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S1E11 – Goal of Mixing – the Analog vs. Digital Debate

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What should be your goal when mixing a track?

Should every instrument stand out with clarity? How do you achieve balance?

Do VSTs even compete with expensive analog gear?

These are just some of the questions new and intermediate producers face when starting out.

In this episode, we cover what your goal of mixing should be, and many helpful tips to improve your mixes so you can give your music a fair comparison when using effects like EQ and Compression.

Also, here’s the pictures of new skateboard (left – blue and yellow) and a previous one I spray painted (right – black)! (If you haven’t watched the video from the first episode, you can watch me doing some tricks lol)

Analog Digital Mastering Mixing Music Production Equipment

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S1E11 – Goal of Mixing – the Analog vs. Digital Debate

  1. Hey, this is Gratuitous. Welcome to Music Production Made Simple, the show that
  2. focuses on best practices about music production, which is based on FL Studio.
  3. If you're wanting to become the best producer you could be, subscribe and listen
  4. weekly. You can also check out my courses, which teach you the principles and basics
  5. of music production. They'll get you up and running quickly.
  6. In addition, I also have books on Amazon and tons of music on Spotify.
  7. Always feel free to hit me up at Hi at it'sgratuitous.com.
  8. So let's get into the episode.
  9. Alright, hey, what's up, everybody?
  10. Welcome to episode number 11. In this episode, we're gonna be talking about what is
  11. the goal of mixing as well as the analog versus digital debate.
  12. This is something that's kind of bothered me more in recent years, when it comes to
  13. the analog and digital world. Just want to talk a little bit about some personal
  14. stuff. So I recently just bought a new skateboard.
  15. I'll I'll take a picture of it and post it on this actual episode page.
  16. my buddy, he got a whole bunch of blank decks shipped out to him.
  17. And whenever a skateboard kind of gets old or whatever, I'll just purchase one from
  18. him. the most recent one, he had blue grip tape, so we put some blue grip tape on,
  19. and then I spray painted it yellow, and then he has this cool little stencil where
  20. we where we just spray painted some kind of like letters with a stencil.
  21. It's just kind of fun, just kind of like making your board unique.
  22. Also, another reason why I did that is because it's nice to know your nose from your
  23. tail as you're skateboarding. Another thing I've been working on on like the
  24. business side of things is I've actually been trying to get my courses into a lot of
  25. different distributors. So I've been dealing with like a lot of contracts, a lot of
  26. kind of meticulous tasks like re exporting videos a certain way, or just kind of
  27. adjusting like the artwork because every single distributor might have different
  28. specifications, and with my catalog now, it's constantly growing.
  29. I now have 18 courses. It's like if they want one change, it's like it's not just I
  30. have to change it for that one course, it's like I have to change it for 18 courses.
  31. So there's quite a bit of repetitive work there, but at the end of the day, it's
  32. worth it because you know the benefit of an online business is for the most part
  33. it's passive income. So, you know, yes, I'm putting in that work up front, but now
  34. it's gonna work for me, hopefully like forever, right?
  35. So that's kind kind of what I've been working on right now, just of getting my
  36. courses out there to these different distributors that sell you know sound kits and
  37. sell courses and stuff like that.
  38. So eventually you're gonna start seeing my name out there more, hopefully, within
  39. these online stores. So let's get into the podcast.
  40. When you're first started, you know, you've learned how to kind of use the music
  41. program, you've learned to make the beat, and then now you're trying to mix, and you
  42. have absolutely no idea what you're doing, but you're diving in, you know, you've
  43. put all your actual sounds to each individual mixer insert, you've pulled up EQs,
  44. you're just experimenting, you're trying things out.
  45. And in all honesty, this is what you have to do.
  46. You have to kind of get your hands dirty and just try stuff, okay?
  47. I'll talk a little bit about some tips that you can use to improve your mixes, to
  48. kind of speed you up. But I just wanted to kind of talk a little bit you know,
  49. generally of what your goal is of mixing and mixing as a whole, okay?
  50. So mixing really is an art, and just like an actual painter would go to paint a
  51. picture, you know, they have all their different types of tools too.
