Mixing Tips
In this rather lengthy post, we will take a close look at some of the principles behind the delicate art of mixing audio. We believe that in order to get the most out of the mixing process, you must first become accustomed to certain theories that lay out the foundation for a good mix.
Equally important to these basic theories is the listening environment in which you operate. Since all your decisions are based on what you hear, it is of utmost importance that you operate within a suitable monitoring environment.
Without further ado, before we have a look at some of the theories behind mixing, here are some things to watch out for in relation to listening environment.
Listening Environment
The following aspects are extremely important and all very closely related:
- Speakers
- Their position
- Your Room (Size, Shape, Position, Density,Tiles etc.)
Regardless of the speakers that you own, different rooms will have a different sound based on a combination of the factors in brackets above. This means that in an acoustically untreated room, the sound you perceive will be different at various positions in the room. For example, the bass might sound powerful in the corners of the room, but will sound much less powerful standing in the middle. Therefore mixing audio in an unideal environment could have several implications on your final mix. It could be that your mix sounds great in your room, but when played in a good listening environment, it might sound too bass heavy and muffled due to your environment being rather bass light.
Speakers
Given the vast range of options out there, on a limited budget we believe it is best to go for monitors with a perceived tonal balance being as close to the population average as possible. What this means is that if our aim is to produce tonally acceptable mixes for the widest range of systems out there, from home hi-fi systems to portable speakers, then we should go for monitors that are neither too bright, nor too dull. Nearfield monitors are a good option since they are made to be positioned close to the listener to obtain the most direct sound possible, with the minimum amount of reflections.
Some models that punch above their weight when it comes to price and quality and that we would recommend are the following:
Avoid using hi-fi speakers for your mixing as these are manufactured to enhance the listening experience and will not provide a reliable listening environment for you to work in. Headphones also should not be used as your main tool for mixing, but could obviously be used as another medium for checking your final mix once it is complete.
Speaker Position
Ideally, you want to be positioned at the tip of an equilateral triangle, with your monitors at the other ends. Your head should be the same distance away from each monitor as the distance they are apart. Testing a distance of around 3 - 8 feet should provide decent results for most rooms.
It is equally important to try and position the speakers away from all side and rear walls. However if this is not possible and you have no option but to place the monitors next to a wall, then a rear wall is almost always the better option (if your monitors are bass heavy and rear ported than all walls must be avoided at all costs). Corners are out of the question.
In a perfect world, the monitors will be mounted so that the tweeters are roughly level with your ears.
Orientation and mounting of the monitors should also be taken into consideration. The majority of monitors are manufactured to be mounted with the tweeters on top, and therefore turning them round or to the side could have detrimental effects on the stereo imaging and frequency response.
The direction in which they are pointing is also important, as some monitors are manufactured to be pointing directly at the listener whilst others are made to point straight out and will sound too bright should you point them in your direction.
It’s always best to ask the manufacturer or vendor if ever in doubt. Alternatively, you can always get in touch with us at phatmastering@gmail.com to see if we can help.
Having looked at some basic tips for setting up the correct monitoring environment, let us now take a look at some of the theories behind the art of mixing.
The Mixing Myth
Mixing is considered by many to be one of the most important procedures in producing a track. However there seems to be a misconception about the mixing process and the final mixdown. Some people tend to believe that a poor production is the direct result of bad mixing. Or that mixing will make a poor sounding track instantly sound great. Most of the time however a production that sounds off is due to a combination of factors before mixdown and throughout the production process as a whole.
The mixing process alone will not perform miracles on a horrible sounding mix. Therefore, before you approach the mix, you should listen to your production and try to identify anything that sounds off. Things to look out for include:
- Poor choices of preset/timbre/samples
- Poor use of effects
- Rough arrangements and programming of midi notes.
In addition, to achieve the best results possible from the mixing process, it must be kept in mind and catered for throughout the whole production process.
It is important to listen to and feel your production prior to mixing. (And not rely on mixing or mastering to magically turn your production into the next hit!) Once you are happy with your recording you could move onto the mixing process. Mixing generally consists of some minor EQ and volume adjustments as well as the introduction of some effects. It is a series of small processes that focus on the role of each element in the mix, and how it sounds when played along with all the other elements in the track. Mixing consists of making minor tweaks to ensure that all the elements are working well together.
Mixing Is Subjective
What sounds like a good mix for one person, might not hold true for another. Mixing is a creative art. You could give a production to 10 different mix engineers and the result will be unique in every case. It is also quite personal and the mixing process could have an influence on the style of the track, as much as the other sounds, instruments and kind of arrangements used. Before delving into the more practical side of things, it is important to grasp certain theories about the art of mixing. These will enable us to perform the necessary adjustments better.
