Part 1 of this two-part series focused on choosing and positioning studio monitors for optimal results. Here in Part 2, we’ll offer some tips and techniques to help you monitor more effectively, even in a room with questionable acoustics.

Keep the Volume Down

It’s essential to keep your monitoring volume relatively low most of the time when mixing. You want to listen at a level that lets you hear everything comfortably, but isn’t consistently loud. This also reduces the reflections created within your listening room that can color what you hear.

If you’re not sure what the optimum level would be, you can purchase an SPL (Sound Pressure Level) meter or get a free (or very inexpensive) SPL app for your smartphone that will get you in the ballpark. You want to keep your settings below approximately 85dB (A-weighted) most of the time. That said, you should check your mix at louder volumes for short periods, especially if you think that’s how most people will listen to it.

Another problem with listening loud for too long is that it’s less efficient because it will more quickly bring on ear fatigue (sometimes referred to as “losing your ears”), and you’ll temporarily be less able to make accurate judgements. Not only that, listening at levels over 85dB SPL on a regular basis can damage your hearing over time.

Take Breaks

It’s also critical to take regular breaks during your mixing sessions to avoid ear fatigue and to regain the perspective that you can lose when concentrating on a single task for a long duration. Take a 10-minute break roughly every hour.

Get out of your studio if you can. Go for a walk or do something else to get your mind off the mix. If you feel like your ears still aren’t back to normal after the break, put off the rest of the session until the next day, if your schedule allows.

When you get back to the mix the following day, you’ll be surprised how much more you notice with fresh ears!

Save Incrementally

While this next tip isn’t strictly about monitoring, it’s directly related and very important. When a mix session runs too long, you not only get ear fatigue, but you lose perspective. When that happens, it’s all too easy to steer your mix off course inadvertently.

Because of those inevitable detours and the difficulty of knowing when you’ve passed the point of diminishing returns, it’s crucial to save your Project files incrementally. This refers to the practice of using “Save As…” instead of “Save,” then putting a successively higher version number in the file name every time you make a significant change to the mix (or even to just a single track within the mix). The idea is that if you do go off course and wreck your mix, you can backtrack to a point before the damage happened and start again by reopening that Project file.

Besides the song title and the incremented numbers, you might want to add a descriptive word in the file name like “Bass up 2dB” or “New reverb on vocal” for a little extra context if you have to backtrack.

Take Notes

When you do reopen a mix after recovering your objectivity, jot down notes about everything you hear that you want to correct as the song is playing. (In my experience, this is more efficient when done the old-fashioned way, with pen and paper; typing in comments on a computer or smart device tends to be much more time-consuming and distracting.) If there are more than a few things that need adjusting, it will be hard to remember them after the fact.

With that list in hand, you’ll be able to go through the mix methodically and correct all the spots where you noticed problems or issues — something that should get you a lot closer to the finish line.

Listen Everywhere

When you feel like you’ve finished your mix, bounce it down to a stereo MP3 and listen to it everywhere you can to see how it holds up. Listen on your home stereo system if you have one. Listen on earbuds. Listen on headphones. Listen at your friend’s house. If you have a car, listen on its sound system via your smartphone. (Like many people, I find my car to be the most revealing place to check a mix.) A well-balanced mix should sound good anywhere, so the more systems you check it on, the better.

If, after checking your mix on different systems, you notice that, though it sounded great in your studio, it sounds weird or out of balance everywhere else, the acoustics are likely contributing significantly to your problem — something we discussed in detail in Part 1. These acoustic anomalies are distorting your perception of frequency and thus causing you to over- or under-compensate. It’s often in the low frequencies where this is most problematic.

For example, if the bass sounds too quiet in your mixes when you listen outside of your studio, then your room is probably accentuating low frequencies too much. Because you’re hearing your mix with what sounds like sufficient bass, you’re not turning the bass or kick drum (or both) up enough.

If you’ve already positioned your monitors in the most advantageous spot you can (see Part 1), try the room compensation EQ on your monitors, if they offer such a feature. For example, Yamaha HS Series monitors provide a rear-panel switch to cut the lower midrange (at 500 Hz) by either 2dB or 4dB and another switch that cuts or boosts by 2dB in the treble range (at 2 kHz).

A/B Your Mix

Even if your acoustics are problematic, a technique called A/B referencing can help you make your mixes more balanced and accurate.

It works like this: When you’re pretty far along in your mix, compare it with a professionally mixed song you like, preferably in a similar style. If you can match, say, the bass levels and the vocal-to-instrument blend of your mix with that of the reference, you should be able to get an accurate balance of levels and frequency.

