https://felix-site-six.vercel.app/guides Articles and videos on production, mixing and the craft of making records. en https://felix-site-six.vercel.app/guides/serban-ghenea-sound https://felix-site-six.vercel.app/guides/serban-ghenea-sound Sat, 04 Jul 2026 12:00:00 GMT Ghenea's records feel effortless because the effort is invisible — it lives in balances, dynamics control, and section-by-section automation, not in a… https://felix-site-six.vercel.app/guides/andrew-scheps-in-the-box https://felix-site-six.vercel.app/guides/andrew-scheps-in-the-box Fri, 03 Jul 2026 12:00:00 GMT 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… https://felix-site-six.vercel.app/guides/manny-marroquin-emotion https://felix-site-six.vercel.app/guides/manny-marroquin-emotion Thu, 02 Jul 2026 12:00:00 GMT Marroquin mixes for emotion first and treats every technical choice — vocal loudness, effects, EQ, even the low end — as a storytelling decision rather… https://felix-site-six.vercel.app/guides/prep-vocals-before-mixing https://felix-site-six.vercel.app/guides/prep-vocals-before-mixing Fri, 26 Jun 2026 12:00:00 GMT 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. https://felix-site-six.vercel.app/guides/translation https://felix-site-six.vercel.app/guides/translation Wed, 24 Jun 2026 12:00:00 GMT 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… https://felix-site-six.vercel.app/guides/fix-muddy-mix https://felix-site-six.vercel.app/guides/fix-muddy-mix Mon, 22 Jun 2026 12:00:00 GMT 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… https://felix-site-six.vercel.app/guides/kick-and-bass https://felix-site-six.vercel.app/guides/kick-and-bass Sat, 20 Jun 2026 12:00:00 GMT 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… https://felix-site-six.vercel.app/guides/home-vocal-recording-setup https://felix-site-six.vercel.app/guides/home-vocal-recording-setup Thu, 18 Jun 2026 12:00:00 GMT 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 https://felix-site-six.vercel.app/guides/make-vocals-sit https://felix-site-six.vercel.app/guides/make-vocals-sit Thu, 18 Jun 2026 12:00:00 GMT 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… https://felix-site-six.vercel.app/guides/how-loud-master-lufs https://felix-site-six.vercel.app/guides/how-loud-master-lufs Tue, 16 Jun 2026 12:00:00 GMT Aim for roughly -14 LUFS integrated with a true-peak ceiling of -1 dBTP, and stop worrying about being 'loud enough.' Streaming platforms normalize… https://felix-site-six.vercel.app/guides/gain-staging-explained https://felix-site-six.vercel.app/guides/gain-staging-explained Sun, 14 Jun 2026 12:00:00 GMT 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… https://felix-site-six.vercel.app/guides/headphones-vs-monitors https://felix-site-six.vercel.app/guides/headphones-vs-monitors Fri, 12 Jun 2026 12:00:00 GMT 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… https://felix-site-six.vercel.app/guides/room-treatment-first https://felix-site-six.vercel.app/guides/room-treatment-first Wed, 10 Jun 2026 12:00:00 GMT 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… https://felix-site-six.vercel.app/guides/five-mixing-mistakes https://felix-site-six.vercel.app/guides/five-mixing-mistakes Tue, 09 Jun 2026 12:00:00 GMT 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 https://felix-site-six.vercel.app/guides/do-you-need-expensive-gear https://felix-site-six.vercel.app/guides/do-you-need-expensive-gear Mon, 08 Jun 2026 12:00:00 GMT 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… https://felix-site-six.vercel.app/guides/mix-sounds-worse-after-mastering https://felix-site-six.vercel.app/guides/mix-sounds-worse-after-mastering Sat, 06 Jun 2026 12:00:00 GMT 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… https://felix-site-six.vercel.app/guides/compression-settings-beginners https://felix-site-six.vercel.app/guides/compression-settings-beginners Thu, 04 Jun 2026 12:00:00 GMT 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… https://felix-site-six.vercel.app/guides/subtractive-vs-additive-eq https://felix-site-six.vercel.app/guides/subtractive-vs-additive-eq Tue, 02 Jun 2026 12:00:00 GMT 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… https://felix-site-six.vercel.app/guides/should-you-high-pass-everything https://felix-site-six.vercel.app/guides/should-you-high-pass-everything Sun, 31 May 2026 12:00:00 GMT 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… https://felix-site-six.vercel.app/guides/reverb-delay-without-mud https://felix-site-six.vercel.app/guides/reverb-delay-without-mud Fri, 29 May 2026 12:00:00 GMT 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… https://felix-site-six.vercel.app/guides/inside-a-mix-session https://felix-site-six.vercel.app/guides/inside-a-mix-session Thu, 28 May 2026 12:00:00 GMT 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 https://felix-site-six.vercel.app/guides/mix-in-mono https://felix-site-six.vercel.app/guides/mix-in-mono Wed, 27 May 2026 12:00:00 GMT 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… https://felix-site-six.vercel.app/guides/how-to-use-reference-tracks https://felix-site-six.vercel.app/guides/how-to-use-reference-tracks Mon, 25 May 2026 12:00:00 GMT 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… https://felix-site-six.vercel.app/guides/what-is-saturation https://felix-site-six.vercel.app/guides/what-is-saturation Sat, 23 May 2026 12:00:00 GMT Saturation is gentle, musical distortion that adds harmonics and softly rounds peaks, making a sound feel present, warm, and louder without touching the… https://felix-site-six.vercel.app/guides/why-mixes-dont-sound-professional https://felix-site-six.vercel.app/guides/why-mixes-dont-sound-professional Thu, 21 May 2026 12:00:00 GMT 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… https://felix-site-six.vercel.app/guides/sidechain-compression-explained https://felix-site-six.vercel.app/guides/sidechain-compression-explained Tue, 19 May 2026 12:00:00 GMT 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… https://felix-site-six.vercel.app/guides/when-is-a-mix-done https://felix-site-six.vercel.app/guides/when-is-a-mix-done Sun, 17 May 2026 12:00:00 GMT 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… https://felix-site-six.vercel.app/guides/sample-rate-and-bit-depth https://felix-site-six.vercel.app/guides/sample-rate-and-bit-depth Fri, 15 May 2026 12:00:00 GMT 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… https://felix-site-six.vercel.app/guides/how-to-pan-instruments https://felix-site-six.vercel.app/guides/how-to-pan-instruments Wed, 13 May 2026 12:00:00 GMT Keep your anchors (kick, snare, bass, lead vocal) dead center, then build outward by ear, hard-panning doubles and rhythm parts and spreading supporting… https://felix-site-six.vercel.app/guides/eq-before-or-after-compression https://felix-site-six.vercel.app/guides/eq-before-or-after-compression Mon, 11 May 2026 12:00:00 GMT 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… https://felix-site-six.vercel.app/guides/mixing-vs-mastering https://felix-site-six.vercel.app/guides/mixing-vs-mastering Sat, 09 May 2026 12:00:00 GMT 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… https://felix-site-six.vercel.app/guides/true-peak-explained https://felix-site-six.vercel.app/guides/true-peak-explained Thu, 07 May 2026 12:00:00 GMT 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…