Most common mix issues

I mix music every single day as my living.

I was recently asked what I fix the most in my work, and that was actually a very good question.

Without any further foreword, let me just get into the facts!

📢 LACK OF MONO POWER

My recent Patreon-exclusive video post actually shows this, and that's why I won't write that long about this one.

But in a nutshell, having a hecking nice, clear, wide stereo mix doesn't necessarily guarantee that the mix is as good in mono. It's super common these days to have a really wide mix, but then it doesn't work nearly as well in mono – but it most definitely should.

Why? Having a powerful stereo does not guarantee powerful mono. Also, not all things fold to mono that well: they may lose level, brightness, and you may even get weird phasing issues.

You can think of a stereo sound as having two signal chains: mono/mid and side/stereo. When you hear it all in stereo, you can't have a guarantee that it'll be as great in mono (it may be, but in the worst case it may be awful and much less powerful).

The video will show you how to check the mono and fix it if need be, with free tools, so watch that if you haven't.

NOTE! Some reverbs and also actually have really bad mono compatibility. I often boost the mids of my reverb or delay bus, so do check if you can hear your reverb loud enough in mono!

📢 STEREO TOO WIDE

I do strongly feel there is such thing as stereo that's too wide!

While it doesn't take away from the mono power that I just mentioned, I think disturbs the smooth listening experience if things leap out of the stereo field – especially drumsounds.

How to fix? Listen to it from all your trusted systems (somehow I like to do that with my Genelecs and get it better than with headphones).

I'll add that wide stereo and powerful mono are NOT mutually exclusive at all!

📢FREQUENCIES IN A LUMP / WHAT'S THE KING IN THE MIX?

A good mix has elements nicely in their own place, frequency-wise.

In many less-than-professional mixes, there's not much frequency separation, and a lot of sounds simply sound too close to each other, resulting in lack of space and congested, cluttered mix where it's hard to tell sometimes what sounds are in the main role, and this affects the energy or excitement.

Especially in terms of instruments, decide what sounds are the king (or queen), and what are more in the side role.

For example, in vocal music, vocal has to stay on top. When you make other instruments duck based on the vocal's main frequencies, you help the vocal to stay on top.

You should also do this to other instruments, because it's very easy to do.

Ducking isn't always necessary, but a lot of times, when you have instruments that largely occupy the same frequency ranges, I always establish this "dynamic hierarchy" where instrument B ducks the main frequencies of instrument A, and instrument C ducks those of instrument B…and so on.

Why dynamic? So that you're not cutting those frequencies all the time. So when instrument B is not playing, instrument C will let its freqs come thru without any ducking.

I do this with Pro-Q3, as it's super easy to do: here's how. Sure enough you can do it with other tools, but the main point is, think about what sounds are the main ones, pay attention to clashing frequencies, and establish some hierarchy.

📢LOW-MID MUD

I don't have a quick fix or a tip for this, sadly, but def worth a mention. Frequency-wise, this is prob the hardest place to get right especially if your acoustics isn't pretty good or if you're not a really good listener of how the low-mids should work in your space. Listen to a LOT of great mixes and how they sound in your space. (room correction tools such as the one by Sonarworks, or Genelec's proprietary correction have a MASSIVE effect on this, and you won't know it before you try it). Try doing lots of narrow ca. 18-dB  boost EQ scoops around 120-200 Hz on your kick, bass, and master, too, and see where it really explodes or "whoomps", and also hear if that happens on your headphones: if it does, you could prob use some cutting there.

📢OVERALL SOUND/POWER FAR FROM WHERE IT SHOULD BE

The hardest mixes I tackle tell me that the producer has paid very little attention to how their song fares in comparison to good commercial mixes. This relates to the previous point in this post in a way.

There are times when this is also one of the hardest things for me to fix, and there are times when I can't even fix it, and have to suggest new sounds, for example (common with drumsounds).

When you work on your song for a long time, you become "deaf" to it, and lose objectivity. For example, if you have drumsounds that are poor, you may not even be aware of that anymore.

Also, one cannot ignore the kick/bass relationship AND the bass weight. If you don't know whether the song should have most of its weight either on its kick or its bass – or both, equally – that can sometimes be hard for the mixing engineer to tackle (then again sometimes it's actually easy if the frequencies are there and they can be cut and boosted). Also pay attention to the overall quality of the sounds (or the lack of / rawness of them, if you want to go more lo-fi): if your snare sounds like cardboard, no engineer will fix it.

