I’m Björgvin Benediktsson. I’m the author of the #1 Amazon best-seller, Step By Step Mixing: How to Create Great Mixes Using Only 5 Plug-ins, the creator of the Audio Issues EQ plug-in, and the founder of Audio Issues. I’m also a venture advisor for the McGuire Center for Entrepreneurship at the Eller College of Management at the University of Arizona.
I’m an audio engineer turned writer, and I’m on a mission to help musicians overcome their imposter syndrome, create great-sounding music, and release their work.
I’ve worked as a live sound engineer, a broadcast recording engineer, a professional touring musician, a freelance mixing and mastering engineer, and an audio educator in both Iceland and the United States.
Since 2009, I’ve been helping people like you turn your rough recordings into finished records you can be proud to release. If you want to create radio-ready and release-worthy music that jumps from the speakers, you’re in the right place. My dream is for you to email me out of the blue one day and tell me you won an award for your music because I helped you make it sound successful.
Thousands of home studio producers like yourself have learned from my training, and my work has been featured in publications such as MusicTech magazine, Audiotuts+, The Pro Audio Files, and Recording Revolution, to name a few.
Every few minutes my computer came to a screeching halt. The playback would stop and my audio software would pop up a message. Turns out my 7-year-old Macbook Pro couldn’t handle all the processing I was applying to the tracks in my mix. After an hour of starting, stopping, starting, stopping, starting, stopping, the snarling impatience inside...
The Drum Mix Toolkit is 40% off until tomorrow because of my early Black Friday sale. I wanted to use this opportunity to give the top ten most important things you’ll learn from the Drum Mix Toolkit. If you already know all of these things, cool. You might not need the Toolkit. But if you...
I have this running joke whenever I’m invited to a potluck-style party. Especially when said party is at my house. I should explain…we get asked to host parties for our friends all the time because our house is nice and open. Because it’s perfect for large groups of people, the parties aren’t always our idea....
A reader asked me how to take pop sounds out of vocal sounds. I assume they’re referring to the ‘p’ sounds, formally known as plosives, that they’re hearing in their audio after the recording. Unfortunately, it’s much more difficult to take the plosives out of a recording during the mixing phase than just making sure...
If you’ve followed any of my drum mixing advice inside the Drum Mix Toolkit, you know that I tend to bus and group my drum tracks to simplify my processing. Here’s a quick excerpt from the course that talks about the different ways of bussing your drums: “All drums together – Simple and easy. Makes for an easy mixing job on the drum bus but doesn’t have...
Today I’m going to give you the most critical lesson in mixing. It might not be the most glorious. It certainly won’t be the most technical. It’s not even COMPLICATED! But it is incredibly important. It’s what everyone does at the start of the mix, but because they’re so eager to rush into EQ’ing, compressing, and...
We got a great comment from Joao Bem, member, about saturation on the kick drum: Kick: After setting the right volume, before inserting a compressor, try using first saturation, and then work with the compressor. Most of the time, if you first try saturation, it can give an already nice definition/separation in the overall mix!...
I got into an argument with this asshole at a bar recently. Now, I’m a lot more civil than I used to be during my whiskey-drinking days, but I had an unusually long day, so the fuse was a little short. I walked in and was going to stand at the bar and wait for...
Heard a really great quote on a podcast this morning while I was on my run: It was: “Every master starts as a disaster.” Now, the podcaster was talking about creating videos online, but the same can be said of anybody who wants to become better at audio. Luke didn’t start off as Luke Skywalker the...
I asked the Audio Issues Facebook followers recently: What’s been a fun mixing trick you’ve been using lately? And boy did they not disappoint. Here are some of my favorites from the thread: This last trick is actually a favorite of mine. If you can make your drums hit hard and sound great at low...