Most advice about mixing focuses on plugins, presets, and tricks. In this Mixing Monday session, I explain why none of that is what actually makes a mix better — and what to focus on instead.
What actually makes a mix better?
If you spend any time on YouTube or social media, it’s easy to believe that what makes a mix better is more plugins, better plugins, or the “right” plugin chain. In this first Mixing Monday session, I want to challenge that idea.
Great mixes don’t come from copying presets or following cooking-recipe workflows. They come from listening, understanding the source material, and making decisions based on what the music actually needs — not what marketing emails or comment threads suggest.
In this session, I talk about:
- Why plugins are not the key to better mixes
- The problem with preset chains and “one-size-fits-all” workflows
- Why mixing skills are much closer to learning an instrument than buying tools
- How your mental state, energy, and workflow directly affect mix quality
- The difference between effortless mixing flow and fighting a mix uphill
- Why arrangement, performance, and recording quality often matter more than processing
If you’ve ever felt stuck, frustrated, or caught in an endless cycle of tweaking without improvement, this session will help you rethink what actually moves your mixes forward — and what quietly holds them back.
Transcript
[00:00:08] Well, welcome to mixing Monday on Mixed Sessions, which is the blog of my new website, mixartist.academy. Today, I would like to talk about what makes mixes better, and there are lots of resources out there. Many of them are absolutely fantastic. But of course there's a lot of stuff among that I find rather questionable and that I don't think, uh, is actually very helpful.
[00:00:34] So today I would like to share with you what I believe is important in mixing. So we're gonna talk about, uh, what actually makes your mix better. And also what can send you down the wrong path, so. Let's start with that first. Um, if you go to YouTube and search for mixing videos, you'll find a humongous abundance of amazing videos often with some kind of a hotshot engineer in much respect to those guys.
[00:01:05] Um, and I find that if I had to sum up an average all these videos, pretty soon it would end up, uh, looking at pl and saying, here, no, this is the, the turn. Processor that I tweaked this way and now it sounds all great. Um, this is clearly oversimplified, but I find these videos a lot, so let me step in straight away.
[00:01:25] No, um, no offense to anybody who's made videos like this, but I personally believe that plugins are actually not where the money is. There are other more important things. It's not the plugins that will make your mix better, and this is also. Pretty much against the big marketing machine that, uh, plugin developers, uh, use to convince us differently.
[00:01:49] But plugins are not the key to a great mix. Take this in for a second also. There are ma uh, ma many videos that, uh, showcase some mixing tricks. Um, I've seen videos about parallel EQing, um, uh, overheads to add high frequency sizzle and of course side chain techniques and all of those things. And I tried many, many, many of these techniques over the course of my life.
[00:02:20] I remember a production where I actually. Took the bass guitar, converted that to midi played through synthesizer, but an octave lore, uh, blended this back in, you know, mixing tricks like this. And the more I mix, the more I find that the truth is actually not in these tricks. It's actually the bread and butter stuff that gets a mix to really, really good levels.
[00:02:45] And these really advanced mixing techniques, they're very rarely what really makes your mix better. So again, a word of caution. So, um, let's talk about this for a moment. There are a couple of things that I want to dive in a little bit deeper for a moment and, um, let's just switch my application. Uh, here is a very cry typical question that people ask on social media.
[00:03:14] In this case, what rap, hip-hop, vocal chain, uh, with free UAD plugins, any presets out there? And there's lots and lots of comments out there. Just show you another one. Um, what's your favorite hip hop vocal mixing chain? And these discussions are in huge abundance out there. There are so many of them. And, um, I, I'd like to talk about this for a moment.
[00:03:37] So what's going on in the mind of the person asking this question? So. I think what's actually going on is that they're looking for some kind of cooking recipe. A cooking recipe goes, uh, along the lines of I don't know how to do a fancy dish. I'm not a chef myself, but I now read the instructions. I've never done it before.
[00:04:02] If I just add this many ingredients or this many grams of that ingredient, and a couple of eggs and a bit of salt, and this much cream, by the end of it. I apparently have a great tasting, uh, dish. This sometimes works. I have the thermo mix at home, and yes, I've, I've worked like this, but in mixing this is not actually the best way forward.
[00:04:24] Uh, instead I advertise or advocate for a workflow that is more looking at the actual material that we work with. Because in a sense of a, when you apply a cooking recipe, when you just apply this compressor first, followed by that EQ and then followed up by whatever processor you add next, the plugin chain, it doesn't guarantee a great outcome.
[00:04:48] And when I look at the responses to these questions, I often find that people just name drop their most recently bought plugins or you know, the fancy ones, but very few people talk about how to set them. You know how to actually use that eq. Do you want to use it to make it brighter or darker or more prominent or more intelligible or warmer?