(TIP! There's actually been times when I've layered some modern snares/claps to give them some more energy; if you're using a murky clap, this can help, and sometimes even a, say, crispy quarter/8th note hihat can bring your drums to life more than an EQ can, if the sounds suck, so do try it!)

How to address all this? Take some time to find some good reference songs whose sound/mix you really like, and they'll teach you a lot about ENERGY and EMOTION in your genre and how they work thru the mix.

Learn to be a very critical listener of music and genre. Use good refs a lot when working on your song. A quick check against a reference song should tell you if your mix is gravely lacking something, for example. Pay attention to how the bass drives the song and how much weight the kick has. Examine how "close" the instruments are mixed. Learn how loud the snare is smacking. Etc. These things are important in your genre – any genre.

While this is not a must, it can help you to a great extent to hear how far your mix may be from where it should be. Picking a few good reference songs and learning how to make your mix sound like them is literally one of the best ways to self-learn mixing.

To quote somebody (I forgot who it was): "To some, mixing without a reference song is like making a smoothie without a lid" and there are times when I agree.

It's absolutely fine to just make music and enjoy it, but when you want to get more serious about mixing, you have to face the reality of how your mix compares to good ones, and see if you can improve it (there are of course producers who completely outsource their mixing when their budget allows it, and that's fine, too – that's a big part of my living).

📢LEVELS ARE OFF

This mostly results from losing objectivity with the mix, as mentioned above. I know it from experience as a music-maker myself.

While it's easy for me to mix others' music, I get this with my own music, still. I don't think there's a quick and easy remedy for this: sometimes you just have to distance yourself from the song – after the actual song has been finished, that is. Only that way you can re-gain objectivity. Also, obvious or not, reference songs do help.  Listening to the mix at a low level is a really good way to hear things that stick out of the mix!

Listening is a skill you can't buy. You have to learn it and train your ear.

I've never promoted any sort of visual mixing like "have your kick peak at X dB and then your snare and bass at Y and Z dB". I don't believe in this "color by numbers" type of mixing, while I understand why so many would want it: to fix their mix following a formula. I just saw some advice like that where the accepted dB variation for elements was 6-8 dB…heh. That won't teach you anything. And peak-based info isn't useful: two kicks that sound equally loud can peak WAY differently, so mixing both those kicks by some dB formula would mean one of those kicks will end up way too wrong.

You only have to have a sound or two too loud in the mix, which kind of ruins the mix and disturbs the balance. And with tired ears, this is especially hard. I even get this in my job sometimes: I feel I may be really close to having it done, but I can tell something is off and it's killing me as I know something sticks out and ruins the harmony.

How I approach that is of course by taking ear breaks (trust me when I say long mixing sessions are not the way to fix a mix if you're struggling with them), ref songs, but also just muting tracks one by one and see how it affects the mix.

A good example might be a shaker/tambourine/perc sound in a busy mix: it's too loud and aggressive, and it's asking for too much attention, but you can't pinpoint it. Then you mute and get that "Ahhh that's it!" feeling. I mix a lot of tech house, for example, and there's often up to 15 perc tracks happening at the same time, and finding the perfect balance often takes a lot of muting tracks: that allows you to pinpoint/hear the place of the sound in the mix. Find the sounds that are too loud, set their levels right, and get closer to a more balanced mix that way.

📢BLOATED KICK

House is the #1 genre I mix and master, and bloated kicks are common. It's much too easy to bloat the kick esp. when you're not mixing against a limiter.

Limiting your song to a comparable level with a good commercial song will teach you a lot about this!

Watch that 500-800 Hz range: cutting there can make a big difference. The best way to describe that range with words is "the kick sound you make with your throat".

📢…AND A KICK THAT'S TOO LONG OR SUBBY

Esp. in house music and also other forms of electronic music. You don't need a kick tail in bassy music, trust me, unless it's trap. You cannot even hear that tail in busy sections, but it'll overlap with your bass and it'll be all trouble in master limiting (yeah, I can sidechain things, but that tail isn't loud enough to trigger sidechain on bass). I'm all up for fat, punchy, heavy kicks, but unless it's trap, we don't need that tail! Kicks don't necessarily need a lot of sub, either (this has to do with the point I mentioned above: learn to perceive how your mix sits in the realm of your genre and examine whether subby kicks are used or not; e.g., tech house has them lower than DNB, to generalize a bit).

