Over the last 17 years, I’ve researched what audio professionals recommend and done a ton of trial and error on my own to come up with a strategy for audio mixing that I use all the time. Hopefully, this list will give you a push in the right direction.
#1 Organize the Tracks
#2 Volume Balance
#3 Panning
#4 Phase Issues
#5 Low End
#6 Automation
#7 Use a Reference Track
#8 Mix at a Lower Volume
#9 Check your mix in MONO
#10 Take Breaks
#11 Listen on Different Devices
#1 Organize the Tracks
To start off a mixing session, I like to bring the tracks into a new session and organize them into groups. For me, I like having all the drums and percussion instruments first, followed by bass, etc. How you set up your template is up to you. The point is to get the sections together so it is easy to group and route tracks.
Once I have the tracks grouped together, I like to take a few minutes and colour code the tracks in the arrangement window as well as the mixer tracks. This just improves my workflow because I know where the tracks are more quickly.
Finally, at this stage, I figure out the busses that I will set up. I always bus my drums to a drum bus for global processing as well as the basses to their own bus. Anytime I have multiple instruments layered together to achieve one sound, I will send them to a bus to process them together. This glues those instruments together.
#2 Volume Balance
Now once I have the tracks grouped and coloured I will set into balancing the volume of the tracks. This is prior to adding any effects. With all the volume faders set at 0, I will check each track to make sure there is a good solid level to work with. If a certain track is quite low I will go into the clip volume and adjust it to a proper level.
This is called gain staging. It is just the process of setting the gain level to a sweet spot where all effects and plugins will work at their optimum level. You can do this by ear and get a “good” level that is pretty close or you can be really technical about it and use a VU meter to get the track as close to 0db as possible. However you choose to do it, it is still a very good practice so that you will get the most out of your plugins.
Now I want to listen to the song a few times and get a feel for what the volume levels are. The best indicator of this is at the peak of the song. I spend a bunch of time setting the volume levels and balancing the track as it is without effects before moving on. This rough mix will guide our decisions later.
#3 Panning
I typically do this after I have gotten a decent balance with just the volume faders and the reason for that is to try to create the separation between the instruments while they are all coming down the center.
Now with panning, there are some typical guidelines that are adhered to in most commercial recordings. These are not hard and fast rules but are more like best practices. For instance, it is typical to hear the kick drum, bass, and vocals centred. Try panning your drums as if you were sitting in the audience. The snare and kick are in the middle. Hihats are on the right and floor toms on the left. You choose what percentage you want to pan them on either side.
If you have multiple guitars, try panning them on either side as if they were standing on opposite sides of the stage. Remember you are panning instruments to give them a sense of their own space in the mix.
I always keep in mind that my mix will often be listened to in MONO so I try not to go too nuts with panning so I don’t lose important parts when listening in MONO.
#4 Phase Issues
Something that I routinely check early on in the audio mixing process is phase issues. It destroys punchiness and obliterates the low end. It makes tracks sound thin and lifeless. It can also cause tracks to disappear due to cancellation. Without getting into the technical side of things, when two tracks are out of phase it simply means that the waves are not lining up. The peaks and valleys are out of sync and many times this causes cancellation.
So you might be working with a kick sample and it feels like it is not enough. So you layer another kick with it thinking it will make it bigger. Sometimes the result is that the kick becomes smaller and lifeless. Or maybe you have recorded a live kick with multiple mics and you hear that there is no presence. This is because they are out of phase. What do you do?
The first thing you can try is to flip the polarity. This may not resolve the issue though because you are just flipping the direction of the wave. This is a good solution for when you have multiple drum samples stacked together. Choose the main sound and then check the other sounds to it by flipping the polarity one by one. If it works, great, if not you can trim the samples to fit the waveforms together.
The next step is to zoom into the two waveforms and analyze the peaks and valleys. You will see that they are offset. You can fix this by figuring out which waveform is on the beat and nudging the other track over to line up.
There are also plugins that will put tracks into phase like InPhase by Waves.
#5 Low End
Arguably the aspect of audio mixing that is the most destructive is failing to mix the low end of a song properly. Once you have a rough mix in place and you have taken care of phase issues, you need to carve out some space for your low end.
One way to carve out space for the low end is to decide what are your primary sources of low end in the mix. Is it a bass synth, bass guitar, kick drum? Or all of the above? Then use a high pass filter on other tracks that may have a lot of sound in the low frequencies but aren’t the primary bass instrument. This happens a lot with virtual instruments.
Another thing to keep in mind is that if you are mixing on smaller speakers (which most of us are in our Home Studio) there are frequencies that you can’t hear. The problem is that they are there. This is why I always switch between the speakers and my headphones. My headphones show me what’s going on in those lower frequencies. The key takeaway is don’t mix what you can’t hear.