  52. You know, like they have their actual canvas, they have different sizes of brushes,
  53. different colors, you know, depending on what kind of art that they are doing.
  54. You know, they might be using different materials, they might mix colors, or they
  55. might you know, use different types of products to achieve a certain look.
  56. And that's the thing with mixing too.
  57. You have to learn these different types of tools that are available to you so that
  58. you can take advantage and give your music the sound that you're wanting, okay?
  59. Again, when you're new, you know, you're unsure of like what's proper, what you're
  60. allowed to do, and if what you're doing is like, you know, if it's even like allowed
  61. in the industry, because you kind of think to yourself, it's like if I'm gonna
  62. release this music, is something gonna be wrong with it?
  63. If some, you know, like is there gonna be like maybe some distortion that I'm
  64. unaware of, or is there a problem?
  65. Is there phase problems? And you really have no idea what you're really doing.
  66. But again, it is really important to get your hands dirty and you know, just start
  67. trying to mix. Now, when it comes to mixing, when you're first starting, there's a
  68. lot of dangerous information out there on the forums and in certain videos, and in
  69. addition, you know, there's many debates with what's proper and like the analog
  70. versus digital and you know what approach you should be taking, okay?
  71. So, in my opinion, your overall goal of mixing is balance, okay?
  72. And that's something that I've discovered later on as I've been mixing my music.
  73. When I first started, I was always trying to get each individual instrument to
  74. really stand out. Okay. And when you do this, many times you can actually take away
  75. from your song, because like what you want to be listening for in your song is does
  76. your song sound like a song? Okay, so when you hit play, does the song actually
  77. sound full? Does it sound like you know it's enjoyable, it's a nice rhythm, and it's
  78. just nice and full, right? That's what you want to be listening for.
  79. Now, don't get me wrong, if certain you know, elements of the song are not standing
  80. out, yeah, you can go in with some EQ and some compression and fine-tune it to get
  81. it to where you want. But if you're over processing, you know, you might be making
  82. that sound sound, you know, kind of weird in context of what it originally was.
  83. The biggest thing that I want you to understand is when you hit play, does your song
  84. sound like a song? Is it enjoyable?
  85. Is it full of rhythm? You know, that kind of stuff.
  86. one important point is now some instruments they may not be able to be heard like
  87. audibly, okay? So, in other words, like you know, you might be using EQ and
  88. compression, and no matter what you're doing, like you really can't get it to stand
  89. out. but the thing is, as soon as you actually remove that instrument, you know,
  90. through soloing or through muting, sometimes you can actually instantly hear
  91. that.ing. Oh wow, now the song's miss something, okay
  92. So let me repeat that one more time.
  93. So if you're working on your track, and if there's like that one instrument, and
  94. this is typically like a pad or something like that.
  95. If there's that one instrument where you just can't get it to stand out how you'd
  96. like, but the thing is as soon as you mute it, you'll actually hear that your song
  97. is missing an element, it's missing its fullness.
  98. But as soon as you add it back in, you hear the fullness, but you really can't hear
  99. that instrument audibly sometimes.
  100. So that's what I'm trying to say.
  101. When you hit play, does your song sound like a song?
  102. Is it nice and full? Okay, it's really, really important concept to understand and
  103. to get your mind thinking when you're mixing.
  104. That way, you're not going to be over processing and doing kind of stuff like that.
  105. Now, let's just talk about some kind of helpful tips to improve your mixing.
  106. You know, this will kind of get you up and running to at least kind of steer you in
  107. the right direction. Again, it's all gonna be about practice, practice, practice.
  108. Watch tons of videos just to kind of get an understanding of you know what is the
  109. point of mixing and and how do you approach it, what are your different tools?
  110. but in short, you know, what you want to be doing is you want to be routing each
  111. individual sound to your actual mixer, okay.
  112. So each sound has its own mixer insert.
  113. That way you have full control over the volume, and if you want to add on like EQ,
  114. compression, or various types of tools, okay.
  115. And then to take it even further, I do have a course that's called FL Studio Mixer
  116. Workflow, and it shows you how to route these inserts to sends and subgroups to have
  117. more control over your mixing.