As you switch between the two, it’s crucial that you make all comparisons at the same volume level. Otherwise, your frequency perception will be inconsistent between your song (the “A”) and the reference (the “B”). That’s because our ears perceive frequency differently depending on the volume, and louder always sounds better because it accentuates the lows and highs more.

You can buy dedicated plug-ins for A/B referencing, but it’s not hard to do it yourself inside your DAW. The following method works in Steinberg Cubase and most other DAWs:

1. Import a reference file into your Project and mute its track.

2. Play your multitrack mix (A), and then press the solo button on the reference track (B). You should now hear B by itself.

3. To switch back to A, turn solo off (in some DAWs, you might have to press mute again).

4. Make sure that the volume is equal between A and B.

5. Use this technique to repeatedly switch back and forth between your mix and the reference as you compare the characteristics of the vocal level relative to the instruments, as well as the bass level, the drum level, the overall EQ, etc.

We’d all love to be able to mix in an acoustically treated, purpose-built studio. But for those of us who record at home, that’s rarely the reality. Yes, you have to work harder to mix in an imperfect space, but if you’re conscious of the issues you face, they are easily overcome.

Check out our other Recording Basics postings.

Click here for more information about Yamaha HS Series studio monitors.

Click here for more information about Steinberg Cubase.

Imagine this scenario: You write a killer song and capture an excellent recording of it, including an awesome lead vocal. Your mix sounds fantastic on the speakers in your studio, and you can’t wait to send it to your friends.

But when you do, instead of the expected compliments, everyone tells you there’s something wrong with the mix. “Nice song, but it sounds weird.”

This is a good indication that there’s a problem with your monitoring setup. It might be because of the speakers you’re using, where you placed them, or how they interact with the acoustics (i.e., the walls, ceiling and floors) in your studio. It might even be a combination of all three!

The ideal remedy would be to bring in an acoustical consultant. He or she would be able to recommend room treatments, suggest the best placement for your monitors, and tell you if you need to replace them.

But that could be quite costly. What’s more, installing acoustical treatments onto the walls and ceiling might not be practical, especially if you rent rather than own your home. But fear not: There are common-sense methods that can help you get much better mixing results, even without any room treatments. In this article, we’ll tell you what they are.

The Difference Between Speakers and Monitors

You’ll invariably get better mix results if you use purpose-built studio monitors. Mixing on the speakers from your home stereo or a computer speaker system is not a good idea. That’s because consumer systems are designed to make music sound good, not necessarily to reproduce it accurately. They may hype the low end and high end in ways that will make it harder for you to accurately gauge frequencies and levels during the mix.

Instead, use a pair of dedicated studio monitors such as the Yamaha HS Series, which includes models with 5″, 7″ and 8″ woofers (the HS5, HS7 and HS8, respectively).

All HS Series monitors are self-powered and biamplified to ensure accuracy over their full frequency range. In addition, they offer EQ capabilities for tailoring their response to the acoustics of your room. For example, if you discover that mixes that sound good in your studio appear to lack bass when you hear them in other places, you can deduce that your room accentuates the bass response. (If you’re mixing in a space that’s exaggerating the bass, you’ll keep it lower in the mix.) In that case, you can use the rear-panel Room Control switch to reduce the low-end response by -2dB or -4dB. Many studio monitors, including all HS Series models, also offer EQ for adjusting the high-end response. These kinds of switches and controls are rarely found on consumer speakers, and almost never on computer speakers.

Monitor Placement

Another very important factor is where you place your monitors. Ideally, they should be kept away from walls and corners, which can interact with the audio to create what are called “standing waves.” These can wreak havoc with bass in particular.

While you can’t alter your room’s dimensions, you can minimize the standing wave issue by placing the monitors away from corners and as far back from the walls as is practical. If your room is rectangular, it’s better to position your monitors along the longer dimension. You should also locate your monitors so that they’re not equidistant to the walls on either side; instead, place them off to one side or the other. The less symmetrical your room and setup are, the less you’ll have to deal with standing waves and other acoustic problems.

Playing the Field

Another way to lessen the impact of room acoustics is to use “near-field” monitors, which are by far the most common type in use today. Because they are designed to be placed close by, near-field monitors allow you to listen at relatively quiet sound levels. This not only serves to maximize the direct sound and minimize the amount of room reflections (which can skew and distort what you hear) but also reduces the ear fatigue that lessens your ability to discern a good mix.

