Mixing your Project

Way back at the beginning of this manual, in the What is a DAW? section, it was mentioned how the first stereo recordings were made with two properly positioned microphones to record a live performance. When played back through two speakers, the listener had the impression of different sound elements/instruments existing at different positions in the stereo sound space, just as you would if you heard the performance live. Mixing within a DAW allows you to imagine and create a virtual performance of your sound elements in this sound space by adjusting and automating volume levels, adjusting the panning (Pan) and EQ, as well as adding spacial effects and anything else required. Mixing is simply the way you want all of your tracks to sound when they are played together, mixed.

Mixing audio is an involved process, one that people spend years perfecting and certainly one that everyone gets better at the more they do it. As such, there's little point pretending that it can all be covered here. Instead, here are a few principles generally held to be good practice when mixing.

First, the best advice when it comes to mixing is actually to make sure your tracks are recorded well in the first place. If your audio is clear and loud without having to tweak anything, more than half the work has been done already. Infinitely better to start off with something which isn't broken than trying to fix it afterwards - it will never sound as good. So, it really pays to take the time to set up your recordings properly, make sure you use headphones when recording subsequent tracks and, if possible, use a USB audio interface to allow you to have more input choices for instruments and microphones and even better quality.

Mix with your speakers at relatively low volume levels. Not only is ear fatigue (tired ears) a genuine phenomenon, but having a lower volume will enable you to make better judgments regarding the clarity of you mix and whether the important elements are coming through.

Gain staging. This relates to how you set the optimum volume levels (gain) throughout your signal chain. Since Audio Evolution Mobile uses 32-bit floating-point processing internally, you have slightly more freedom over this than used to be the case. Though it is best practice for the individual track's mixer channel to not go beyond 0dB, it won't, in the 32-bit floating-point domain, cause clipping (volume overload) directly - as it used to - because there's plenty of headroom when using 32-bit floating-point processing. Going beyond 0dB will cause a minor loss of digital resolution though. However, though you can push beyond 0dB on an individual track without harming the signal, you still need to bring it back down below 0dB on its corresponding destination - ultimately, of course, meaning the Master channel (as well as any Bus which outputs directly to a USB audio interface): these channels must be set with their peak volume level just below 0dB otherwise clipping and distortion will occur. This is because these are the points at which the signal moves back into the fixed-point domain, for export to a fixed-point file format or to be passed through a digital-to-analog converter (DAC).

NOTE. When you Render individual tracks to audio files using the Track Options, you must, in that scenario, have them peaking just below 0dB otherwise they will clip and distort despite the description of individual tracks above. This is because, as they are rendered, the individual track is moved back into the fixed-point domain directly, without going through any destination channel where the volume has been brought back down. This also applies when you Export to other DAW (rendered tracks) as the same process is taking place.

It's usually a good idea to start off mixing the loudest part of your song first. For the sake of example, let's say the loudest part is the song's chorus and the song's verses are quieter. If you mix a one of the verses of the track first and end up making it as loud as possible, you are left with no possibility of making the song's chorus even louder without clipping occurring. If, on the other hand, you mix the song's chorus first and make it as loud as possible, you can then easily ensure the verses are relatively quieter as they should be. Don't forget the Loop mode is available if you just want to hear a certain part of your track repeatedly when mixing.

Start off with a 'big picture' mix, focusing on the track volumes only. There's little point minutely sculpting and positioning the sound of individual tracks only for all that work to be completely lost when heard in the overall mix. Listen to everything together and adjust only the individual track volumes to get things working together basically the way you want. You will possibly want to automate some of the volume levels of tracks throughout the length of the song too. Fine tuning the mix can be done later.

Similarly, there's usually little point applying loads of effects and processing to your tracks before you have a basic idea of your overall mix. That way you can only apply effects and make adjustments which are genuinely needed to achieve what you're after rather than ones which might even end up working against your ultimate goal. Don't complicate things unnecessarily.

Use some Reference Tracks to compare your mix to as you work. Import a few professionally produced tracks into your project; songs which have the sort of sound or feel you're after and use them as guides to what your mix is failing to achieve and what you might need to change.

Remember to use your ears. It is easy to become focused on what you're seeing on the screen rather than concentrating on what you're hearing. It is what you're hearing which is important though, and it is good to learn to trust what you're hearing rather than being guided by what you're seeing onscreen.

Likewise, when mixing, try to listen to the entire mix when making adjustments to individual tracks rather than using the Solo button to hear them on their own. It is how they sound in the mix which is important, not how they sound on their own.

Always remember that you have the possibility of Automation available. Automation is a great mixing tool as it's extremely unlikely that a parameter's level is going to be perfect for the entire song. Automation allows automatic changes and adjustments throughout the course of the track and should be used as required.

Take regular breaks. Not only can your ears become tired (ear fatigue) but you can become so involved with repeated listening that you are no longer being objective in your decision making. Take frequent breaks, reset your ears.

Throughout the mixing process it is a really good idea to listen to your mix through as many different types of speaker and headphone as possible. Studio monitor speakers are made to give you as flat a frequency response as possible, meaning you hear a true representation of the sound, uncolored, and this is why they are used for mixing whenever possible. Most other speakers are tuned to give an enhanced experience in some way though - a richer, boosted bass or mid-range for example. This means your mix will sound different on different speakers and your goal, when mixing, is to find the sweet-spot where it sounds as good as possible on all of them. Thus, even if you're using studio monitor speakers, you still want to listen to your mix through as many types of speaker as possible, even if this means exporting your mix as you go along to audition it through, say, a car's speaker system.

Lastly, there really is a lot of free advice about mixing out there. Simply search on YouTube, for example, and you'll easily find some excellent guides are available.

That said, don't forget, your goals are your goals. Don't be afraid to experiment and break the 'rules': if it works and creates the sound you're after, then it works.