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Mixing – start low, and watch the levels
Written by Andy Patterson
There are a few standard tricks employed when mixing, but generally everyone works in a different way to achieve the correct balance of sounds in the quest for the perfect sounding recording.
One important technique that every engineer should undertake when mixing is to keep a close eye or ear on the monitoring levels.
It is very easy to turn things up loud straight away and go from there, and things end up getting louder and louder – and to your ears sounding better and better all of the time, but in reality you’ll suffer from fatigue, possible hearing damage and poorly balanced mixes..
So, start low and work up from there. Reach a maximum at the end of the day, and go no further. You can purchase SPL meters quite cheaply from Maplin or other electronic dealers on the internet. measure a safe listening level and mark your monitoring controller.
Take regular listening breaks. If there’s a song you want your track to sound like, have a listen to that every so often.
As with the Hare and the Tortoise….slow and steady wins the race.