Mixing
The Serban Ghenea Sound: Why the Biggest Pop Mixes Feel Effortless
Ghenea's records feel effortless because the effort is invisible — it lives in balances, dynamics control, and section-by-section automation, not in a…
Notes from the studio
Guides
Articles and videos on production, mixing, recording and the craft of making records — what I've learned in the room, written to be actually useful.
Mixing
What Andrew Scheps Proves: Hit Mixes on Headphones, In the Box
Andrew Scheps' mixes feel like aggression under control because he builds movement into the mix with a colored, unlinked parallel bus — and he proves that…
Mixing
Manny Marroquin and the Art of Mixing for Emotion
Marroquin mixes for emotion first and treats every technical choice — vocal loudness, effects, EQ, even the low end — as a storytelling decision rather…
Mixing
How to Prep Your Vocals Before You Send Them to a Mix Engineer
A simple checklist for exporting clean vocal stems — sample rate, levels, naming and what to keep dry — so your mix comes back faster and sounds better.
Mixing
Why Your Mix Sounds Great in the Studio and Bad in the Car
It's a monitoring problem, not a mixing problem. Your room and speakers are coloring what you hear, so you 'fix' things that were never broken, and that…
Mixing
How to Fix a Muddy Mix (It’s Not Where You Think)
Mud almost never lives in the bass. It's a pile-up in the low-mids around 200–500 Hz, where too many instruments stack energy at once. Fix it by thinning…
Mixing
Getting Your Kick and Bass to Stop Fighting
Decide which instrument owns which frequency band, carve the other one where the winner dominates, and let the bass briefly duck when the kick hits. Give…
Recording
Recording Vocals at Home That Actually Sound Professional
You don't need an expensive studio for radio-ready vocals. Here's the gear that matters, the room tricks that cost nothing, and the recording habits that separate amateur take
Mixing
How to Make Vocals Sit in the Mix and Cut Through
A vocal that won't sit is almost always a level-and-space problem, not a plugin problem. Get a smooth fader balance first, automate the vocal so every…
Mastering
How Loud Should Your Master Be? The LUFS Question, Settled
Aim for roughly -14 LUFS integrated with a true-peak ceiling of -1 dBTP, and stop worrying about being 'loud enough.' Streaming platforms normalize…
Mixing
Gain Staging, Explained Without the Jargon
Gain staging means keeping a healthy, consistent level at every step of your signal chain so each plugin gets the level it was designed for and your mix…
Monitoring
Headphones or Studio Monitors? What Actually Matters
Either headphones or monitors can deliver pro mixes once you learn how each one lies. The modern consensus is to use both, cross-checking constantly…
Monitoring
Room Treatment or Better Monitors? Spend Here First
Treat the room first, almost every time. A modest pair of monitors in an acoustically treated room will give you more honest, more translatable mixes than…
Mixing
5 Mixing Mistakes That Make a Song Sound Amateur
The five habits I hear most often in self-mixed records — too much low end, soloing instead of balancing, over-compression, no reference track, and chasing loudness — and how
Gear
Do You Need Expensive Gear and Plugins? An Honest Answer
No. A skilled engineer working entirely with the stock plugins in their DAW will out-mix a beginner with a $10,000 plugin folder every single time. Spend…
Mastering
Why Your Mix Sounds Worse After Mastering
Almost every time, the mix went into mastering with too little headroom or was already crushed by a master-bus limiter. Mastering didn't add loudness — it…
Compression
Compression Settings for Beginners (Start Here)
there is no universal preset. Set your threshold by watching the gain-reduction meter, not by copying a value. Start vocals around a 3:1 ratio, 10 ms…
EQ
Subtractive vs Additive EQ: Cut, Boost, or Both?
use both. Lead with subtractive cuts to fix problems, then add wide boosts for character. The durable rule of thumb is cut narrow, boost wide — cuts buy…
EQ
Should You High-Pass Every Track? Not So Fast
No, don't high-pass every track. Filter only the tracks that aren't contributing useful low end, set each cutoff by ear inside the full mix, and leave…
Effects
Using Reverb and Delay Without Drowning Your Mix
Run reverb and delay on send/return buses instead of inserts, EQ the return aggressively (high-pass around 200 Hz, roll off above 8 kHz), add 20–50 ms of…
Behind the Scenes
Inside a Mix Session — From Raw Stems to Finished Record
A walkthrough of how a record actually comes together in the mix — gain staging, carving space, building the vocal, and the final polish. Watch the process, then read the brea
Mixing
Why You Should Mix in Mono (At Least Some of the Time)
Collapse your mix to mono regularly while you work. It exposes phase cancellation, reveals elements that secretly depend on stereo width to be heard, and…
Mixing
How to Use Reference Tracks the Right Way
Drop a commercially released song from your genre into the session, level-match it to your mix (pull the loud master down about 9 dB to start), and A/B in…
Mixing
What Saturation Actually Does (and Why Your Mix Needs It)
Saturation is gentle, musical distortion that adds harmonics and softly rounds peaks, making a sound feel present, warm, and louder without touching the…
Mixing
Why Your Mixes Don’t Sound “Professional” Yet
It usually isn't the mix. The biggest amateur tells are timing, tuning, and recording quality, followed by a sloppy static balance. Get a smooth fader mix…
Compression
Sidechain Compression: The Pump, Explained
Sidechain compression puts a compressor on your bass that's triggered by the kick, so each kick hit briefly turns the bass down and the two stop fighting…
Mixing
When Is a Mix Actually Done?
A mix is done when every element is audible, the vocal sits right, it holds up against a level-matched reference, it translates across your playback…
Recording
Sample Rate and Bit Depth: What to Actually Use
Record and produce at 24-bit, and pick 44.1 kHz for music or 48 kHz for video and streaming. Bit depth is the setting that actually matters, sample rate…
Mixing
How to Pan Your Instruments (Rules Worth Breaking)
Keep your anchors (kick, snare, bass, lead vocal) dead center, then build outward by ear, hard-panning doubles and rhythm parts and spreading supporting…
EQ
EQ Before or After Compression? The Real Answer
There is no universal rule, and most pros use both. Cut problem frequencies before the compressor so it isn't reacting to junk, and shape tone or add…
Mixing
Mixing vs Mastering: What’s the Difference?
Mixing blends all the individual tracks of one song into a single balanced stereo file; mastering takes that finished stereo and polishes it for loudness…
Mastering
True Peak, and Why You Master to −1 dBTP
True peak measures the real analog level your samples will reconstruct into, which can climb higher than any single sample. Master with your limiter's…
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