10 COMMON MIXING MISTAKES THAT CAN RUIN YOUR PROJECT

From having dealt with literally tens of thousands of mixes, here are 10 mistakes that I see people make over and over again. These are mistakes that will prevent your final mastered tracks from having the clarity, sparkle, punch and volume that you want, and they're fairly easy to address. These are general common-sense guidelines, but it's always important to remember the #1 rule of recording - There are no rules.

1.) THE MIX IS TOO LOUD - This is the most common mistake engineers make today. The mixes you submit for mastering should not be done with eq's, compressors and limiters across the stereo buss. If a stereo buss compressor gives a particular flavor to your mix that you can't get any other way, then by all means use it. But don't do it for the purpose of making the mix louder. If the mix is over-compressed and limited, that cannot be undone. And it totally ties the hands of the mastering engineer. What do you think will sound better? Letting the mastering engineer compress the mix with his $10,000.00+ analog mastering compressor, or letting the mix engineer do it with his $100.00 plug-in? You should also leave headroom, which means your peaks should not be hitting full scale digital 0 (0dBfs). Looking at your stereo peak meters; the hottest peaks in your mix should not exceed -3dBfs, and if you're doing a proper 24 bit mix, -6dBfs is ideal.

2.) THE MIX IS TOO DYNAMIC - Everyone wants their mastered tracks to be huge and loud. But that can't all be done in mastering. As I said in point #1, you generally should not compress or limit the stereo mix. But you should control the dynamics of individual tracks and groups. That doesn't mean squash them, it means control them. Assign your drums to a stereo group and put a stereo compressor/limiter across that group. Usually a compression ratio around 2:1 showing a gain change of around -3dB will do wonders for tightening up the drums, increasing tom & kick sustain and emphasizing the ambience of the drum sound. Adjusting attack and release is critical, as too fast of an attack will kill the punch. You might also want to put limiters on the kick and snare tracks alone if they are too peaky. When you hear a song that is just huge, loud and opened, you can be sure a lot of care was taken in eq'ing, compressing and limiting the individual tracks.

3.) TRACKING AND MIXING AT LOW SAMPLE RATES AND/OR BIT DEPTH - In these days when hard drives are so inexpensive, why would anyone track at 44.1k, and even worse at 16 bit resolution? Even 48k sounds better, but if you want your mix to come alive, you should be tracking and mixing at 88.2k or 96k, 24 bit. If your music is going to be released as an audio CD, 44.1k/16 bit .wav or .aif downloads, or even mp3's or AAC's, the ideal sample rate for tracking and mixing is 88.2k. This allows the mastering engineer to do a linear decimation to 44.1k after mastering, meaning the sample rate converter has to simply divide by 2, which results in the best sound. ESPECIALLY if you are using a real mastering room that will be using analog processing, the difference between a 44.1k mix and an 88.2k mix is night and day.

4.) CRASH CYMBALS TOO LOUD - Want a big, powerful drum sound? Get those crash cymbals down! Loud crash cymbals will completely diminish the apparent size of the drums, and consequently the entire mix. And they will totally cloud and blur the rest of the top end of the mix. It's fine if you want a crash to punch through a couple of times during the mix to emphasize transitions etc., but the entire mix should not be awash in crash cymbals. Solo your drum mix; the crash cymbals should be lower in volume than the snare.

5.) TOO MUCH 'POINT' ON THE KICK DRUM - The 'point' is the slap or click at the leading edge of the kick drum. It adds apparent punch to the kick, but too much can totally destroy an otherwise good mix. You may think it's just a narrow sliver of frequencies that could easily be pulled back in mastering, but in reality it is very broad-band and sits right in the sweet spot of critical upper-mid frequencies where vocals, guitars, strings, synths etc. need presence, and they will all suffer if it has to be pulled back. In the case of the kick drum's point, as in so many things in recording, less is more.

