Don’t Even Think About Bouncing Your Mix Before Doing These 3 Things

Translation.

It’s one of those things that are so important for your mix.

It doesn’t really matter if you have the best equipment in the world. If your mixes sound bad on the bad systems, then your high-end monitors mean nothing.

Well, here are three things you can do to make sure your mix sounds the best it can before you take it to your car or play it on the home stereo. Do them all in succession or go back and forth between them.

1. Listen in Mono

Flip your mix into mono. Everything still sounding good?

Is the stereo spread a little weird and your guitar delays and vocal enhancer and spatializers all gone? Then start tweaking your stereo effects until you get as close as possible to the sound you had before.

2. Lower the Volume

Turn your monitors aaaall the way down until you can barely hear your mix.

Does the mix still sound the same?

Are the instruments that you want to be dominant still dominant? Can you still hear everything clearly? If not it’s time to fine-tune your faders to make the mix more balanced. Use EQ to add more presence or pull things back.

3. Switch Your Speakers

Chances are you have computer speakers of some sorts. If you’re using a laptop you can easily switch the output to the laptop instead of the monitors.

Doing #1 and #2 with your computer speakers gives you a completely different listening experience and will show you all the little intricacies of the mix you couldn’t hear on your monitors.

Computer speakers by and large sound pretty bad. If you can make your mix sound convincing on both your monitors and your laptop, then you’re 80% of the way to a well translated mix.

Now these three things are something you need to do when you’re done mixing. If you’re still not there yet and need help getting to the final stage of your productions Recording & Mixing Strategies are guaranteed to show you the way there.

Take a look right here:

www.audio-issues.com/strategies

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About Audio Issues and Björgvin Benediktsson

We help musicians transform their recordings into radio-ready and release-worthy records they’re proud to release.

We do this by offering simple and practical music production and success skills they can use immediately to level themselves up – while rejecting negativity and gear-shaming from the industry. A rising tide floats all boats and the ocean is big enough for all of us to surf the sound waves.

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