Mixing / Production

We condense nearly 50 years’ worth of producing and engineering experience into 36 indispensable tips!

Creating an environment where artists can flourish means building trust, understanding people and valuing everyone’s input.

When using a mono-making plug-in, is there a range of transition that sees stereo signals gradually taper into mono?

As a mix engineer, it’s your job to give clients what they want — but what they say and what they mean aren’t always quite the same...

Just how do professional engineers tackle the earliest stages of their mixes, and can the rest of us learn anything from their approach?

We’re often advised to check mixes on a car stereo. But how useful is the fabled ‘car test’ in reality?

Learn to stop worrying and love your mixes with our 10‑point checklist!

I’ve played with ‘out of phase’ parallel compression (where the compressed signal path is polarity inverted)  — but, honestly, I didn’t really understand what I was doing...

Do the automation features in DAW software make old‑school console automation redundant? We canvass opinions from big‑name mix engineers.

I need to align some analogue gear to work with digital audio embedded in a video broadcast... what dBFS should my digital PPM read at the end of the chain?

Our mix guru shares his tips for keeping clients happy.

I’m trying to understand the panning being used in a particular song in which the verse has a guitar that appears to be almost completely right‑panned. However, in the chorus the guitar comes in on the left too...

While it’s obviously a great idea to seek tips, tricks and guidance when you’re learning how to mix, and to consider how you might apply that advice, you also have to be careful that in the process of applying it you don’t lose sight of the big picture.

Welcome to Sound On Sound's regularly updated, indispensible explanations of technical terms from the fields of Recording, Audio Production, Music Technology, MIDI, Music Software, Audio Plug-ins, Mac and PC Computing, Live Sound, Acoustics, Electronics and more...

Mixing can be a mentally taxing pursuit, but these simple strategies will help you maintain your focus and get the best results.

I double-tracked lead vocals by combining two different vocal takes from the same singer, each recorded on a different mic (a Shure SM7b and an Audio-Technica AT4033a)...

Do you advise panning stereo guitar solos close to the centre to enhance definition, or would you ever pan them wider apart?

What's the difference between using bell boosts and using a good old-fashioned high-shelving EQ?

I read that 1dB is the minimum difference in volume that can be noticed, but I often end up doing much smaller changes in mixes. Am I fooling myself?

For years I've noticed crossfades between two audio files don't behave predictably. I always thought the logarithmic shape was fool-proof, but is it programme-dependent?

I've been struggling with recording and mixing 'epic' guitar sounds. I'm after something that balances aggression with tone, but which doesn't sound too distorted... Any tips?