Mixing / Production

Not everyone wants their compressors to sound the same. But once you’ve set yours up how you like them, why change anything?

There comes a point when tinkering with your mixes won’t improve them — it could even damage them. But just how do you know when it’s time to let go?

I have a recording of a drummer where the sound is decent, but there are some issues with the performance. Is there a way to tackle this without fully replacing?

Paul White and Hugh Robjohns talk us through four essential studio effects that every music producer or mix engineer needs to know for creating an effective mix.

Is it ever appropriate to place a limiter on a routing folder for specific parts prior to them hitting the final mix bus?

Back in SOS July 2011, Mike Shipley said this about the producer Mutt Lange: “With Mutt, we always have programmable equalisers where we can EQ every word..."

Quite a few engineers who work with bands like driving their drum submix into fairly heavy compression, but whenever I try doing this it seems like I end up losing the low‑end weight from my kick drum...

How do I make my ears more sensitive to inconsistencies in the vocal frequency spectrum?

At what point in the mixdown process do you think it’s best to engage the master‑bus compressor?

We condense nearly 50 years’ worth of producing and engineering experience into 36 indispensable tips!

Creating an environment where artists can flourish means building trust, understanding people and valuing everyone’s input.

When using a mono-making plug-in, is there a range of transition that sees stereo signals gradually taper into mono?

As a mix engineer, it’s your job to give clients what they want — but what they say and what they mean aren’t always quite the same...

Just how do professional engineers tackle the earliest stages of their mixes, and can the rest of us learn anything from their approach?

We’re often advised to check mixes on a car stereo. But how useful is the fabled ‘car test’ in reality?

Learn to stop worrying and love your mixes with our 10‑point checklist!

I’ve played with ‘out of phase’ parallel compression (where the compressed signal path is polarity inverted)  — but, honestly, I didn’t really understand what I was doing...

Do the automation features in DAW software make old‑school console automation redundant? We canvass opinions from big‑name mix engineers.

I need to align some analogue gear to work with digital audio embedded in a video broadcast... what dBFS should my digital PPM read at the end of the chain?

Our mix guru shares his tips for keeping clients happy.

I’m trying to understand the panning being used in a particular song in which the verse has a guitar that appears to be almost completely right‑panned. However, in the chorus the guitar comes in on the left too...