To monitor correctly in a near-field setup, the mix position (where you sit while mixing) should be one point in an equilateral triangle, with the monitors serving as the other two points, as shown in this illustration:

Each of the three points should be roughly three to five feet apart. If you’re using monitors with small (5″ or 6″) woofers, err toward the shorter distance; if they have 7″ or 8″ woofers, err toward the longer distance. Make sure to angle your monitors inwards (this is called “toe-in”) to line up with your mix position. There are apps that can help you in achieving these settings accurately.

In terms of height, it’s best to position your monitors at ear level. Use dedicated speaker stands instead of tabletops to further avoid reflections, and invest in monitor isolation pads to put under each speaker. Such pads are designed to “decouple” the monitors from the surface. Without them, the vibrations from the speaker cabinets can create resonance that distorts what you’re hearing.

Go Big if Possible

Which size monitor you should use depends on how large your home studio is. If you can fit (and afford) monitors with 8″ woofers, they’re usually the better choice. That’s because larger size woofers can reproduce lower bass frequencies, allowing you to accurately hear what’s going on in the low-end of your mix.

As an example of how size and bass response correlate, look at the different sized monitors’ bass response specs in the HS Series: The HS5 goes to 74Hz, the HS7 to 55Hz and the HS8 all the way down to 47Hz.

To Sub or Not to Sub?

Another option for improving bass response is to add a subwoofer, particularly if you plan to mix electronic dance music or hip-hop, where bass instruments commonly extend into the sub-bass frequency range (below 60Hz). A good option here is the Yamaha HS8S — it’s a powered sub that’s compatible with all HS models (as well as studio monitors from other manufacturers) and gives you bass response down to 22Hz.

Unlike other kinds of monitors, subwoofer positioning is not critical — you can pretty much place them anywhere. That’s because the kinds of very low-frequency sounds they produce are not especially directional, meaning that the human ear can’t easily discern where they are coming from.

Why Not Just Mix Over Headphones?

Headphones are good for checking details in your mix, but they’re not a substitute for studio monitors. The problem is that you hear things differently when you have headphones on, for two reasons:

1. In headphones, the left and right sides are totally discrete, which is not the case when you listen to music in a room over speakers and hear some of the left signal coming from the right and vice-versa.

2. When you listen in headphones, you’re hearing only direct signal, whereas when you listen over speakers, you’re hearing both direct and reflected (room) sound.

Because many people listen to music on earbuds or headphones, it’s perfectly valid to check your mixes that way. Just don’t do it exclusively, because your mixes will also be heard over speakers.

Click here for Part 2: Tips and tricks for achieving better monitoring.

Check out our other Recording Basics postings.

Click here for more information about Yamaha HS Series studio monitors.

Ask five audio engineers how they start their mixes, and you’re likely to get five different answers. Mixing is more art than science, and there are myriad ways to get to a great-sounding result.

But when you’re new to mixing and haven’t yet had the time or experience to develop your own style, it’s easy to sit and stare at your DAW and think, “Where do I begin?”

Here’s a suggested road map for starting a mix.

Get Organized

Before you even start moving onscreen faders or turning knobs, you want to make sure to organize things — a topic we covered in detail in a previous blog.

In a nutshell, it’s helpful to first arrange your tracks by type, color-code them for easy recognition, then add markers at the start of each song section. That way, you’re beginning each mix from an orderly and logical place.

Another helpful preparatory task is to play each track in solo mode, listening for glitches and noises and mistakes that you didn’t notice with everything playing. I’m always surprised by the number of little things I find and end up fixing during this process.

If you discover pitch issues, particularly on your vocal tracks, this is an excellent time to pitch-correct them. If you’re using Steinberg Cubase, the VariAudio feature is very powerful for fixing pitch issues. Read more about pitch correction here.

Envision Your Final Product

Next, try to visualize what you want the final product to sound like. It’s helpful to have a rough goal in mind for the sound of the final mix, so before you move a single fader, think about songs you know that have a similar vibe, and spend some time listening to them.

Analyze these reference mixes as you listen and ask yourself questions like: How loud is the lead vocal compared to the tracks? What kind of ambience effects — reverb and delay — are there on the vocal, and how are they being applied? How loud are the drums compared to the rest of the instruments? Is there a lot of reverb in general on the mix or does it sound pretty dry?

There’s no shame in copying mix ideas from professionally produced material — doing so can only help you improve your repertoire of techniques. So if you hear something cool, try to figure out how to reproduce that sound.

Now, finally, onto the actual mixing.

Ground Zero

A good way to begin is to set all of your tracks to unity gain (0dB), all your pan controls to center, and switch off any processing plug-ins like EQs, compressors, reverbs and delays that you may have added during the recording process. (The only exception would be for plug-ins that are critical for creating the raw sound of a track, such as virtual instruments or an amp modeler on a DI guitar track.) In the analog days, this is what used to be referred to as “zeroing out the console.” The idea is to start from a neutral place.

