix bus compression can take your…
6 Reverb Tips for Clean and Creative Mixes
Learning how to use reverb is an essential mixing skill. Time-based effects have the ability to add dimension to your mix, and give instruments their own sonic space. Reverb is often used to push mix elements further back, but it…
3 EQ Mistakes We All Make
6 Delay Mistakes We All Make
The Basics of Starting a Mix – Setting Levels
Mixing Basics: Drums
Compression Techniques: The Multiband Compressor
Learning to use a compressor is one of the most important mixing skills you can develop. Compression is all over mixes, even becoming the sound we associate with loud, modern pop mixing. If there’s anything you want to really understand, it’s…
Mixing Basics: Bass
How to Mix Vocals to a 2-Track Instrumental
Mixing vocals to a 2-track instrumental is something every engineer will encounter at some point. It’s especially common in hip hop/pop, where artists routinely download pre-mixed instrumentals online and bring them to a studio to record. The challenge with learning…
Mixing Basics: Guitar
6 Key Ingredients to a Better Vocal Production
If you’re struggling to fine-tune your vocal production chops, don’t be alarmed. Every time a new vocalist steps up to the mic, there are a bunch of variables at play which can skew our results from session to session. Keeping…
15 Mixing Tips I Wish I Would’ve Learned Sooner
It’s perfectly normal to feel like you’ve hit a wall when it comes to progressing as a mixer. A lot of the time we rely on our tried and true methods which get the job done, but ultimately leave something…
Guidelines on How to EQ 14 Common Instruments
Understanding how to EQ–probably the most used tool available to engineers–is essential. Sometimes it’s as simple as high-passing an instrument, while other cases require more precision. Either way, EQ is fundamental in making mix elements sound more or less defined,…
Mixing Basics: EQ Before or After Compression?
8 Tips For Getting Better Low End
Which Vocal Compressor is Right for the Mix?
We’ve stressed the importance of mixing vocals time and time again! Because lyrics are what average listeners immediately identify with, making a singer sound great should almost always be a priority. Amongst other tools, the perfect vocal compressor for the…
Reverb Mixing Tricks to Elevate Your Mix
Learning how to use reverb is an essential mixing skill. Time-based effects have the ability to add width and dimension to your mix, and give instruments their own sonic space. Reverb is often used to push mix elements further back,…
Understanding Granular Synthesis
Granular synthesis is the operative force behind many plugins and DAW functions we use all the time. When it was first introduced, it was incredibly CPU heavy and confined to offline processing only. Now we have incredibly quick processing speeds…
Top 5 Mixing Mistakes
Summing Mixer: Digital or Analog?
Which summing mixer is right for you is dependent on how you like to work. In a small project studio where you’re working in the box, an outboard summing mixer is probably an afterthought. But if you have the budget…
Mixing Vocals: The Produce Like A Pro Master List
Have you ever had trouble getting a vocal to sit right in the mix? Have you ever felt underwhelmed by the overall tonality of a vocal, whether it’s too thin or perhaps too muffled? Does the vocal feel too wet…
A Beginner’s Guide to Sidechain Compression
Sidechain compression is an intermediate level mixing technique that allows you to set an alternate input signal source from the track on which the compressor is inserted. For instance, if you place a compressor on the bass guitar and “sidechain”…
15 Essential Mixing Tips for Better Mixes Today
Mixing music requires technical ability as well as the creativity to make a song interesting to listeners. Mix engineers firstly possess the technical knowledge of audio signal flow, DAW and/or console operation, and how to use signal processors, whether in…
What is Reverse Reverb? Should I Be Using It?
Reverse reverb, sometimes called reverse echo or reverse regeneration, simply takes the reverb tail of any instrument and reverses it. Creating it is a matter of printing the wet signal of a reversed audio track. Reverse reverb is typically accompanied…
Reference Tracks: How to Use Them and Mistakes to Avoid
Reference tracks are used as a guideline while mixing. They can be supplied by the artist to demonstrate a desired aesthetic, or chosen by the mix engineer as a standard to go by. Using reference tracks can help us craft…
Beginner’s Guide to Wider Stereo Image
If your mixes feel flat and narrow, like everything is stuck between the speakers, then you should put some work into the stereo image! But don’t reach for a widening plugin just yet—there are simple ways to achieve better stereo…