On all my mixes I use a spectrum analyzer or frequency analyzer. I use SPAN because it’s accurate and free. Using a plugin like this will show you if you have a lot of build-up in the low end, or conversely, you don’t have enough low end. Just another tool in your arsenal and not a replacement for your ears.
#6 Automation
This is something I use on every mix. Using volume automation is vital to getting a more balanced and polished mix. Inevitably there are going to be points within the song where certain instruments become too loud or too quiet. Merely automating the track’s volume can fix this issue without the need to overly compress the track. Using volume automation instead of compression can help to save the dynamics of the track.
Volume automation can be a great tool for emphasizing sections of a song as well. For example, you may want to increase the volume by 2db in the chorus to give that punch and energy. It can be a creative tool in sculpting the sound you want.
I use a lot of automation when I am creating cinematic music. I use virtual instruments for strings and brass, etc and therefore I need to automate the expression and dynamics to try to mimic the sound produced by a real instrument.
There are tons of things you can do with automation. Just become familiar with it because you will use it in some form on all your mixes.
#7 Use a Reference Track
For those of us who are working in less than ideal rooms, it is always a good idea to use reference tracks while we are mixing. Referencing is just taking tracks that are already commercially produced and bringing them into your session so that you can check your mix against them.
The reason behind it is to give you a framework to see what you are doing right and where you need to make some changes. By listening critically to these reference tracks alongside your own you can compare things like the low end, stereo imaging, etc, and make some audio mixing decisions that would be difficult to hear in your room alone. Always remember to volume match your reference tracks to your track.
When choosing reference tracks it is a good idea to pick some that are in your genre with the quality of sound you are going for. In my research, I have also found a lot of people advocating for using songs outside of your genre for specific reasons. For example, you could choose a song because you really like the low end even though it is not in your genre.
Whether you decide to use reference tracks in your genre or outside your genre is OK. The point is to build this into your mixing routine.
#8 Mix at a Lower Volume
Listening to your mix at high volume levels can actually trick your ears into thinking that your mix sounds energetic and punchy when it actually isn’t. Even a poor mix can sound pretty good when it is cranked. We want to avoid this by mixing at a lower volume level.
At a lower level, we need to do the work of making it punchy, energetic and clear. Then, when we crank up the volume, it will sound amazing. The tip is to try to mix at a level where you can still talk to someone in the room and they can hear you. Get your balance right at this level and it will translate well to other volume levels.
Mixing at lower volume levels will also help you to stave off ear fatigue.
#9 Check your mix in MONO
This is a simple trick that professional audio engineers use to get the mix to sound great no matter what speakers they are on or the position the listener is listening at. We don’t know all the scenarios that people will hear our music so we want to get good results regardless.
Mixing in MONO will force us to use volume and EQ to balance our tracks and achieve good separation, instead of just using panning. We want the tracks to be clear and balanced even if they are only coming out of one speaker. You will need to use EQ to carve out spaces for each instrument.
Try spending about half your time mixing in MONO. Your stereo mix will sound amazing because you have already done the work of balance and separation. In order to switch between stereo and MONO, you will have to use a plugin. All the DAWs have some sort of plugin to enable you to do this.
A great STEREO mix is still the goal, but use MONO mixing to help you get there
#10 Take Breaks
Ear fatigue is a real issue. Our ears get tired listening to music for a long time. As our ears tire, we begin to lose our ability to discern problems. Our ears also adapt to the track we are working on. If there is a glaring problem in our mix, eventually our ears will adapt to that issue and we won’t hear it.
By taking breaks we can give our ears a reset. We only need about 5 minutes to reset. Get up, walk around, get a drink, or whatever. We can come back into the mix and hear it all again. We will have a fresh perspective and we will more readily pick up on things that we need to adjust.
#11 Listen on Different Devices
Listening and mixing on studio speakers and studio headphones are vital for getting accurate mixes. But this is not how most people will consume your content. Think about how most of your audience will be enjoying your music. Will it be on laptop speakers, car stereo, earbuds, or a Bluetooth speaker in the kitchen?
Try out your mix on as many of these devices as you can. See if the mix you worked on translates well. How’s the low end? Are the vocals present? I know many times I’ve been super excited about a mix and then I pop it into the car and it sounds muddy and unimpressive.
Checking other devices will give you good clues as to what needs to be addressed in your mix.
What To Do Now?
So there you have it. In your next few mixes try using these tips to build your own system for audio mixing. Professional-sounding mixes don’t happen by accident. They take intentionality. Use these tips to bump your audio mixing to the next level.
If you want to learn more about music production then read our guide on Music Production: 6 Stages in the Life of a Song.