Frequency Ranges
In order to apply proper equalization, and thus make our elements sit nicely in the mix we need to know something about frequency ranges. (Simply understanding these ranges is not enough, we must also with time, train our ears to recognize certain timbres and their corresponding frequencies)
The following is a table with some of the different frequency ranges to look out for:
Name
|
Range
|
Description
|
Sub-Bass
|
Below 50 Hz
|
More than hearing this range, we tend to feel it. This area is usually occupied by the lowest areas of kicks and bass.
|
Bass
|
50 - 250 Hz
|
This is where most of the bass is contained. EQ adjustments in this range can add presence to the bass and kick drum.
|
Mid-Range
|
200-800 Hz
|
This area is sometimes dubbed the muddiness area. Too many sounds dominating this range could make your mix sound muddy.
|
True Mid-Range
|
800-5000 Hz
|
Since this is the range we are most sensitive to, extreme care should be exercised when making adjustments to frequencies in this band.
|
High Range
|
5000-8000 Hz
|
The home of Hi-Hats and Cymbals. Boosting this band results in a brighter sound.
|
Hi-High Range
|
8000-20000 Hz
|
Contains the higher frequencies of Cymbals and Hi-Hats.
|
Since by nature we are most sensitive to frequencies in the mid-range, we need to take special care when mixing frequencies out of this range.
The reason why we perceive different frequencies to be at different volumes can be traced back to a time when we lived in caves. Since any form of speech in a cave resulted in lots of reverberation, our hearing got used to concentrating on the frequencies where speech is most pronounced. Today this means that during conversation, our ears are most sensitive to sounds occupying the mid-range. Frequencies that are lower or higher must be amplified for us to perceive them to be at the same volume.
For example, if you balance the bass elements at a low monitoring level, then upon increasing volume you will most likely experience a huge bass increase. This is because bass naturally needs to be louder in order for us to perceive it to be at the same level as its mid-range counterparts.
Soundstages
It is often recommended to imagine a 3 dimensional room (soundstage), when approaching a mix. All the instruments and elements that make up the track should be placed on this stage.
Therefore, sounds could be placed:
- at the front, back of anywhere in between (volume)
- anywhere between the right and left walls of the stage (panning)
- at the top of the stage (high frequencies) or at the bottom (low frequencies).
Using this analogy, we are able to form an image where each sound will occupy its own space in the sound stage, so that it can be heard properly while also sit well with all the other sounds in the room.
Volume (Front to Back)
Because of the way sound propagates, the further it has to travel the less intense it becomes. Therefore, the louder some sounds are in the mix, the more we could feel and hear them. This depth and the way we perceive it is an important aspect in producing a good mix.
Depending on the style of music you are producing, certain sounds will need to be further front than others. However, regardless of genre, if all elements were placed equally at the front, ie. equal gain, this would result in a cluttered sound with lack of depth. Moreover, in order for our ears and minds to create a sense of depth and balance, we need some sounds to be anchoring in the background to allow us to determine that other sounds are more in front.
Effects On:
- Presence of the sound - volume adjustments to certain sounds can create a sense of depth and also affect it’s presence. For example, cutting a few decibels at the higher frequencies of a sound can make it sound more distant in comparison to other low frequency sounds, and vice-versa of course
- Compression - when compressing a sound, if a fast attack is used, some of the high frequency content will be reduced, making it sound more distant. (Usually the opposite of what we would like to achieve through compression). This could be avoided by using a multi-band compressor to compress only the low-frequency content.
Panning (Horizontal)
The impression of panning and stereo is formed through the volume intensity between the sounds as well as the timing between them.
Fading a sound source in volume from one speaker and increasing the volume in the other, creates the impression of the sound moving from left to right or vice-versa. In addition to that, directional clues could also be received through the timing between sounds. A sound coming from the left speaker will mostly reach your left ear before reaching your right. Because of this slight delay and one sound reaching your ear before the other, your mind is able to extrapolate a sense of directionality from the time or phase difference. To produce the impression that sound is being panned, you can try setting up a delay of around 5ms on a mono signal.
The point to take home here is that, the soundstage for your mix should be as transparent as possible. In a perfect world, you would be able to picture in your mind the exact position of each instrument or sound within the stage.
With most genres of music containing a lot of different elements playing at the same time, if the sounds were all stereo it would be nearly impossible to find the right pan position for each one. This would often lead to unnecessary EQ and increases in volume. On the other hand, should mono sound sources be used for some of the instruments, then if they share the same frequency range, they can be separated by panning one sound to the left and the other to the right.