  118. But that is like the next approach.
  119. So as soon as your sounds are on their own individual mixer inserts, now you can
  120. route them to kind of sends or put them into subgroups just to allow for easier
  121. mixing. So once you you actually have your sounds on like the mixer on their each
  122. individual mixer insert, now it's just a matter of know mixing the track.
  123. And the first step there, in my opinion, would be to adjust your volumes.
  124. And this is what's called you know gain staging.
  125. You have to be careful if you are working with analog plugins, because analog
  126. plugins, if you drive them too hard, it will cause distortion because they're like
  127. an emulation of real analog gear where if you drive it too hard, you're gonna get
  128. distortion, okay? However, there is the myth out there that if you drive it too
  129. hard, you know, on an individual insert that you're gonna get distortion.
  130. But since these actual DAWs are 32-bit floating point, you actually can drive your
  131. audio as hard as you want into an actual individual insert, you just have to make
  132. sure it's churned down before it goes to the master, okay.
  133. I don't want to get too much into it, but that is a myth that is commonly talked
  134. about you know in videos and stuff like that.
  135. I explain this more in my course, the FL Studio Intermediate course, the one I just
  136. recently released. In that course, we talk about you know mixing, arrangement, and
  137. mastering with the new LUFS standards.
  138. Again, all the links will be in the resource section on this episode page.
  139. Okay, so I just want to talk a little bit about some tips to improve your mixing,
  140. okay? So when you're first starting up, the first thing you want to do is create a
  141. draft copy so you can practice and then you want to compare your mix to your
  142. original song, okay? So now imagine you've made a beat, okay?
  143. Now it's ready to mix. I would actually save an original copy and I would just put
  144. dash mixing to whatever the song name is, okay.
  145. Mix that actual track and then export it, okay?
  146. Now compare the original track that was unmixed to your mixed version.
  147. This is gonna help you improve over your years.
  148. And as I was saying in my early years, when I first started mixing, I would do
  149. this., I would do the comparison, and I would typically like the non-mixed version
  150. And the reason for that is many times I would actually overprocess, I would go too
  151. heavy on EQ, you know, and stuff like that.
  152. And the thing is with music nowadays, see back in the day with analog
  153. gear, you know, if they're actually recording guitars or recording voices and stuff,
  154. typically they have to be more aggressive with EQ and these types of tools because
  155. you see, when we mix our music, which is digital, you know, we're using VSTs, which
  156. are you know digital, which is extremely high quality right off the start.
  157. We're using EQ to enhance a song.
  158. Typically, when you're recording audio, you're using EQ to actually fix problems,
  159. or you know, you're using it more aggressively.
  160. But nowadays with digital, you're using EQ to again enhance what's already going on
  161. because it's already high quality.
  162. You might just be ducking a little bit here and there, but back in the day, you
  163. might have been more aggressive to get that sound sounding better.
  164. So in my early days, I was always just too aggressive on my settings, and then and
  165. again, when I would go to compare the old version to my mixed version, I would
  166. typically like the old version because that's how I made the beat, that's how it
  167. sounded. But then when I mixed it, it kind of changed the overall sound of the
  168. music. The next point is mixing and solo is dangerous.
  169. So here's a little example. Okay, so imagine you're mixing your track, and then
  170. there's like let's say the piano, and the piano, you know, you just can't get it to
  171. sound how you'd like. So, what you do is in FL Studio, you would go to the insert,
  172. you'd right-click on the mute knob, and that would solo it out for you.
  173. So now you're listening to the piano just solo.
  174. Now, you know, if you take out some EQ and some cra and some compression, and now
  175. you're actually being, you know, you're applying mixing techniques without
  176. referencing it to the actual mix.
  177. Now, what you'll discover is you're gonna spend lots of time soloing out a sound,
  178. you're gonna be processing it, and you know, you can spend up to 15, 20 minutes
  179. doing this, and trust me, I've done this in my early years, and then what happens is
  180. you go to add that piano back into the mix, and you think to yourself, you're like,
  181. ooh, like this doesn't even suit the song anymore.
  182. And the reason for that is because you were mixing in solo.
  183. Now you can mix in solo, but you have to do it quickly and then always reference
  184. back to the whole song, okay? So now how I would approach it is now let's say that
  185. piano isn't standing out how you'd like, or you can't get that sound.
