Hello, sorry about the late reply.

In one of the Mix With The Masters shows he was asked that same question, and you're basically correct. If there is a Master track on any bus the routing goes into that first, then the below bus.

It's basically just a VCA fader.

So for example here is the routing for a Kick track.

Kick
C Drums Master (NLS chain, EQ if needed)
C-Drums R-Bass, Shadow Hills Comp, Gate, Black Box
Dnb Standard Clip
All Drums (I use Bx Control V3 and enable mono maker -60hz)
Mix Bus Comp + Limiter ( added my settings to this if you wanted to see them).

808/Sub gets routed to a copy of C Drums/M, but with no Shadow Hills comp, but instead uses R-Comp. Not sure what they use now. Seems to have changed a lot. 808/Sub then goes into Dnb to get summed with the drums.

Cymbals go into Hi or Low percussion bus, then routed into All Drums. I use Standard clip on both Hi and Lo to control digital peaks.

The sends are used to add lost transients. They all get routed to All Drums. Basically what I noticed is just use parallel compression to bring back lost transients and call it a day.

Instrument tracks are individually set into group buses, but like all keyboards goes into all keys, that then goes into Main Music, then All Music.

The main focus he tries to teach, or what thought is to control the voltage before anything goes into the mix bus. Like, if something is overloading the mix bus limiter, turn it down with the VCA fader, or pre fader whatever.

Also a ton of work goes into pre-production. Editing samples, to make sure nothing is using a time stretching algorithm etc. Even spends time (or his team) clip gaining down high peaks. Like the music he agrees to work on, it doesn't sound bad before going in.

Seems to love to clip gain in Pro Tools. So using clip gain on a Sub to sidechain a Kick to make space, or duck a percussion instrument. Basically goes through most of everything to see fighting frequency, and lets one win.

I think pre-production is the most important thing to be honest. This mixing chain isn't to fix something that sounds bad, just help it to be perceived louder, while having a wide dynamic.

Honestly, the best information I gained was from watching Mix With The Masters JJ and Dave #4.

I'm still learning, and not even trying to be a mix engineer. Just a producer trying to get good sounding mixes lol

Also, I used that pan plugin because I jump from DAWs a lot while testing, and needed something that I could use in each. I only had the 4U from hofa because it was close to Pro Tools. Now I'm using Kilohearts channel mixer.

I really tried to match Pro Tools to the best of my abilities. I loaded the template and started watching levels with Waves vitamin (so I had an easy read out of volumes).

What I learned very quickly is not all dual panning plugins work the same as pro tools.

I don't personally use Studio One anymore. I have Studio One 4/5 pro, but I moved into Bitwig for production and am looking at UAD's Luna for mixing, or who knows even Pro Tools being perpetual licences are back.

Studio One kept giving out odd little quirks that would drive me nuts in a Windows envoriment, but I'm happy with mixing in Bitwig atm, love those plugins in a sandbox, so I never crash. I push things over the limits just to crash the plugin sandbox all the time haha.

Sorry if this didn't answer your reply, message anytime.

"Mixing Plugin Presets"

 

is the template ready for studio one ? cause ive bought one online ,mabe this can help aswell

 

Hello Scor. Truly sorry for the late reply, but I don't normally message here so your comment went unnoticed.

I do have a new template, and I actually think it's directly from Mix With the Masters from Jaysen Joshya himself and/ or one of his team members. Just too detailed that I could see that someone could come up with it. Like having mixing notes etc.

I recently moved from Studio One to Bitwig, but then noticed AVID was having deals on their Mbox Studio, which comes with Pro Tools studio perpetual. wasn't about to pass that up. Now in Pro Tools \o/.

I could transfer all the plugins over to Studio One, but that would take some time. AAX to VST isn't that easy (depends on plugin company).

The best solution I can think of is to upload the template I have (added to this messages here), then you can just transfer them manually. You can use Pro Tools Intro (free). It's track limited, but you can open 8 tracks at a time.

So just segment it, and it shouldn't be too painful.

Hope this helps. Message anytime.

Details about settings (A great deal of information can be found from the latest Mix with The Masters). You can find these online.

The C Drums bus is meant to be -1, -1.5 or something around there in terms of reduction into the Shadow Hills. You don't mess with the Shadow Hills compressor itself, but just line level going into the master fader itself. Kick should be the loudest, then something like snare. So if you load up that template and your kick is over hitting, just lower the volume of that kick itself, and then mix around that. It's quist easy once you get levels.