[00:05:14] That's often not part of these discussions, and that's the problem that I have. So the real question to ask is, what signal do you want to apply these plugins to and how does that sound in the first place? Maybe you're applying this to, I don't know, a really well recorded studio vocal. There's a very good chance you don't need to do much at all.
[00:05:36] Just leave it as it is and do very little things. Or maybe you're dealing with a home recording done with, with a cheap microphone. Well, now you have face an entirely new set of problems in many situations. You can get each vocal to the desired sound. but a poorly done home recording and a studio quality recording need very different treatment.
[00:05:59] And that's my point here. When people apply these cooking recipe mindsets, it seems like they just want to add the right processes that everybody else suggests. And now there must be a great outcome, but that's not the case. It all changes when you disregard all of that and only listen to how it sounds to begin with, start to envision how you wanna make it sound.
[00:06:24] Then find your way to get from one to the other, and that sometimes needs one plugin. Sometimes it needs doesn't need any, or sometimes it needs eight. I don't know. But it's this custom solution for each sound where you pay close attention to how the source actually sounds. That makes a big, big difference.
[00:06:45] So, as you can see, I'm not the biggest advocate of these, you know, plugin chain discussions. That's, in my opinion, not where the money is. It actually triggers a different kind of thinking process. You know, the kind of chasing the latest and the greatest tools and using what other. You know, great engineers use, no, nothing wrong with that in general, but that by itself doesn't lead to a good mix.
[00:07:11] Let's look at another couple of examples. So, um, all of this is of course, fueled, uh, by a big marketing machine. So if we now have a quick look at, um. Where am I? Um, preview. If we now go to another window, here is a marketing email that I received. Um, I blanked it out. Hotshot producer, X, YZ uses this plugin to make his mix sound mastered.
[00:07:44] Is this really gonna work? If. Somebody if you at home, assuming you're not a hotshot engineer, if you bought the same plugin, would it sound mastered? No, it wouldn't because the sound is not coming from the plugin. It's coming from the person using it and setting it and reacting to how the sound changes when you grab the control and tweak them.
[00:08:12] That's what's important. It's actually not the itself, somebody who can make. A mix sound like a finished master with one PL in could possibly do that quite likely with a range of other plugins as well, because it's in their skills. So it's actually not the PL in, it's the person. That's what I would like to point out here.
[00:08:31] There are plenty of examples. I get these emails all the time and here's another one, pro results and 3, 2, 1, insert my plugin and it's done. No, that's actually not. Real, let's be honest. There's this marketing talk. They're trying to push PL ins in the market and get to your credit card number. You know what, it's actually, you know, I love these guys.
[00:08:55] They make great PL ins. But it's never that simple. So I've seen engineers mixing ridiculously beautiful sounds with just stock plugins. And I've also seen people struggle, uh, getting the mix together with all the most amazing plugins in the world. So plugins again, is not where the money is. Okay, let's take this in for a moment.
[00:09:19] It's not the plugins, so. What is it then? Well, it's all coming down to the skills and the skills of mixing are pretty much exactly like learning a musical instrument. So if you imagine you are a young person picking up the guitar for the first time, or the drums, or singing or playing keys or synthesizes, what have you.
[00:09:48] There's a learning curve and it always starts with, yeah, well the first couple of years are a little bit rough around the edges. Um, and it takes a couple of years to actually get good with that. An interesting theory that floats around. Um, I actually like it in many ways. It's called the 10,000 hour, uh, theory.
[00:10:10] And it sort of implies that anybody who dedicates 10,000 hours to something they're really interested in is gonna get a really masterful at a world class level. Eventually, this might apply to musicians, so if you want to play like an amazing drummer turned really, really high level, this might apply to business leaders.
[00:10:29] Um. Pilots anywhere in the world, sports, people, athletes, you could keep going. Um, personally I find that this is really simplified and you can't just work for 10,000 hours and then you are good at it. So if I now look at my personal. Path of about 25 years. I would say that a learning curve is not linear in any way.
[00:10:54] It's actually full of curvatures. There are times when you learn a lot and there's also times when you don't learn so much. When I didn't make much progress over a couple of the first couple of years is pretty steep, pretty quickly, and suddenly it comes together. That made my mixing better. And I just use compression as one example.
[00:11:12] But if I'm totally honest, most of these revelations had to do with me understanding music, understanding how it's intended, how it's meant to sound, or most importantly, understanding myself better, uh, learning about myself, how I can extract a better. Artistic mixing performance out of myself. And that also means to accept sometimes that today's not the day that happens as well.