  186. Now, you know, you might want to solo it out and just kind of quickly adjust it, but
  187. then always add it back into the mix.
  188. Again, you can just right-click on the mute knob in FL Studio and you can solo it
  189. out, or you can bring back all the instruments, okay?
  190. And that's how you're gonna want to mix.
  191. Okay, you always want to reference it in context of the actual song.
  192. This is gonna speed you up, it's gonna give you a better outlook on the adjustments
  193. that you are doing to your song.
  194. Okay, again, when you solo out a sound, you have no idea in context of the mix how
  195. it's gonna sound. then when you add it back in, let's say 15-20 minutes later, it's
  196. not gonna relate to the song because you're mixing in solo, especially you know,
  197. when you're dealing with drums and all that kind of stuff.
  198. You can solo, but you have to do it quickly, and then always reference back to the
  199. whole song. The next point is you always want a fair volume comparison.
  200. So, what this means is when you turn the plugin off and on, is there a fair level?
  201. Okay, like so is the level similar.
  202. And if it's not, what's gonna happen is you're gonna be skewed towards thinking that
  203. the louder one sounds better. Now, in FL Studio, you know, like so.
  204. Let's say you have an EQ compressor, and then let's say another EQ or something like
  205. that. When you turn off all the plugins, because on each individual insert near the
  206. bottom, there's like a master on off for the plugins.
  207. You know, I try to adjust my plugins so that they're always an even volume, no
  208. matter if I turn off the actual individual effect or if I turn off the effects as a
  209. whole. And again, this is gonna help you make more accurate mixing decisions because
  210. you're actually listening with a fair volume comparison in context of the whole mix.
  211. So when you turn the plugin off and on, that it's a fair volume comparison.
  212. This is gonna be a game changer for you if this is not something that you do, okay?
  213. Because now you're gonna actually be able to listen more accurately with more proper
  214. judgment. You know, you're not skewed in terms of loudness, you're actually
  215. listening in terms of your actual EQ decisions or your actual compression decisions,
  216. okay. Now, most plugins they have a tool called A and B.
  217. Okay, this allows you to dial in two different settings and compare between what you
  218. like best. The fruity limiter allows you to do this as well as the parametric EQ2,
  219. it allows you to have an A and B so you can switch in between two different you know
  220. settings, but again, you don't always want that fair volume comparison.
  221. But let's just talk about compression for example.
  222. So, you know, with a compressor, you might want to put the threshold really low, but
  223. then have like a low ratio, open up the attack or something, and then you can you
  224. know save that state. Now you'd go to B.
  225. Now you maybe want to open up that threshold, you know, bring it up a bit, maybe a
  226. bit more aggressive ratio, and then maybe clamp down on the attack a little bit
  227. more. Again, now you'd want to adjust a fair volume comparison so when you switch
  228. between A and B, you can hear how it sounds.
  229. Okay, and you know, this is how I mix my music, and again, it just allows you to
  230. make more accurate decisions and it lets you hear from a fair judgment standpoint,
  231. which is extremely important..
  232. Okay let's just talk about your bass line for a second, okay?
  233. So in your low end, you always want to be making sure that your low end is nice and
  234. clean. typically you want to like remove any kind of stereo content in the low end
  235. when you have tools like Fab Filter Pro Q or something, you can just have a stereo
  236. low cut filter and just kind of take some like the lows out there, or if you have
  237. like a multi-band compressor where it allows you to do like stereo and mono, you can
  238. kind of remove the stereo content out of like the low lows.
  239. the reason for this is just so that your actual low end is mono, and therefore it's
  240. not gonna be skewed if it goes to like a mono system.
  241. You know, you always know that your mono content is hitting nice and hard, it's nice
  242. and clean. But with that said, if your actual low end isn't clean, typically what
  243. you'll want to be doing is you know, you want to side chain compression.
  244. So your kick drum, you you want to allow it to kind of reduce the volume of the bass
  245. line. Now I actually have a track that I was working on, and I just want to show you
  246. when it comes to the bass line, where we can be using this side chain compression to
  247. help that kick drum stand out and make it not clash with the bass line, okay.