If something feels too heavy, find what is doing it and try to reduce it, or completely bypass it. The Black Box is a good place to start (top right of the plugin is mix knob).

A final net is the Standard clip. C Drums should be taking off just the transients (1db or less). For me it's usually the snare that gets cut off.

Sub goes through the Da Boom or whatever track. It doesn't get compressed by the Shadow Hills, but just active on the channel for harmonics. The Rcompressor is the main one.

For the Sub you want to be around negative (-3) three for the Rcompressor (if I remember correctly). Then everything should fit into place.

DaBoom and C-Drums Go into a Master fader called All Drums.

Bass Master is like guitar bass (I think). Multiple bass tracks are perfectly fine to get sent all at once, but some heavy sidechain might be needed. Sidechain is done by Soothe 2, but there was a plugin called Laser on one of the buses, not sure what that is, never even tried it.

 

Last edited: Aug 15, 2024

So, just out of curiosity. How are you mixes sounding (for people who use a copy 1:1 of his template)? Do you get close to Jaycen's results?

 

Hello Lad Impala,

Close to Jaycen and/ or his team? No. I don't have the same quality of production tracks they're using. I'm using my own tracks. That team is getting some of the best in the industry productions you could possibly get.

Do I like the sound and layout, yes! Absolutely. I'm not trying to be a mixer and/ or engineer, just wanted something for my own productions so it sounded more standardized. Before (like 2 years ago) I would just make beats and throw a limiter on each individual track and call it a day.

Lower dynamics, raise volume. Called it done (So Fabfilter Pro Q3 linear phase and Pro-L2 was my complete mixing package).

By going through this template and the Mix With The Master videos I've learned so much that it helps the actual way I produce. Also, in the world of mixing, I've learned very quickly not to use my eyes, but ears. I disable graphical interfaces where I can and try to judge my listening more than anything.

In terms of sound, the C drums aux gives dynamics, volume average, panning variation to my kick and snare samples. Also, the template on its own wouldn't do anything that much good without reference. The Mix With The Master videos are what helped the most. Each course might have one thing about the template that is new or something like that. I still need to enable Heat, just haven't got around to it.

Taking everything in one at a time. Learning the plugins, what it's doing and if I like it. Like if the template has one plugin, I test others to see if that works better.

Enough talk, here are some examples of audio.

Original


Pro Tools W/ This Template.


Pro Tools W/ Orion (C Drums).


Okay, 45 try, has to be done!

 

Last edited: Oct 15, 2024

Hey Popa2caps,
thanks for the reply text, and the examples too, both very clarifying.
Also cool looking at the waveforms. even though is better to use our ears, is pretty cool to see the compression taking place with NLS on.
I feel like Mix New was a great improvement from Mix Old

 

Not a problem at all.

Yeah too me too, I did listen to the old to new on SoundCloud and one thing stood out. Also, I exported this out at MP3 44.1 from Pro Tools, but the session is 48 khz 32 bit ( I think). I only noticed that the hi hats in my actual session sound way better. Could be the downsampling and/ or compression of MP3 doing that.

I like the setup as there's so many gates you can interact with. Like if the 808 is too pushy, turn off one of the NLS plugins, or EQ. C Drums too heavy, turn down Black Box's saturation. So many different variables, it's nice. Like Jaycen stated, safety nets. There are like 4 doors that all sound goes through before the final limiter. It's really handy.

I noticed really quickly that most main compressors are set in parallel mode. Like nothing really seems to be fully 100% mixed. NLS, Black Box, Shadow Hills, Spectre, Rbass, are all just there to add a little something, but not at full volume. Kinda reminds me of Andrew Scheps. I think he likes to parallel everything.

Also my bad if it's way too much bass in the demos. Using an old pair of AKG K702s right now. My Audeze MM-100s broke, so I'm just waiting for them to get back.

Also, if you don't have Pro Tools yourself. I would suggest checking out the template I uploaded with Pro Tools Intro with up to 8 tracks at a time. Like an empty session, then import the template, pick channels you want to play it.

It will just deactivate plugins not found, but the routing and/ or general vibe is still there (mostly).

Anyways, thanks for the comment. I'll keep playing around with this. I'm sure some plugins need some tuning. Being that I have this now, I can go around and pick better samples. I need to enable Pro Tools Heat, but last time I did, it sounded terrible (settings LOL). Plus 1db on the string could end up adding +7 to the next channel close to that and so on.