Mixing 101

Herne

Hey all,

Am enjoying bumbling about making music with Audiobus, and learning as I go, but whenever I mix a track to somewhere that sounds right through my headphones, when I play it through speakers, the mix is wildly different, with some elements over loud and others disappearing. Am I going to have to bite the bullet and learn about mixing and levels etc?

Any pointers on a good place to start for a complete novice, or is there an app which can help?

Thanks

squeals

In short yes it’s good to learn. Your headphones may be colouring the sound, bass heavy for example. The idea is to make a mix that sound decent on any system.

Here’s a decent short cut that will help for a levels baseline. Especially for dance music.

Make a pink noise track. All pink noise. Set that so it’s at -12db. Take every track and solo it against it. Reduce the volume until you can just hear it (important elements you can raise a little up again if you want.)
When you’ve done them all, mute the pink noise and play. your mix levels will sound a lot better.

kirmesteggno

This video is quite old but it's also a simple approach which can be replicated with most tools, have fun:

DMfan

@Herne said:
Hey all,

Am enjoying bumbling about making music with Audiobus, and learning as I go, but whenever I mix a track to somewhere that sounds right through my headphones, when I play it through speakers, the mix is wildly different, with some elements over loud and others disappearing. Am I going to have to bite the bullet and learn about mixing and levels etc?

Any pointers on a good place to start for a complete novice, or is there an app which can help?

Thanks

You could start out with some YouTube- videos to get a better understanding of mixing. My advice though is to stick to one or a few trusted sources. There are loads of ”experts” online and trying out everything will make a mess. Second: don’t apply plugins randomly everywhere to try to ”fix” your mix. Cool and fun yeah, but you will never understand neither the cause of the problem or understand how to fix it that way.

Joe Gilder from The Home Studio Corner has been my main source of knowledge through the years and I can recommend his channel.

There are many other serious ones but I like this one and it has worked out totally OK for me following his advice. He has a lot of videos to check out, very worth watching! Check out my stuff here in Creations😎.

Good luck and let us know about your progress!

👊

/DMfan🇸🇪

Ailerom

@Herne said:
Hey all,

Am enjoying bumbling about making music with Audiobus, and learning as I go, but whenever I mix a track to somewhere that sounds right through my headphones, when I play it through speakers, the mix is wildly different, with some elements over loud and others disappearing. Am I going to have to bite the bullet and learn about mixing and levels etc?

Any pointers on a good place to start for a complete novice, or is there an app which can help?

Thanks

I think you just stopped to ask questions too soon. Not that learning more is not essential, just that this sounds like a normal process. Mix, check on speakers, go back and adjust, and so on. There are also ways to speed this process up by using an app that changes the response of headphones or models speakers. Are you on iPad or desktop? I probably should know but I'm unaware if AUM is desktop ready.

richardyot

In most cases speakers are going to be less accurate than headphones for most people. Room modes are a huge problem for monitoring bass frequencies, so as long as your headphones are semi-decent I would trust those over speakers in an untreated room any day.

But the best thing to do is to test your mix on as many different systems as you can. That can reveal potential problems, just be aware that if you hear bass problems on a pair of speakers the problem might not be with the track, but with the actual room.

raimundoarriagada

@richardyot said:
In most cases speakers are going to be less accurate than headphones for most people. Room modes are a huge problem for monitoring bass frequencies, so as long as your headphones are semi-decent I would trust those over speakers in an untreated room any day.

But the best thing to do is to test your mix on as many different systems as you can. That can reveal potential problems, just be aware that if you hear bass problems on a pair of speakers the problem might not be with the track, but with the actual room.

any cheap mixing headphones for the iPad?

richardyot

@raimundoarriagada said:

@richardyot said:
In most cases speakers are going to be less accurate than headphones for most people. Room modes are a huge problem for monitoring bass frequencies, so as long as your headphones are semi-decent I would trust those over speakers in an untreated room any day.

But the best thing to do is to test your mix on as many different systems as you can. That can reveal potential problems, just be aware that if you hear bass problems on a pair of speakers the problem might not be with the track, but with the actual room.

any cheap mixing headphones for the iPad?

Shure srh440 can be found for around £85ish, they are good enough for mixing IMO.

Herne

Thanks so much for taking the time to respond everybody - really useful advice👍