  248. At the moment, this track is called Things Have Yet to Come.
  249. I'll let you listen to the bit of the chorus, and then we're gonna solo out the kick
  250. drum and the bass, and we're gonna hear the actual side chain compression more in
  251. depth, okay? So this is just kind of a rough mix I have going on at the
  252. moment.
  253. Okay, so what I'm gonna do is we're just gonna solo out the kick and the bass, okay?
  254. And we're gonna listen to those together.
  255. Okay, so this is how I have it mixed.
  256. So what you should be hearing is the kick drum is a lot cleaner and it's not
  257. fighting with that bass line. I'm gonna turn it off.
  258. Okay, so one thing that I'm hearing is that there's not much groove going on, as
  259. well as that bass line is a bit muddy, right?
  260. It's sounding, it's kind of fighting with the kick drum.
  261. So I'm gonna enable
  262. it.
  263. Okay, so I'm actually being quite aggressive on the side chain compression.
  264. I would actually bring it up a little bit.
  265. And we're gonna turn it off and on one more time.
  266. So right now it's enabled. Now it's
  267. off.
  268. Only so it's a really subtle thing, but it really helps
  269. your kick drum and bass line to sound a lot cleaner.
  270. They're not fighting for that frequency space.
  271. It just allows it to hit nice and hard and make your mix sound a lot cleaner.
  272. Okay. if you want more information on side chain compression, there's tons and tons
  273. of videos out there on YouTube, as well as I kind of break it down in quite a few of
  274. my courses. one of them is why do we producers use compression as well as the FL
  275. Studio Intermediate course, as well as FL Studio Mixer Workflow.
  276. Okay, so I just want to you know let you know that I do have a lot of courses on
  277. these different mixing tools, like they're all separate courses.
  278. So, for example, if you want to learn about EQ, I have a course it's called using EQ
  279. effectively in your songs. I talk about you know how to use EQ, the pros and cons of
  280. it, what to be careful of, and best practices.
  281. if you want to learn about compression, again, I have why do we producers use
  282. compression? I also have this FL Studio Intermediate course, and that's gonna teach
  283. you mixing, arrangement, as well as mastering with the new LUFS standards.
  284. Okay.,. Again all the links will be in the resource section of this episode
  285. The last thing I want to talk about before we end this episode is just this analog
  286. versus digital debate. Now, for those of you who have listened to like the first
  287. episode, so I am actually an electrician.
  288. So what that means is that I have gone to school.
  289. I understand about you know electricity for like the most part when in like the
  290. theory with like volts, amps, ohms, and like Ohm's law and you know, all that kind
  291. of stuff. now the thing is being an electrician, we typically learn about like
  292. power, you know. So for example, in North America, you know, it's 120 volts and and
  293. you know, stuff like that. So like we're more like you know, power, whereas audio is
  294. more like signal, you know, so it's it's quite you know, lower you know, voltages
  295. and like lower power. But the thing is, you know, they more deal with a lot of like
  296. capacitance and inductance. And even though I've learned this stuff as an
  297. electrician, we didn't learn it like in depth.
  298. And that's where eventually in my life I would like to start learning this stuff.
  299. Like I would like to learn how to put together like a real audio compressor, like
  300. just for the sake of knowing how it how it works and just trying it out.
  301. Like now, I'm not saying that I would build it to use it, I would just want to build
  302. it to know how it works. and the reason why I'm talking like this is because I'm
  303. really tired of kind of listening to like the older generation of engineers talk
  304. about like this old vintage gear.
  305. Like, in my opinion, like I really feel that they have like this nostalgic love
  306. towards this analog gear that they're they're not wanting to let go of.
  307. Now, I understand that you know, this old gear is the reason why we have a lot of
  308. our old kind of classic hits, but I also feel that times have changed, right?
  309. Because if you think about it, like digital is way easier than analog.
  310. We can recall old projects, like on like the fly, you know, it's just a matter of
  311. opening up a project, all your you know, VSTs, all like their plug-in states, like
  312. everything is saved, and you can achieve you know the exact same sound in your
  313. computer, you know. There's always been like that debate of in the box ITB, which is
  314. you know, just mixing inside your computer using these you know digital plugins to
  315. achieve the same sound as analog.
