No. Mixing is mixing, sound design is sound design. And arrangement is arrangement. And mastering is mastering. There is no need to mix them in your mind and in minds of other people (the latter is worse). Yes, from time to time we do mixing and sound design concurrently. Or correct mistakes of sound design by mixing. But these are clearly separated things. And they must be separated.

 

Save your project as another name. Open the other name project.
Remove EVERY insert and EVERY FX BUS.
How does it sound? Then apply one effect on ONE instrument only.
In order to troubleshoot anything, attempting to do it all at once will achieve nothing.
Doing one target at a time, people tend to find what they seek. Trying to do ten or twenty at a time never works.

 

Well, this is more a testimony of your individual mental disposition, rather than a truth that needs to be adhered through universally.

It seems you are cognitively rigid in a way that urges you to separate the creative process into smaller, more digestible, seemingly dichotomous subprocesses, so that you can work through these processes in a sequential manner? If this is a clutch that works for you: great. But please keep in mind that your favourite way of doing and seeing things is not necessarily shared by all humanity.

In my case there is no clear separation between sounddesign and mixing. And there is no need for me to separate both, since I use the exact same tools for both purposes.

 

Last edited: Dec 9, 2023

Where have I said about "a sequential manner"? I've not said about it anything. It's you who think about it in a sequential manner.

We use same tools (for example, EQ) for different tasks: 1) to form a timbre or 2) to make a mix coherent, to blend a sound in a mix. These tasks are different. Sometimes you need change a timbre only, sometimes you need just blend a sound without changing its timbre, sometimes you need both. Such use of one tool for different purposes doesn't mean that mixing is sound design. No. Mixing is mixing, sound design is sound design. Period.

When we think as you do any differentiation of sound design, arrangement, mixing and mastering looses their meaning. All is the same, "a holistic creative process". Why do you use these terms? Why do you say about mixing or sound design? These terms aren't needed.

Or may be we need them...

 

i know he isnt, but you can make a stock plugin sound like a UAD plugin if you know what the hell your doing.

 

Just finished watching new MWTM CLA video. He mixed a Green Day's song at other studio with atleast half (20 or so) of his usual go-to hardware not present and the mix still sound like "CLA mix" if one is familiar with it.