Mixing Setup


“I deliberately define the point at which I start mixing,” explains Fraser T. Smith. “I think it’s helpful for my headspace.... I’ll clear the decks, clean up the session, consolidate all the tracks, and look at the session purely from a mix point of view.... It feels like the session is set in stone, and nothing is going to be moved any more. It’s a visual/psychological thing.”

Make sure to bounce down the out- put of any live-running MIDI instruments as audio too. This reduces CPU load (allowing you more power for mix plug-ins), discourages endless tinkering with synth settings during mixing (although you can still rebounce an altered version of the part later if you really need to), and also avoids an insidious problem with some MIDI instruments where they respond slightly differently with every play-through—there are more than enough mind games to deal with at mixdown without this kind of thing going on. “I never run anything live, from a sequencer,” affirms Tom Lord-Alge. “I don’t want to have to worry about synchronization or issues of sound level.”

It’s usually best to start a mix with a clean slate, working from raw multi- track audio les in a new DAW project, even if you’re engineering and producing everything yourself.

Listen through to the individual multitrack les to remove silent regions, x purely technical problems, and highlight any audio sections that need timing/tuning correction or special emphasis in the mix.

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