As you get more experienced, you may end up “mixing as you go,” which means putting together a rough mix as you’re recording the song. But beginners will find it more helpful to start from scratch.

Once your DAW console is zeroed out, play through the song and start adjusting the volume faders to get as good-sounding a balance as you can. For this step, you want to focus exclusively on the level relationships between the tracks.

Left, Right and In Between

Next, start panning. You’ll be surprised how everything springs to life when you give it space in the panorama. As described in our blog entitled “The Virtual Soundstage,” creating a place for each track is one of the key goals when mixing.

Although there are many different panning approaches, putting the lead vocal, the bass, the bass drum, and the snare drum dead center is standard practice in just about every contemporary pop music mix.

With that as your baseline, position the other instruments to create whatever panorama you think sounds good. Be careful, however, to keep elements that are predominantly in the same frequency range (such as rhythm guitars and chordal keyboard parts) in different panning positions. Otherwise, they can mask one another, making it hard for the listener to distinguish between those sounds.

At this point, it’s a good idea to check your mix on headphones, where panning always appears more extreme because the left and right sides are completely discrete — unlike when you’re listening on speakers and hearing room reflections too.

EQ for You

The next step is to listen to your tracks and adjust any frequency problems or deficiencies with equalization — a topic we covered in detail in our “Practical EQ Techniques” blog.

EQ can help with frequency masking too. If you have two instruments that are masking each other and for some reason you can’t apply separate panning to them, try boosting a small frequency range in one and cutting the same range in the other. If necessary, you can repeat this process in a different frequency range, this time boosting the second track and cutting the first one.

Another way to clear up muddiness is to use high-pass filters (also known as low-cut filters) to remove unnecessary low frequencies from a track. A good way to do this is to solo the track in question, then slowly raise the frequency on the high-pass filter until you hear the instrument or vocal start to thin out, then back it off to the point right before you heard it change. Then turn off the solo button and check the track with all the instruments playing (all adjustments should always be checked in the context of the full mix). Doing this for each track will help bring clarity to your final product.

Squeeze It

Now it’s time to listen to the dynamics of the tracks and apply compression where necessary. If you hear parts that are too loud or too soft in spots, compressing them will knock down the peaks, narrowing the dynamic range. That will make it easier to turn the overall track volume up to compensate for quieter parts, without the louder parts sticking out.

Alternatively, you can do “compression by hand” with the use of volume automation, which lets you change levels on a track at any point by any amount.

Vintage compressor plug-ins can also be used for adding “color” to instruments or voices. You can find out more about compression in our “Why Compress?” blog.

Space is Nice

Now you can feel free to start adding reverb and delay wherever you like. Both of these effects are best applied from an aux track (called an “FX Track” in Cubase.) However, bear in mind that reverb that takes too long to decay can wash over successive notes and cause muddiness, especially on up-tempo songs. A basic rule of thumb here is: the faster the tempo, the shorter the decay time (sometimes called “reverb time.”)

Using the reverb’s EQ controls to reduce the low end of the reverberated signal can help with clarity. Read more about effective ways of using reverb here.

Break Time

At this point, you’ve got a rough mix going. Now it’s time to take a break for an hour or two … or even better, until the next day. Come back with a fresh perspective, and you’re sure to hear things you want to adjust. Mixing is a process, and you’ll likely need several stabs at it to get it to get it sounding exactly how you want to. In the meantime, you’re off to a good start!

Check out our other Recording Basics postings.

Click here for more information about Steinberg Cubase and Cubase plug-ins.

The master bus, the mix bus, the 2-bus, the stereo bus and the stereo out are all different terms for the same thing: the left-right channel that’s the final destination in your DAW’s console when you’re mixing a multitrack project. All your tracks are routed to the master bus, summed to stereo and then bounced to disk from there.

Because the master bus is the only point where all the tracks are combined, it’s the place to insert plug-ins if you want to to add polish to the overall sound by applying global processing such as compression, EQ and saturation.

A word of caution, however: This is not a panacea, and it won’t fix a poorly mixed song. If there are noticeable problems with your mix, you’re better off addressing them at the track level. That said, let’s take a closer look at how master bus processing works.

Who’s First?

As with standard track-based processing, the order in which you insert effects during master bus processing will have an impact on the sound. Most engineers tend to start with EQ or compression. Which of those should come first is a matter of deciding whether you want to compress the audio after it’s been EQed, or EQ it after it’s been compressed.