Note:
Kick drums should usually all be mono up to the first 150Hz and placed dead centre. These are often the most powerful parts of the mix, and were we to use stereo the main energy would be spread across the soundstage. Not ideal. By using mono, they would be placed centrally, allowing us to perceive the position of other sounds much more clearly, in turn increasing our overall sense of space within the mix.
As we explained at the start of this guide, one crucial element that will determine the accuracy and overall success of the mix is the speaker setup in relation to your monitoring position, i.e - your listening environment.
Ideally, you should sit at one point of the equal sided triangle, with the speakers at the other two points. This will ensure that the signal from each speaker reaches your ears simultaneously. For the reasons we mentioned before, volume and time difference, even small imbalances in any of these 2 could shift the sound image to one side considerably.
Frequency Range (The Vertical Perspective)
While most timbres and sounds will naturally occupy a certain area of the frequency range (bass will sit towards the lower end, whilst hi-hats the top), they can contain frequencies that make no contribution to our sound when placed in the mix. Take the bass elements that we use in our track. These could contain mid-range and higher frequencies that through EQ could be removed to make space for some other instruments to occupy the mid-range, while keeping most of the bass’s low-end energy.
Indeed EQ is a frequency volume control and one of the major aspects of mixing. Through EQ you can essentially adjust the gain of a band of frequencies of a particular sound. In mixing, EQ can be used for the following:
- Bring certain, dead sounds to life to sound more interesting
- Give more definition to the attack portion of a sound to pull it to the front of the mix
- Prevent the bass or other elements, muddying up the frequency ranges that they occupy.
To make efficient use of EQ, we need to first understand that each sound is made up of a fundamental frequency along with various overtones (or harmonics), all at different amplitudes. As you can imagine, a plucky lead will by nature have different spectral content to a powerful bass instrument. And it is this combination of the fundamental frequency and its overtones that define the type of sound we perceive and hear.
What is interesting is that, when mixed in with various other instruments, we need only keep the basic frequencies of a given sound. This is because when played in conjunction with other instruments, our mind will still perceive the ‘less important’ frequencies to be there, they are just masked behind the other instruments.
Parametric EQ
By using a Parametric EQ, we can pinpoint groups of frequencies that we need to keep or enhance and those that need to be removed.
A Parametric EQ consists of:
- Frequency Pot - which is used to select the centre frequency that needs to be boosted or reduced.
- Bandwidth Pot - that determines by how much the frequencies on either side of the centre frequency should be affected.
- Gain Pot - (surprise, surprise) can be used to increase or reduce the volume of the centre frequency which would affect the respective frequency range.
The size of the bandwidth pot is usually referred to as ‘Q’, with smaller values resulting in a larger bandwidth or range of frequencies and larger Q values resulting in a more focused, conservative bandwidth.
The following table is a reference for common Q settings and the octave range they affect:
Q Value
|
Octave Range
|
0.7
|
2 Octaves
|
1.0
|
1 ⅓ Octaves
|
1.4
|
1 Octave
|
2.9
|
½ Octave
|
5.6
|
¼ Octave
|
As you can see in the table, as the Q value increases, the octave range or bandwidth affected decreases. A good starting point if you are new to mixing is around 1.0 since it tends to sound quite natural. However, it is always good to test out different values, make minor tweaks and ultimately learn to trust your ears.
Shelving EQ
Shelving EQs consist of low and high-pass filters as well as low and high-shelfs. It is important to differentiate between the two as they are often confused with one another.
Low-Pass filters are used to attenuate higher frequencies above the cutoff frequency
High-Pass filters are used to attenuate lower frequencies below the cutoff frequency
Low-Shelf filter is used to boost or cut frequencies below the cutoff point.
High-Shelf filter is used to boost or cut frequencies above the cutoff point.
A lot of the EQ units found in modern day DAWs are extremely flexible, and will incorporate many of the features found on old school parametric and shelving EQs at a fraction of the cost.
Congratulations, you’ve reached the end of this guide. Unless you’ve been bored to death, you are now hopefully equipped with some basic knowledge of how your home monitoring environment should be set up as well as some of the theories behind mixing. In the next part we will look at the more practical side of mixing. Follow us on Twitter or updates.
We welcome you to Get in touch should you have any feedback, questions, require clarification on some of the points discussed, or whether you disagree with anything we have mentioned in this guide - We would love to hear from you.
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The Phat Mastering Team.
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