8 Things You Should Know Before You Start Mixing: Part I

If you’re just starting out in the bedroom studio, you might feel a bit overwhelmed. I want to talk about a few things that I think are important to always keep in mind as a bedroom producer, so that as you embark on this journey, you can avoid some of the same mistakes I made when I was getting started.

Here are 8 things you should know before you start mixing:

Clipping/headroom

In a digital audio system, the maximum capacity of the amplifier is represented by what’s known as “0dBFS,” which stands for “zero decibels relative to full scale.” If the signal an amplifier receives is less than 0dBFS, the audio will sound normal because the peaks of the waveform fit within the amplifier’s limits.

On the other hand, if the signal the amplifier receives is greater than 0dBFS, the audio will sound distorted because those same peaks extend beyond the limits of the amplifier and get chopped off. In other words, the amplifier can’t handle the amount of sound you’re trying to push through it, so it just cuts the audio down to size. This is called “clipping.”

The space between a track’s peaks and 0dBFS is referred to as “headroom.” It’s important to leave headroom above all of your tracks, including the master bus, for a few reasons. The first and most obvious reason is that you don’t want your tracks to clip and distort, or at least if you do, you want to record them that way or use a distortion plug-in so that you have complete control over the sound.

Another reason to leave headroom, however, is to allow for proper mastering once the mix is complete. As long as the mix is balanced, you don't need to worry that it's quiet. The mastering engineer will be able to bring the overall level up to a competitive volume with limiting, a technique I’ll discuss later.

Level-matching/make-up gain

Any time you use a plug-in on a track, there’s a chance it will change the volume of that track. A substantial EQ cut, for instance, could bring down the volume of a track, while you might be at risk of increasing the volume of a track with a distortion plug-in.

This change in volume can be deceiving, since "louder" often sounds better to our human ears, which is why most plug-ins will have as the very last parameter something called “gain,” “output gain,” or “dry” and “wet.”

These controls allow you to “level-match” your tracks (compensate for the loss or gain of volume) with “make-up gain” by adjusting the volume directly within the plug-in so that your tracks remain at roughly the same level with or without the plug-in enabled. This is the only way to be certain that a plug-in is having the effect you want it to have on a track and that your ears aren’t being fooled by the change in volume.

Mixing in solo

Your DAW will likely have a small “M” button and a small “S” button next to each track. These stand for “mute” and “solo,” both of which are useful tools when recording, editing, and mixing. “Mute,” of course, silences the selected track(s), while “solo” silences everything but the selected track(s).

It can be tempting to use the solo tool when working on a track, especially when you’re unsure of what a particular plug-in is doing to the sound of that track, but until you check your work against the mix as a whole, you cannot be certain that what you’ve done is best for the song.

Let’s say, for instance, that you have a guitar track that you think sounds a little muddy. The temptation is to solo the track so that you can hear the guitar more clearly, apply an EQ plug-in, and then find and cut those nasty guitar frequencies.

The problem is that you might zero in on very different frequencies in isolation than you would if you were to listen in the context of the mix. In order to make the best decision for the song, you need to know how those guitar frequencies relate not just to the guitar track as a whole, but to every other track in the session, from the drums to the other guitars to the vocals.

I typically only use the mute and solo tools when a) I don’t know which track an unwanted noise is coming from or b) I want to play with a new plug-in and get a sense of how it affects the sound of a track.

Mixing in mono

I wrote a whole blog post on why I prefer to mix in mono, but here’s a brief explanation:

Just like mixing in solo, mixing in stereo can fool your ears into thinking things sound better than they really do.

When you collapse your mix down to mono, you’re hearing all of your tracks and effects right on top of each other, instead of spread out across the stereo field. This gives you a clearer picture of how your tracks relate to one another and allows you to make decisions that will translate to a greater variety of speakers.

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Tune in next week for Part II, where I talk about 4 more things to always keep in mind as a bedroom producer.