We always talk about producers, but did you know top mixing engineers charge $4,000-$5000+ per mix?

[Hannibal Fox]

No love for the goat hip hop engineer Troy Hightower?

 

[comfortablynumbd]

it looks like that kanye beat was running off ableton live

cool

always wondered how more people dont use that

 

[Mac Casper]

@bdizzle

Random Artist, A mix presented to us, done by the former engineers. Dull, Muddy, Super Compressed, Eq'd horribly,
Not even to touch on the misuse of reverb and delay's..sounds Like cheap waves plugins.
Mix:

Same Artist, Different song, but a mix done by us. Proper Vocal chain, Proper arrangement and editing done on the mix,
Clean Hi's but not harsh, Hard lows, but not distorted, and more importantly midrange treatment done right.
Not over compressed, very organic, and the vocals sit in the mix great.
Mix:


Edit: I didn't even realize you could see the waveforms, notice the bad mix seems to be
Hitting harder, or has the appearance of being louder, but the dynamics of the record are destroyed, so it's muddy and filled with horrible artifacts, and still has no room for the mastering engineer. We leave headroom for our ME's to do their thing.
Also these are MP3's i just uploaded, so bare with me.

I'm sorry you have to work with a dude who's basically a Drake tribute act . . does dude not realize there's already a Drake? Like is this dude just out here hoping to steal Quentin Miller's job?

 

[PRVLG Sound Studios]

I'm sorry you have to work with a dude who's basically a Drake tribute act . . does dude not realize there's already a Drake? Like is this dude just out here hoping to steal Quentin Miller's job?

Hey, he's a paying client. As long as the mix is amazing, and the quality is on point…We've done our job.
You should hear how many Future clones we have right now smh.

 

[SirBiatch]

Honestly, Im surprised they aint getting more. Mixing is such an integral part of the final product. A good mix can turn a weak beat to a decent record, and a bad mix can ruin a classic beat like we've seen time and time again in rap

Examples of a weak beat made decent by mixing?

And what bad mixes have ruined classic beats?

 

[SirBiatch]

Great thread OP

I'm curious: how would y'all rate the mixing on Live.Love.ASAP?

@Wally Russell @Thepowkid

 

[CHICAGO]

I ENGINEERED THIS WHOLE ALBUM BY MYSELF FOR FREE.
PICK A SONG & LISTEN TO THE CLARITY IVE PRODUCED.



​

 

[Tetris v2.0]

Examples of a weak beat made decent by mixing?

And what bad mixes have ruined classic beats?

A lot of Cam and Dip Set shyt is horribly mixed, but the beats are hard

Eminem production was always well mixed and clear, but the actual beats were ehhhh

 

[10bandz]

Great thread OP

I'm curious: how would y'all rate the mixing on Live.Love.ASAP?

 

[Mac Casper]

Hey, he's a paying client. As long as the mix is amazing, and the quality is on point…We've done our job.
You should here how many Future clones we have right now smh.

You should do a Coli Exposé on clones

 

[McSpacey]

Ali from TDE is one of the best engineers I've ever heard. Dude is actually like an artist. All TDE tracks should say "feat. Mixed by Ali" thats how important he is to the songs. Some of the stuff he's able to do is incredible. All of Kendrick's, Q, Ab-Soul, and Rock's mixes are so detailed. There's so much texture to all of their songs that you can listen to them over & over and find different things in the mix.

 

[Mac Casper]

Ali from TDE is one of the best engineers I've ever heard. Dude is actually like an artist. All TDE tracks should say "feat. Mixed by Ali" thats how important he is to the songs. Some of the stuff he's able to do is incredible. All of Kendrick's, Q, Ab-Soul, and Rock's details are so detailed. There's so much texture to all of their songs that you can listen to them over & over and find different things in the mix.

He seems to of come up outside of this audio engineer community hierarchy so I wonder what it is that he charges

 

[Barney Rubble]

My Sennheiser HD800's are very grateful to these audio gods

 

[Turbulent]

I'm not going to pretend to know the difference between a mixed and unmixed song, can someone explain with audio examples?

when making a beat/song, you make it by recording the different parts separately (on separate tracks). say you have the bassline on one track, guitar on another, piano etc, drums which will have each sound (kick, snare, closed hi-hat, open high hat, cymbal, etc)all on separate tracks, vocals etc. in a nutshell, mixing is manipulating the sound to make the tracks sound "good" together. the most basic thing is to adjust the volume of each track to make it sound balanced like you want it to sound. do you want your drums to sound on top of everything or the guitar or the vocals. there's plenty of other things you can do to manipulate or shape the sound of each "track" of the song. you can equalize (basically the sound on a track is divided into different frequencies and you can increase or decrease these). panning, reverb, compression, etc, etc. there is a lot of room to get creative with it and to shape the sound.

a "good" or "bad" mix is somewhat subjective so it's hard to give examples. one that comes to mind as a bad mix would be that Joe Budden album that a lot of people were saying sounded bad (i wanna say Padded Room but i'm not sure). but then on the flip side you could take an album like 36 Chambers (and Tical as well) and say it's "badly" mixed but it's kind of what made it what it was. sounds rough and rugged. 36 chambers wouldn't sound right if it was mixed to sound all clean. but even when you mix something to sound rough, there are still ways to make it sound rough yet good. but again, this is where it gets a little subjective. kind of like how you could see a painting and some will say it's a magnificent work of abstract art while other would say it looks like a kid's drawing. it also depends on the intent, execution of the intent. like you could say the drums sound WAY too loud and the producer would say that was the intent because blablabla. so in a way the mix was intended to sound that way. but the next person could argue, just because it was the intent, doesn't mean it was a good idea. so now a good or bad mix is a philosophical debate...

one album i would argue is a bad mix is the College Dropout album from Kanye. also, a lot of mixtapes are not well mixed and the reason for that is they use beats from other people so it was already mixed a certain way and then they just get the instrumental all on one track which they record vocals over. they don't have as much space or latitude to shape the final sound.


EDIT: another way to look at it is if we compare it to film making, you could say the cinematographer is kind of like the mixer. making sure the images look good. the colors on the screen look right, resolution, saturation, lighting, etc. i keep repeating myself but watching a movie, that shyt would be subjective as well.

 

[Mac Casper]

My Sennheiser HD800's are very grateful to these audio gods

You have Sennheiser HD800's?

What's your amp?