Have you gone through the Sound Mangling Techniques thread? That is chock full of handy tricks.

 

kick in mono.

 

Andrew Scheps on Analogue vs Digital, How to 'Hear' when Mixing

Andrew Scheps Reveals How to Approach Parallel Compression

 

No, Didn't know about that.
I usually browse the legendary Shitpost thread :P
Thank You.

 

Heh, fair. That trick thread missed my notice for far too long as well.

 

A good DAW with proper external latency compensation will measure this for you using a full round-trip ping, then apply that amount of advance automatically. If it’s accurate, you’ll never need the nudge tool at all.

 

This is a peculiar but cool one, from Bobby Owsinski's 'The Mixing Engineer's Handbook'

Calibrate Your Hearing

Our ears are amazing organs that are capable of hearing sounds so faint that they move the eardrum less than the diameter of a hydrogen molecule. It’s important that we first calibrate them to take advantage of their enormous capabilities. Here’s how:

1. Try to stay in the quietest area that you can for as long as you can before you begin your mix. Concentrate on the sounds that you’re hearing and try to identify what they are and the direction they’re coming from. Studies have found that this can make your hearing much more acute.
2. Stay away from a large meal before you mix, because it will temporarily make your hearing less sharp.
3. To improve your ability to hear faint sounds, relax your jaw or just smile. There are tiny muscles in your jaw that can actually disrupt the action of your eardrums and Eustachian tubes, which control the inner-ear pressure.

Make Yourself Comfortable

1. Most mixes take a while, so both you and your environment need to be comfortable. Make sure your clothes and shoes are comfy, the room temperature is just right, and the lighting is adjusted so you can easily see any monitor screens that you may be using without squinting, because this can lead to fatigue before you realize it. It’s also a good idea to have some beverages and a snack ready for later when you need a break.

(The 'Snack' idea always cracks me up lol)

 

I'd expand this to monoing most bass instruments (bass guitar, synth sub bass, kickdrum etc)

While not necessary these days anymore unless it gets pressed to vinyl (in which case the mastering engineer will take care of that) it does make a mix sound more focused. Also works for any form of dance music that gets played on a huge PA.

If I want a wide stereo growl bassy instrument I'll mix in a stereo FX but highpass the effect so there won't be any phase funnies in the bass range.

 

And that's how you get the gig !

 

Not something unconventional – but rather blatantly obvious:

Always have a few reference mixes (or at least one) in the project to A/B.
Presumably, you already have your go-to library of reference tracks from different genres.

 

Even if there is nothing to learn, there is a lot to be entertained by

 

If you can't get your mix "loud enough" start with putting a limiter on transient heavy sounds and limit these transients. Most of the time you can gain quite a lot of headroom by simply limiting the transients. They tend to be the loudest parts of the whole track and you can get away with reducing them quite a bit before the sound changes drastically. By doing that you can get away with far less limiting on the master which will result in a cleaner and louder mix.

 

Mostly Rock/Metal. (my work:

)

Edit everything. It do not need to be perfect on grid, but sounding amazing and COESIVE.
Duplicate bass track and extract midi. Add a bass synth layer beneath.
On synth bass stereo, use a little bit of microshift or doubler.
Don't be afraid to distort BASS, but keep most of the low end intact.
Double track vocals (even if you just use on chorus).
Record the best way possible.
Tune the drums with tunebot or similar.
Use the same guy to play both guitars. Even small differences might sound shit when double tracking.
Use your ears, not eyes.
Delete Soothe.
Dont use "console" emulation. Sounds like shit.
You don't need to compress everything.
Ride the fucking faders. Usually, in groups or VCAs.
Drum room samples > replacing shells.
Natural drum toms. Please, new skins.
Use 4-5 FX returns only. One or two reverbs only, and send the instruments to the FX bus. Don't use on individual tracks.
Reverb best on room channels. Lightly on shells.
Use real amps and cabs. Or NAM. Everything else is shit. Specially those "Nolly" IRs, shit (or tamed) highs.
BX_BOOM is great on bass.
SRS_WOW is amazing on OH, guitars.
Talking OHs, those are PITA to get right. Just record correctly. Use something to measure distance.
Use a Dolby 361 effect on toms to get attack and high frequencies instead of EQ.
You don't need to cut first and boost after. Just use your ears.
Randy Staub samples are the GOAT for drums.
Andy Wallace SNR/KICK fake room trick is amazing. Use wisely.
You don't need SSL style strips. But they make EASY rock/metal mixes. 2k or 3k boosts, with hi-low shelfs... cut mids gently. Easy money.
Metric Halo Channel Strip and SSLs are beasts. Also Waves v2.
FX cheat: slap delay, 1/4 ddl, 1/8 ddl, short rev, medium rev, long rev (for special fx), doubler (or microshift or symphonic style), distortion.
Thats all you'll ever need.
Search every mix tip from: Andy Sneap, Andy Wallace, CLA and tricks from Randy Staub (some videos from JPHENRY on YT).
Don't CLIP everything to get loud! Use your ears. Usually a bit of clip followed by PRO-L2 gets you -5 easy. Or just use Ozone IRC 4-5.
Ozone MATCH EQ is your friend. Grab some multitracks from guitar hero and check your tracks against stems. You'll see that professional mixes tend to have A LOT MORE midrange than you think.(classic ssl 2k-3k boost)
Also, grab drums samples from guitar hero/rock band stems.
One more tip: after getting a nice guitar tone, make sure to profile (kemper, tonex, NAM, STL).
Make drums samples from the session.

And finally: SHIT IN SHIT OUT. Poor recorded = LOADS of turd to polish. Great recording = easy and amazing mix.

 

Last edited: Nov 29, 2025 at 12:38 AM

- LCR Panning for wider mixes
- Tune the Kick to the Bass.
- Euclidian rhythms & Polymeters to keep things interesting.
- Import a pro track you like, create markers in your project which outlines the track's structure -- then use that as a guide.
- Take breaks and eat ice cream ;)

 

weed before you record anything :D

 

On the mixbus (or your "everything-except-D&B-bus", whatever your setup may be) expand the mids 1-2dB with a muliband processor, triggered by the kick via sidechain.
You'll never be worried again about how the bass drum translates on different listening setups.

 

Number 2 is nonsense. Hearing is a very ATP dependent process especially the motility of outer hair cells and the auditory neurons firing. it's even more demanding of ATP than muscle synthesis, which is why creatine is one thing that has been shown to improve hearing acuity, tolerance, and thresholds in studies in vivo. Glucose oxidation is the most efficient means of producing ATP other than oxidative phosphorylation. So unless you are diabetic or have some other form of metabolic dysregulation(maybe you do if it's a personal anecdote as it's certainly not grounded in science), this one doesn't make any sense and it's not how cochlear energetics works

 

Can you explain, how it works a bit more?
Kick sidechain triggers the expansion but wouldn't it make bass louder than kick?
edit: I meant mix bus not bass.

 

Last edited: Nov 29, 2025 at 9:22 AM

It will make your entire mix midrange pulse +2 dB every time the kick hits. You probably won't notice what the kick is doing because your ears will be too busy saying WTF about everything else.

 

Why on earth would anyone want to do that... I mean, I really don't get the point... it just muddies the kick in the whole signal, doesn't it?