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Sometimes mixes fall apart in mono, for a variety of reasons. Why is this important? Who listens in mono anyway? We all do, all the time. If you are not sitting right in front of your speakers, you are hearing some form of mono. If are are listening from way off to the side, or from another room, it's Read more [...]

Most people record at levels that are way too hot.  Overly hot recording does audible damage on many levels, even if you don't hear distortion while you are doing it.  Here they are, in order of appearance. But first, a quick primer on digital vs. analog metering. On a digital Read more [...]

 It can be really helpful and enlightening to hear your own mixes in a shootout with your favorite CDs.  But iTunes has some preference settings that will attempt to "alter" spacing, general eq, and volume settings.  You will need to temporally turn these off in order to make legitimate comparisons.  Read more [...]

I see many mixes where the bass drum (and/or bass) is quite loud and deep on large speakers, but are non-existent on smaller speakers. Yet on some CDs, one can hear the bass drum CLEARLY, even on laptop speakers. How is this possible? Low-frequency instruments (kick, bass guitar, string bass, etc.) Read more [...]

Is your bass guitar disappearing into an abyss of muck? Hard to make out the notes? Hard to even know the bass is even there? There are many factors, sometimes the main ones being the instrument and the player, but that's another topic... Another very common factor is that there may be too much low end Read more [...]

Many times musicians and engineers will work for long hours on a mix only to find the next day that critical balances are off, i.e., vocals too loud / too low, certain instruments too loud / too low, the mix overall too bright / too dull, too much reverb / too little reverb, etc. The way they usually Read more [...]