More From This User
Guide to Mixing
This document is a guide to the essential ideas of audio mixing, targeted spe...
Guide to Mixing v1.0
Nick ThomasFebruary 8, 2009
This document is a guide to the essential ideas of audio mixing, targetedspecifically at computer-based producers. I am writing it because I haven’tbeen able to find anything similar freely available on the Internet. The Internethas an incredible wealth of information on this subject, but it is scattered acrossa disorganized body of articles and tutorials of varying quality and reliability.My aim is to consolidate all of the most important information in one place, allof it verified and fact-checked.This guide will not tell you about micing techniques or how to track vocalsor what frequency to boost to make your guitars really kick. There’s plenty of stuff written already on mixing live-band music. This guide is specifically forcomputer-based electronic musicians, and so it is tailored to their needs.On the other hand, this guide does not assume that you are making club-oriented dance music. Certainly the advice in here is applicable to mixing electrohouse or hip-hop, but it is equally applicable to mixing ambient or IDM.
1
On theother hand, dance music does pose special mixing challenges, such as the tuningof percussion tracks and the achievement of loudness, and these challenges aregiven adequate time, since they are relevant to many readers.In this document, I assume only very basic prior knowledge of the concepts of mixing. You should know your way around your DAW. You should know whata mixer is, and what an effect is, and how to use them. You should probablyhave at least heard of equalization, compression, and reverb. You should havedone some mixdowns for yourself, so that you have the flavor of how the wholeprocess works. But that’s really all you need to know at this point.I do not claim to be an expert on any of this material. I have, however,had this guide peer-reviewed by a number of people, many of them more knowl-edgable about mixing than I. Therefore, I think it’s fair to say that at the veryleast it does not contain many gross inaccuracies. I thank them for their effort.If you have questions, comments, or complaints of any kind about anythingI’ve written here, please write
nhomas@gmail.com
.
1
Indeed, the advice in here is applicable to, though not sufficient for, mixing even liveband music. The defining characteristic of electronic music, other than being made withelectronics, is that it has no defining characteristics. It can be anything, and so a guide tomixing electronic music has to be a guide to mixing anything.
1
Contents
1 Sounds 5
1.1 Frequency Domain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51.2 Patterns of Frequency Distribution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81.2.1 Tones . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81.2.2 The Human Voice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81.2.3 Drums . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91.2.4 Cymbals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91.3 Time Domain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101.4 Loudness Perception . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101.5 Digital Audio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121.5.1 Clipping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131.5.2 Sampling Resolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141.5.3 Dynamic Range . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141.5.4 Standard Sampling Resolutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151.5.5 Sampling Rate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2 Preparation 17
2.1 Monitors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172.2 Volume Setting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172.3 Plugins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182.4 Ears . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182.5 Sound Selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
3 Mixer Usage 20
3.1 Leveling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203.1.1 Input Gain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213.1.2 Headroom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213.1.3 Level Riding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223.2 Effects and Routing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223.2.1 Inserts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223.2.2 Auxiliary Sends . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233.2.3 Busses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233.2.4 Master Bus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243.2.5 Advanced Routing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242
of 00
5.4.7 Shaping Percussive Sounds for Guide to Mixing
This document is a guide to the essential ideas of audio mixing, targeted specifically at computer-based producers. I am writing it because I haven't been able to find anything ...
(More)
38,656 Reads
Info and Rating
| Category: | |
| Rating: | (7 Ratings) |
| Upload Date: | 02/10/2009 |
| Copyright: | Attribution Non-commercial |
| Tags: |
Leave a Comment
Very well written and nice guide. I've watched tutorials from major companies which weren't so rich in content on many categories. Thank you very much for your effort!
Thanks I was looking for something like this for a while now, a short but informative document
Thank you very much!
Sam, thanks for bringing this to my attention. I've enabled downloads on the document.
Scribd tech support eventually got back to me and confirmed that the author has prevented downloads of this document.
Hi Nick, I really enjoyed this mixing guide, it is comprehensive and very informative, I've already used several new things I have learned with good results! Thank you very much for creating it, it must have been a lot of work. Kudos to you. I am having one minor problem though, I would like to download the document from Scribd so I can keep it on hand for reference. However, even though I have registered as member of Scribd (confirmed and logged in) I can never get the download option to appear. In the FAQ it says that this can be due to the security settings set by the author, or it can be due to a known bug where the download options do not appear as they should. I am assuming that this document is set to be freely downloadable because in tthe document information it says that there have been "218 Downloads" of this document. Can you confirm for me that this document is indeed meant to be freely downloadable? This would help me to confirm that I am in fact having a technical issue with the Scribd site. I raised a support ticket 5 days with Scribd Help system but I have had no answer from Scribd at all. The ticket is still "awaiting assignment to a helpdesk operator" so no-one has even looked at it yet. :(