  316. You know, there's always like that debate of like, oh, in the box is cold, analog is
  317. warm, he kind of opens it up. And you know, so what I want you to do is I want you
  318. to go to Sweetwater, okay. You know, if you don't know what Sweetwater is, they're a
  319. really, really popular website that sells audio gear, okay.
  320. I want you to go to the mastering section on Sweetwater.
  321. Look at the EQs, look at the compressors.
  322. These things are like 7,000 US dollars for a compressor.
  323. I'm in Canada, like that's gonna cost me like 85 to like 9,000.
  324. In my opinion, I think that is absolutely ridiculous.
  325. Like computers have come such a long way over the years, and you know, this debate
  326. of analog versus digital. I truly believe that digital wins for
  327. convenience, for price, for space.
  328. Like you don't need anywhere to store this stuff, you simply just need a decent
  329. computer. So, again, you know, I understand that this old analog gear has got us
  330. to where we are, as well as you know, the old generation of mixing engineers have
  331. also kind of paved the way for us new producers in a sense of a lot of these
  332. strategies and a lot of these techniques, which is awesome.
  333. You know, I'm very thankful for towards that stuff, but I also feel that we new
  334. producers have to be careful of what they are holding on to and not. wanting to let
  335. go of You know, again, I tr I truly do not believe that you need a $7,000 compressor
  336. to compete with these other songs on the radio.
  337. Okay. So again, that's just more my opinion.
  338. But I don't know. Whenever I, you know, I'm on YouTube and I'm just trying to watch
  339. some videos on compression or something, you always have that one older you know,
  340. tutorialist talking about oh, how they love the sound of this compressor, and oh,
  341. how they love the sound of this and this.
  342. And it's like I get it. Like, you know, like they give you a certain sound.
  343. but nowadays we have plugins, there's emulations of these loved compressors.
  344. but at the end of the day, I I kind of find it annoying.
  345. It's just a matter of like when I make my music, I make my music.
  346. If I'm gonna be using a compressor, I'm using it for a certain reason.
  347. Let me know what you guys think.
  348. If you're kind of on that same page as what I'm speaking here, like I get it.
  349. Analog is cool, you know, it's fun to play with this stuff, but at the end of the
  350. day, it's extremely expensive.
  351. It takes up space in your studio, as well as you cannot recall presets.
  352. Anyway, so that's pretty much this episode, you know, pretty much, you know, mixing
  353. as well as this kind of analog and digital debate of you know, kind of where it's
  354. at. I truly believe that this will be something going on forever, just people that
  355. love that hands-on feeling versus people who kind of like the more minimal approach.
  356. And you know, I I personally like the digital way.
  357. It's just it's simple. If you want to purchase, you know, a compressor, you know,
  358. sure, this plug-in might be 200, but compare that to a $7,000 compressor.
  359. I'm pretty sure you can get extremely similar results.
  360. And the thing is, you always have to be thinking about from a listener standpoint.
  361. Like I'm talking like think about like your mom or like think about your friends.
  362. Like these are the types of people that are going to be listening to your music..
  363. People that have no audio education whatsoever
  364. They have no idea what the difference between a wave and an MP3 is.
  365. And you know, even with an MP3, like you know, yeah, they might know the difference
  366. that 320 is higher quality than like 128, but can they really hear a difference?
  367. You know, because you really have to kind of like train your ear to hear these kind
  368. of shortcomings of MP3, especially at like the lower bit rates.
  369. Again, if you guys want to check out any of the courses or you know, check out my
  370. new skateboard, I'm gonna be taking pictures and all those links will be on this
  371. actual episode page. So if you guys have any questions, always feel free to reach
  372. out to me. I'm gratuitous. I'll talk to you guys in the next one.
  373. Thanks for checking out the episode.
  374. If you had any questions, visit it'sgratuitous.com slash podcast, select an episode
  375. and submit your question at the bottom of the page to the contact form.
  376. If you'd like to take my FL Studio courses, see my current studio and podcasting
  377. gear, read my books, or are interested in lessons, visit the link it's
  378. gratuitous.com slash learning.
  379. That page will redirect you to more info and resources.
  380. I hope the best with your productions.
  381. I'm gratuitous, and I'll see you in the next
  382. episode.
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