Thanks for getting the book! Be sure to read it, as I've had fantastic feedback on how much it's helped people. BUT, more on your actual question... Yeah - that is a common objection to using references as "they are already mastered!" and while this will obviously have impacts on aspects of the mix, it will not matter as you use it to guide you in your own mixing process. The reference isn't there for you to copy 100%. It's there so you can take inspiration from it, and avoid making blatant mistakes. I have very specific things that I listen for in my reference songs - so it's not just a blanket "this is what I'm doing", but rather "I'm listening for this specifically to see if I did something wrong!" In an example: I don't just listen to the whole reference and think "what can I do to make my mix sound more like this...?" INSTEAD I ask: "Is the relative volume between their kick and bass similar to mine in my mix?" Hopefully this makes sense. Use references - they will 100% help you get a more pro mix. Doesn't matter if they are mastered and yes - please do adjust the volume so it's relatively the same between your mix and the mastered reference. :)

I generally don't bounce anything in place during the mix. Any pre-mix processing though (during recording, editing), I will always bake into the tracks though.

I always use a separate mix bus for the mix. I don't use the stereo out as the mix bus. So the references are in the DAW, but only go to the stereo out, NOT my mix bus.

@@dinosaurdogstudio ahh, ok. Cheers.

It's a great song, doesn't mean the mix is good.

@@dinosaurdogstudio well then, that would suggest that a good mix doesn’t even matter 🤷🏻‍♂️

@@officialWWM You can't argue with results, and it doesn't to a certain extent. However, I would argue that you DO need to reach a certain level of "quality". That doesn't mean it needs to be a perfect mix, but it needs to be good enough to not get in the way of the song. There are too many examples of bad mixes that were done on good songs to argue this fact to vehemently. However, if your mix is just bad... it won't be given the chance to become a hit. The goal is to get to that baseline of "quality" and then it doesn't make as big of an impact after that. It's just getting out of the way enough to allow the song to be judged for the SONG - not the mix. Very few people (other than us mixing nerds) are listening to the MIX, they are trying to listen to the SONG. The mix just gets in the way sometimes.

Thanks for the comment! Glad you found it valuable. 👍

Between 40hz and 5khz, your mix should roughly match pink noise. This keeps your mix from having any holes in the midrange. There's a section on it before I dive into the mix too.

​@@dinosaurdogstudio So the pink noise window isn't really necessary, right? You just want a basically flat graph between those freqs in the mix analysis?

@@ontheruntonowhere Yes, I just pulled it up for reference for those that wanted to see the actual pink noise signal in real-time.

@@dinosaurdogstudio Ahh. I got it. Sorry, I'm dense! :)

Yes, this is not a mixed song, so of course you're right...

He needed to boost with a wide q at 3k not dip

@@Durkhead I like to let my guitars live in this area, and in order to avoid masking I tend to give the vocals some more room here. You do what works for you, I'm just sharing what has worked for me.

@@dinosaurdogstudio guitars and vocals compete for the same space but vocals are the most important aspect, but also guitars should be panned to the side so you dont have to worry about them "masking" anything, and all the tracks your referencing the vocals were all at 3k its the freq that almost everyones voice is so if you eq them any other way its gona sound weird thats why your vocals were sounding tunnely or hollow

Haha, thanks for sharing. You may have just ruined this song for me. 😅

It all depends on your goal of compression. Check out this vid: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/g9Rii8lnr9i9mJ8.htmlsi=mElAT323Rrm3xpEN

​@@dinosaurdogstudiothe "slowest" attack of an 1176 is under 1 millisec

@@EdwinDekker71 Yep, that's why the digital gear is so nice. We can break the rules of the OG gear and use it to our advantage.

Thanks for the feedback. I agree that "pro" and "professional" should relate to a venture where people are making money - not the quality of a song. But this is something that people tend to resonate with as far as what they want their mixes to sound like. It's short-hand for "it sounds like a professional mixing engineer mixed this song." But that's too long for normal language. If that is a deal-breaker for you, then I'm sorry.