Treating your individual sounds in groups such as drums, pads, vocals, synths and high end will help to reinforce the sense of one unified track rather than a load of component parts thrown together. One of the most effective ways to create a coherent pro-sounding mix is to group similar sounds together on a mix bus or a group sub mix channel and to apply compression, saturation and limiting to the group. Vector scopes can help check phase and mono compatibility. Then the stereo mix can be sent without these plugins on the master channel so the mastering engineer has plenty of headroom to do the job professionally. However we highly recommend removing these plugins before the mixing phase so you can get a true representation of what your individual channels are doing for a more accurate mix down. This pulls the disparate parts of the track together to form a cohesive whole. When writing and arranging house it can often help producers to envisage the end track and help creative flow of a compressor or gentle limiter is placed on the master bus. It’s important to keep an eye on the phase and balance of your whole track whilst doing this and by checking mono compatibility on the master.

Categorise them by sound type and try to incorporate them into other projects to find your own unique soundĪ good way to generate some movement and stereo imaging within a mix is to use auto-panning and auto-filters on channels with similar sounds and harmonic content such as two pads playing the same notes.Īlso try changing the offset starting points of the LFO waveforms as well as their phase to enhance the stereo image further. Store such presets for each synth and start building your own library of presets and samples. It’s often the case when synth preset surfing that you will encounter several sounds you love but that are unsuitable for the current project. For example having a gain device, saturation, EQ, compressor and utility turned off (to save CPU) but ready to go by default when the track loads up can save you precious time in the long run.

Save channel presets that are often used on almost all your channels. Just because a certain effects chain sounds good in one channel doesn’t mean it will work for another. Also don’t fall into the trap of using the same plugins in the same order. The best way to learn and understand the different parameters of any given device is to use it over and over again, practice is paramount to learning.

Every channels audio will be different and should be treated accordingly. Get out of the bad habit of blindly copying compressors and other plugins from one channel to the other without tweaking their settings.

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