📢OVERLAPPING SUB BASS AND KICK

This is simple: if you have a subby kick and a sub bass, that's fine, but don't have them play at the same time. Tech house, for example, often has kick and bassline occupying same-ish freq range, but as long as they're not overlapping, all good.

How to fix fully: stay on the safe side, and have your kick peak above the sub (at least 30 Hz above the sub, or ideally an octave, i.e., sub hertz x 2).

TIP: also listen to that range in isolation – here's how!

📢POORLY TUNED KICK

Ever been in a place where you keep EQing a kick to no end, and it just doesn't fit? I swear, sometimes transposing the kick +-2 semitones may literally solve your problem! I know this, as I've been in that EQing-kick-for-hours so many times and learned the hard way that sometimes changing its pitch can literally solve your issues with kick/mix low-mids, and even improve its energy (lower kick has more sub, but higher kick may have more energy and it leaves more room for low-mids and sub).

📢OVERCOOKED TRANSIENTS

Every has a transient tool these days to boost their transients. A less experienced producer will overuse it in hopes of better sound separation or punch, and this results in a sharp mix, the opposite of fat and punchy. Esp. if you mix against a limiter, do a lot of on/off with the limiter to hear if you're overcooking your transients; a limiter will shave them off, but they may also hurt your master limiting. Esp. many kicks that come in for mixing are just too snappy – yes, there is such thing as too snappy!

📢LACK OF SUB – OR WAY TOO MUCH

This is prob because not everyone has a system that produces ample sub.

Tip:

1) if you cannot hear the sub properly because of your system, learn to look at how it looks on some good mixes/masters you trust.

2) use Voxengo SPAN for example, have the sub on master hit around -30 on SPAN's own metering when the song is limited to commercial loudness, and you're in good ballpark, trust me!

📢HIGHPASSED TRACKS

Gggaaahh! One of the biggest peeves of mine in terms of mixing advice that everybody seems to be sharing. Man, just don't highpass your tracks, because it's soooo easy to thin sounds out with that. If they clash in terms of sub, find out where, and reduce clashing.  For boxy low-mids, use a bell or a shelf.

I get premasters or stems sometimes where i can hear that everything's a bit thin and i can't fix it, and i ask the producer if he has HPd everything, and in those cases the answer usually is "yes".

📢TOO MUCH DYNAMICS

We're used to hearing smoothed-out dynamics. For example, a totally untreated vocal track will sound immediately homebrewn if the dynamic range is too big.  An unexperienced mixer will have sounds and their levels leap up too much. Learn to listen to classy mixes and compare. BTW, if a sound is too loud, no need to compress it: just turn it down. But if that sound/track does a lot of level jumping here and there, compression might be the trick.

📢EVERYTHING IS LOUD

I understand you want to do loud shit sometimes. But if everything is loud in the mix, nothing is, and it's just a mess. Notice that often the loudest, most banging mix are more minimal. It's ok to have some things loud, but if everything is loud, nothing works in the mix.

📢SHEEN IS MISSING

This nearly impossible to get right without good reference comparisons. This is how you can get that sheen once your mix is about right.

📢HARSHNESS

Resonances are everywhere. It does take a bit of trained ear to hear them, but this is how you can find some!

• SO HOW TO FIX THESE?

By learning to hear things! So, learn to hear things is how you'll get to the root of fixing the issues. You cannot fix an issue before you locate it.

Listen to a lot of music, critically, in your workspace. Listening to your own mixes is not enough: learn how your mixes compare to some really good ones: find the best dang mixes you can and hear how they sound and ruthlessly compare your mix to those (ALWAYS level-matched, as the one we perceive the loudest always wins!).

Make more music. Make more songs and learn more thru that. Mixing one song forever will not even teach you as much as mixing lots of songs. Mixing and making music is a life-long process. I've been making music for 30 years, and doing audio engineering full-time for 7+ years, and I'm still learning…have fun doing it!