[00:11:37] That every once in a while I have a day where I feel like, no, it's not coming together. I'm not gonna force it. I'll back off and try another day. But you know what, this will leave for another day. There's so much more that I wanna talk about that. Okay, good. Um, so let's change the subject and talk about what actually makes your mix better.
[00:11:59] How do you leap forward and it's again, not buying more plugins. Please don't do that. I'm always happy to say that whatever you have in your DAW plus a couple of free plugins is pro probably all you need to make a number one hit record. I know that's a big statement, but you know what, I stand by that.
[00:12:20] Alright, lemme just consult my notes. Um, so.
[00:12:27] If we consider mixing to be extremely similar to playing a musical instrument, then we can also understand that if you try to record a singer or somebody, you know, sometimes they've got good bad days and bad days, and that same thing applies to you as a mix engineer. So first, understand. When you're in the right mood for mixing, and that could be the time of the day.
[00:12:56] It could also be that, um, it just doesn't work after three cups of coffee anymore, three cups of coffee work for me. If I have to add it for. Uh, several hours. But if I want to get creative, that's actually counterproductive. A lighter breakfast and lots of water works for me much better. I find that after a healthy breakfast, lots of water, maybe some orange juice, I get into a nice mixing flow.
[00:13:23] Much easier than compared to, I dunno, a big breakfast and too much coffee. So that's really important, looking at yourself and being in the best state. The next thing is. Don't mix for too long. A mix is usually not good. After a marathon 14 hour mixing shift, there's a very good chance the second half of it, you're completely fried and you might even introduce more errors or more problems than you solve.
[00:13:55] So knowing when to stop and when to continue another day, that's a really important one. And again, this comes down to self observation. I reckon that modern daws, like my pro tools or whatever, DAW use are an absolute godsend because you have the luxury to just say, okay, I'm at my best now. I've done it all.
[00:14:16] I'm getting exhausted. I'm gonna hit save now and go home and play with my kids, and the next day I come back and pick it up right where I left it, which is amazing. That's a feature that you know, we couldn't always do, especially in the times of analog consults. So what I'm trying to do here is direct you towards a more effortless mixing flow so you can really observe how you feel.
[00:14:44] And this translates into mixing quality quite directly, and that actually makes sense if we link it back to how musicians work. If a musician, if you try to record a musician whose heart is in it, who's is not feeling well. Chances are you won't get good takes out of them. And the same thing applies to you as a mix engineer if you, if you're mixed, you gotta look well after yourself and you gotta be at your very best.
[00:15:09] And then mixing can feel really effortless. So the opposite of effortless, you know, effortless. That's almost like a flow state where I'm getting lost in this space here between the music in front of me, my ears and the speakers, and I'm in my little bubble and time flies by it. I don't even know what's happening.
[00:15:28] Just my hands do things and it's coming together nicely. That's the kind of state that I wanna be anyone mixing. But there's also the opposite, and that is what I would call the mixing uphill battle and that. Feels very differently on the inside. So if you feel frustrated or you go through extensive, tedious work that's just grinding your gears and you're not feeling like you're getting anywhere, or you spend countless hours and you're not getting there, now you're up against something.
[00:15:57] There's some resistance, and that means in this metal state, chances are you can't deliver the best mix already. So it's really important now to look at what's causing it. And there's a range of different options that I probably want to go into much more detail in another live session, but it comes down to things like, are you fighting the song?
[00:16:19] You know, is there something in the song that isn't right? Maybe it wasn't recorded well, or maybe it wasn't performed well, or maybe the arrangement is not. Cohesive, and maybe there's things in the arrangement not working. So all of these things sort of rule out a great mix. So if that's the source material you work with, well tough luck.
[00:16:40] You're not gonna get there. So it's really important to then step back and look at it and sort those things out. Sometimes that means go back and rerecord or change the arrangement or do something about it. Um. A look at workflows that seem very, very time consuming. Like um, drum editing could be one of those things.
[00:17:05] So if you find yourself going through a six hour, I dunno, Tom editing session, this is totally so destroying, and I don't find that once I'm in this mindset. I can't snap out of it and mix creatively and beautifully straight away. It just ruins my day anyway. So I try to get those workflows reduced to the absolute minimum, or if that's not possible, completely separate them.
[00:17:32] So the separation of. Logical, you know, rational task like Tom editing or arranging a session or importing files, managing color coding. Those are the things that are very deliberately separate from the creative work, and I don't do them together. So just to give you an example, if a client gives me a mix, it's very common that I actually sit on the couch with my laptop and a hard drive and headphones on while my wife watches to me to tv, watches TV next to me.
[00:18:03] Import files, sort through them, organize them, renamed them if necessary, color code, do all the administration, nothing creative about it. Occasionally I do set some very basic cues, but extremely basic one, never the detailed ones. I try deliberately not to go into creative workflows there. So, and things like editing and time alignment or pitch correction, that's typically done in that kind of phase.