6.) KICK DRUM, SNARE AND TOMS ARE NEGATIVE POLARITY - This is related to phase, but different than being out-of-phase. This means the leading edge of the signal falls rather than rises, which will cause the speaker to pull rather than push at the attack of the drum. That doesn't happen in nature, and it will diminish the punch of the kick and bigger toms. Look at the wave forms of your drum tracks. If the waveform at the beginning of a note goes down before it goes up, it is negative polarity. It's a simple matter on any DAW to highlight the offending track and select "Reverse Polarity". Then you'll see the leading edge rise, as it should. Surprisingly, many professional drum samples are negative polarity.

7.) TOO MUCH SUB-BASS - Almost all home and car systems have subwoofers these day, so it is more important than ever that the sub-bass be correct. But with the home-recording revolution comes the fact that a lot of mixes are being done on small speakers that can't reproduce sub-bass, or on big speakers/subwoofers in a bad control room that can't reproduce the sub-bass properly, or the worst, on headphones. I regularly see mixes from home studios where the bottom end below 40Hz. needs to be pulled back as much as -10dB! Yes, the mastering engineer can do this, but usually not without the rest of the mix suffering. The proper way to address bottom end is by properly eq'ing the individual bass elements of the mix, not by eq'ing the entire mix. An easy answer is an RTA (real-time analyzer) plug-in, which will show you a graphic representation of the tonal balance of your mix. For the majority of rock and pop mixes, the meat of the kick drum is around 40 - 50Hz. You should not see a rise in energy below those frequencies. For hip-hop and r&b, sub-bass below 40Hz. is important, but it should not be out of control. Look at professional mixes on your RTA and see what their tonal balance looks like. As I said in point #2, eq'ing, compressing and limiting the kick drum and bass independently is key to having a huge bottom end without sacrificing the volume the entire mix can eventually be.

8.) VOCAL SIBILANCE WAS NOT ADDRESSED PROPERLY - Sibilance (the sharp ear-piercing 'ess' sound in vocals) should really be addressed during the tracking process. If the tracking engineer let it slip, the second best alternative is to control it during the mix. The worst alternative is to fix it in mastering, which means the entire mix has to be de-essed, and that is going to affect everything else in the 7k - 8kHz. range. If you're working with a vocalist with a lot of sibilance, the best technique is to de-ess some while tracking the vocal, along with mic selection and placement, and then de-ess a bit more during the mix. The results will be much more transparent by preventing one de-esser from having to over-work.

9.) BEING TOO RUSHED - This is a huge one. There is really no reason why you should be rushing the mixing and mastering stages of production. People who have gone through the music production process more than once usually don't schedule release parties, radio promos etc. until they have CD's in-hand. Somehow the music universe has survived without hearing your album for centuries now, it can surely get by an extra couple of weeks. You should allow yourself several days to live with your mastered project before you send it to press. And you shouldn't just rush back to the studio with it. The important thing is how it sounds in your car, on your stereo system, on your friend's stereo system, from the next room, in a retail store if you have a friend working there that can sneak it in - all the ways you normally hear music.

10.) EXPECTING MASTERING TO MAKE YOUR MIXES SOUND PROFESSIONAL - Despite what many mastering engineers will tell you, quality cannot be created in the mastering room. All the mastering engineer can do is enhance the quality that is in your mix, and to make sure nothing is getting in the way of the critical elements of each mix. He cannot 'pull a diamond out of a goat's butt'. The key to having a big, professional sounding product to release is taking your time and paying close attention to each little detail, from the time the first mic is set up to the final tweaking of the vocal during the mix. If all is done properly, the mastering engineer will then be sweetening your mixes, which is what mastering should be all about, and not trying to repair them.

10b.) ALLOWING THE MIX ENGINEER TO 'MASTER' - Yes, anyone can afford a 'mastering' plug-in bundle these days. But unfortunately the plug-ins do not come with the decades of experience that a real mastering engineer will have. And they do not include the room and speakers that are necessary to hear what is really going on. Do not allow your mix engineer's ego, or greed, to get in the way of the quality of your final product. The real heavyweights in the industry know that mixing and mastering are two completely different jobs. The biggest names in mix engineers have no problem with a different engineer being credited for mastering. They know that what is in their best interest is to be credited as the mix engineer on a great sounding album, not being credited for every job on a mediocre sounding album. Whether you use DES Mastering or not, let a professional mastering room master your project.