Awesome. Thanks for tuning in! We’ve got a ton of free videos here, and if it’s ever useful down the line there’s a whole members section too that we just started up. Hope to see more if you around one way or another! -Justin

What DAW you using? I can only comment on Ableton or Pro Tools.

@@CLdwyer FL Studio...I looked it up & saw some of the options I have but still dont have a solid answer & example of how it can be done. i know how to check a few render options that allow FL Studio to render out individual wavs with all the master bus effects on...is that essentially the way its done including in your DAWs? In my mind Im thinking theres more to it & better ways than that though as Justin mentioned side chaining & again my mind has never actually seen anyone explain this in a tutorial. Im especially curious on how to do it & how to NOT do it if that makes sense...I know theres many ways to do something wrong but Im wanting to know the top mistakes one like myself might make when attempting to do it. So much of mixing is just effective strategy & knowing what mistakes to look for & avoid. Im probably over thinking all this & already know but my mind is in student mode to make sure I truly understand this. Thanks.

@@QuabmasM gotcha. The basic mechanic is you want the full mix to be the sidechain key. And you also want it to be as simple as possible. The two key objectives. I’d take a day to explore it. Justin will describe it in PT but FL has diff mechanics. Sometimes mastering engineers do this Sidechain method to export mastered stems so they can all be triggered by the full mix. It’s really genius stuff. Played together they sound perfect. Played in solo they sound weird tho. I don’t know FL so well but it’s a routing mechanic if you want to do this. I honestly consider it to be a pain in the ass. I actually don’t do any mix bus compression when tracking & producing. Especially if I’m gonna bounce stems and send to a mixing engineer (or create a mix session). I tend to keep all processing on a track level, sometime busses/groups (and those busses will be bounced as groups). That’s my method for avoiding the issue you’re describing altogether. However, theoretically, if you create an aux, send everything to that aux and tell a compressor to listen to that aux you’re part the way there. The headache (in my opinion) comes when managing pre-fader sends, delay compensation, solo-safe and creating new tracks (remembering to send to that aux). I think it’s more trouble than it’s worth for my workflow. Better for me to get individual tracks behaving well with no full mix, summing components. Again, I’d encourage taking a day to experiment (I do this all the time with workflow changes). Hope some bit of this is helpful.

agreed! @SonicScoop did you ever end up making a video on it?

I agree. So much hinges on the mix being well made and the song being well arranged and performed. Makes every step down-stream so much simpler. The scary mixes are the ones that leave almost too much creative room. Requires a totally diff mentality for mixing.

@@CLdwyer You're right. The really scary mixes are the one where there is no rough mix, so it's down you to put it together in a way 'they' want. Fortunately, that doesn't happen too often. I have one client, who's a producer/singer who pays very little attention to the mix, but will send me the Logic project through to mix for him. I can see on nearly every track, it's a channel strip preset he's pulled in. Often with a Logic silververb reverb on them, which is a really rough reverb. I then have to decode if that reverb 'tone' is part of the sound he's going for along with any other effects on there, or if they're just on the there because they were part of the preset. It's quite a puzzle. I've learnt that in his case, it's better to just wipe the floor and start again. All the best.

It’s a nice problem to have! Though sometimes it’s humbling and difficult to accept that the best thing you can do on a great production is “not too much.”

Not yet! But I should. -Justin

Stems are a group of tracks, like stems for guitars or for drums. Vs single tracks. I guess stems could be wet or dry.

Oh just to be super clear, just in case☺️ stems are a group of tracks bounced to a single track/stem.

All good! I like learning from him.

Sure! That could work. I have done something just like this on one mix and it worked well. Kind of the opposite though. Not playing around with phase or anything but just blending it in slightly in parallel. Not something I “recommend” officially, but crazy things can sometimes work for sure! It worked on that mix. -Justin

This is what I do when I have mixed analog and need some recalls. Make something louder? No problem, just play the stereo mix and add the dry track. Something softer? A bit more tricky, but the phase trick can help!

Boom Boom! 🥁

Haha, come back in a couple hours and you won't be ruining anything X-D

@@SonicScoop finally, 668 ^

Jeff, is that you? 😂 Also: If you’re telling me Manny Marroquin isn’t one of the greats in the field, I don’t know what to tell you. Enjoy your evening, Justin

Agreed! He describes this approach in detail here: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/qNyWfrx8qbrUp6c.html Incidentally, I’ve also interviewed Joe Chiccarelli who you were on another comment thread with, though we didn’t talk about this specifically: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/sJ-FZ8eouJOqpok.html I’ve interviewed a ton of top level producers, mixers and engineers over the past decade. I’m sure there’s things we both agree and disagree on, and I know many of them contradict eachother on some issues. Ultimately what makes something a good idea or a bad one isn’t who is saying it. Sometimes two conflicting ideas can both be right in different contexts, and sometimes there’s an empirically right or wrong answer to a question. Either way, the person saying it isn’t what makes it a good or bad idea. Though it can be a good reason to further explore the idea. But when it comes to making records, I’m not sure there are a lot of “rights” and “wrongs”. With all art, so much comes down to taste. Hope that makes sense, Justin

I think it is very silly as a consumer playback format for a multitude of reasons described in that episode. Here are some key highlights: 1. No trained listener has ever shown they can distinguish between 320kbps MP3 and any other format in blind listening tests. 2. Increasing bit depth cannot have any effect of the audio other than lowering the noise floor from inaudible to still inaudible, in any commercial playback format. 3. Increasing sample rate in and of itself has no effect on audio except to increase the maximum reproducible frequency. It has no effect on frequencies below that point. There is some reasonable argument to be made that 24 bit is better for recording because it leaves even more room for error. I agree. 4. Higher sample rates can make it easier to use analog anti-aliasing filters in converters without ill effect. But this point is rendered moot by oversampling. 5. Same goes for the argument that plugin processing could be better at higher sample rates. 6. Studies have shown time and time again that supersonic frequencies seem to have no effect on enjoyment of music. 7. Only one study ever conducted suggested there might be some effect (though it was not established as being a positive one) but it was with an extremely small sample size, occurred for only one piece out of many, just bordered on statistical significance, and has never been replicated. All those are facts. That it makes high super high res audio silly is certainly an opinion, but not one that comes out of nowhere. It’s informed by reason. On the other hand, there are real costs to increasing file size, processor power, download times and bandwidth by a factor of 5x to 20x. The case for increasing sample rates for production is pretty flimsy for those reasons, in my opinion. I don’t think that PEOPLE who advocate the ultra high res audio are dumb by any stretch. Most of the time they simply don’t know a few of the facts listed above, at the very least. And in almost all cases I’ve found they haven’t actually done properly controlled double blind listening tests for themselves. Rather, from what I have experienced, they often go by either uncontrolled listening tests, a subtle misunderstanding of the underlying theory, by anecdotes, or appeal to authority. Very bright people who do very good work are not immune to this. I wasn’t either. That said, if it works for you, do it! I hope that makes sense, Justin

Please direct me to your videos where you clarify the correct way to do things 🙄

@@SonicScoop "appeal to authority" i'm impressed, you know your fallacies, nicely done