There’s no reason you can’t experiment with both options if you’re not sure. Many times the decision is song-dependent, and in many cases, the difference will be quite subtle. However, there is one rule of thumb: If you’re applying saturation as well, you’ll probably want to put that last in the chain.

All Things Being Equalized

Most of the equalization in a mix takes place on individual tracks. EQ on the master bus should generally be subtle and intended for outcomes like adding a little extra low-end thump, creating some more energy, making the mix brighter, or reducing muddiness.

Here are some suggestions for EQ adjustments you might try applying to the master bus:

– Add a little boost somewhere between 60 – 150Hz to accentuate the kick and bass.

– Reduce muddiness with a small cut in the 250 to 500Hz range.

– Add presence with a small boost between about 4kHz and 7kHz.

– Create a little air on top with a boost between 10kHz and 15kHz using a high-shelf filter.

– Get rid of unneeded subharmonic information with a high-pass (aka “low-cut”) filter to roll off frequencies below about 30Hz. Unless you’re mixing dance music, these ultra-low frequencies are probably unnecessary and not audible anyway, except on systems with large subwoofers.

That said, the rule of thumb here is: when in doubt, leave it out — or at least print a version of your mix without any master bus EQ. That will leave your mastering engineer the leeway they need to make those kinds of decisions.

Add Some Glue to Your Mix

Compression is probably the most common type of processing that’s applied to the master bus. Why would you need master compression when you’ve likely inserted it on most of your individual tracks? Probably the most crucial reason is to create what’s referred to as the “glue” effect. Compressing the whole mix through a single processor imparts a cohesiveness to the overall sound that can really make it sound polished and professional.

For glue-type compression, set the ratio pretty low — around 2:1 or 3:1. Use the threshold to control how much compression you’re getting. You probably want no more than about 2 to 5dB of gain reduction. Keep the attack parameter relatively slow, or you run the risk of squashing the parts of the mix that tend to come from the most important components, such as lead vocals and kick and snare drum. Fast attacks on master bus compressors can also have the unwanted effect of reducing the mix’s overall energy.

The nature of a compressor is that it’s constantly going on and off based on when the audio is exceeding and going below the threshold. The goal is to have its cycle of attenuation and release feel like it’s working in time with the music and not against it. You can control this with the release time, which governs how quickly the compressor lets go after attenuating a transient (signal peak). Either experiment with different release times to see what feels best or activate your compressor’s auto-release function if it has one. Auto-release will usually give you a usable setting.

All types of compressor plug-ins are used for master bus compression, but probably the most common are those based on VCA compressors — for example, Steinberg’s Vintage Compressor mkIII. These kinds of plug-ins can be used to not only compress but to add some analog-style “color” to your mix.

Steinberg Cubase includes an excellent built-in Compressor plug-in, which gives you plenty of control, including an auto-release function.

In terms of when it should be applied, many engineers feel that if you’re going to use master bus compression, you should add it early on in the mix process so that all of your subsequent mixing decisions will be made in context of the compression. In other words, you’ll take its effect into account as you’re setting levels and compressing individual tracks. If you wait to add the compressor until the end of the mix, it likely won’t be as integrated as it would have been if it was there from early on.

A Little Dirt

Another master bus effect that’s sometimes applied is saturation. A little bit of tape- or tube-like saturation coming from a plug-in like Steinberg Magneto can add analog-sounding warmth to a mix by softening the transients. It also adds a bit of its own natural compression. Subtlety is the key when it comes to master saturation. You’re just flavoring the mix, not crushing it — unless, of course, that’s what you want.

If your saturation plug-in has a wet/dry (“mix”) control, try adding a little too much saturation — that is, to the point where it can be clearly heard — and then back off the mix knob to taste. This creates parallel saturation, which can sometimes sound better than just adding it at 100%.

Pushing the Levels

Home recordists often put limiters on the master bus to make a mix louder. This is a practice I don’t recommend because it may not leave any room for your mastering engineer to apply their own limiting — something they can arguably do with much greater expertise than most of us mere mortals. What’s more, too much limiting will reduce your music’s dynamic range and can make it sound fatiguing.

Until you’ve gained a lot of mixing experience, you’re better off focusing on creating the best mix you can rather than worrying about its ultimate loudness. If you’re planning on mastering the project yourself, you can always process it with a limiter after you’ve finished your mix and are happy with it.

When it comes to master bus processing, less is usually more. Careful application is the name of the game if you want the best results.

Check out these related blog articles:

Why Compress?

Practical EQ Techniques

Distortion and Saturation

Check out our other Recording Basics postings.

Click here for more information about Steinberg Cubase and Cubase plug-ins.