[00:18:31] And then I save it and close it down and come back to the actual mix another day. I find that this is something that's extremely helpful to me so that I can actually go through the mix effortlessly and don't fight, uh, the mix. Uh, another reason why the mix might not come together is if you try to make the mix sound like something that it doesn't want to be.
[00:18:55] So that could be, if you have a vision mind, you might, uh, find that you want a really loud, rocky, cracking drum sound, but maybe the drummer played actually quite light and very soulful with a lot of feel, but not with a lot of cracking performance. So if you're not trying to force that in the mix, you often find that, yeah, you get there to some degree, but it's really hard to get.
[00:19:24] At a hundred percent you might be able to get there 70% or 60 or 80 or something like that. But to get to a hundred percent, it gets very difficult. So you keep trying and trying and trying it, you never really get there. So that is when you fight the mix by itself, when you try to steer the mix into a direction that it actually doesn't wanna be in.
[00:19:44] So personally. I always let the music guide the mix, so I try not to get too much of a vision in my mind of what I need this to sound like I just saw through the mix, and try to pay attention to the individual takes and try to let them guide me to their sound and their desired envelope and tone and depth.
[00:20:12] And I simply do that by bringing up, let's say, the base in the mix for a little bit. For a short while and leave it a bit too loud so I can hear every node really well, not too loud, just a little bit louder. And then ask myself, okay, what's the bass guitar player doing? And I try to visualize their body language and their face expression, and I try to think about what story out it they're trying to tell me.
[00:20:37] I, I'm always big about stories. I love stories and music and, and once I get the pattern, once I realize, okay, aha, that's what he's doing, and actually now understand there's a core response with something else, then I start to get into a new mindset where the mix was gonna guide me into certain erection.
[00:20:55] I just follow it. I just keep following. And I usually find that this is a very blissful kind of workflow, but I need to. Stay very flexible there and can't really force the mix into a certain direction. I need to let it guide me and I usually find that if I do this well, musicians really appreciate that and it leads to a good sound.
[00:21:18] And you know, the music shines in the mix. So by the end of it, I want my clients. To hear the music and not necessarily mix. If the music, all the details come out beautifully, then the mix is done and all the sound aspects that fall into place naturally might sound like a bit of a weird concept, but I honestly believe that this is something that that really, really helps.
[00:21:43] Okay, so there's more things that we can do. Lemme just check the time for a moment. Um, trying to finish up just near five o'clock. Um, other things that can get you stuck in a mix is the workflow of adding processes and adding process and adding processes. Example, um, a client who I'm currently working with, um, worked with another mix engineer, and, uh, by the end of it, you know, they, we decided to change things around.
[00:22:12] So I got to look at somebody else's session. Um, and when I listened to the initial work, we tried to give them direction. It was really difficult to pinpoint, but what I saw, I pretty much figured out what was going on. Uh, there were just simply too many plugins. Um. And, you know, many dws allow pretty much unlimited plugins.
[00:22:34] And then they were going through, you know, many p plugins on the channel and then buy buses again and more plugins. And that really is a good workflow. Um, I don't want to say in general, but I guess it depends on the situation. Sometimes a heavy handed approach is totally appropriate and needs to be done.
[00:22:53] But in most situations I find that when people stack plugins too much, they add, let's say any queue and tweak it, and it's getting closer, but they're not there yet. So they add a compressor and then they add something else, an ex excite, and then they realize, okay, now we need to readjust the queue. So they add any queue on top, and it's just like stacking and stacking and stacking and, and they never go back.
[00:23:16] So the key is to ask yourself, okay, what did I just do to the sound and how does it make me feel? And if it's, if it's better, cool, then we leave it. But if it's not better, it's often better to just take the plugin away and add another one. Maybe it didn't need any queue. Maybe that was actually totally fine.
[00:23:36] What it actually needs is maybe, I don't know, an expander or, um, uh, compressor with a wide knee and a slow attack or something like that. You, you never know, but the idea of moving on top. Always adding another layer on top is not the wisest idea. If you didn't get there with two, three plugins, maybe just remove some and start again, or try to do it in a simpler way.
[00:23:59] And I find that this is a really important aspect of getting to more natural sound, and that typically speaks to the human emotions better. So people, when they listen to music and hear something, they get to hear, sorry, my notes fell. They hear the musical intent and the emotions behind the music better that way.
[00:24:19] So don't add too many plug-ins. Use the ones it needs, and if there's a three, that's fine. If that's one, that's also fine. If it's none perfect, sometimes it's gotta be seven, but that's, I find relatively rare. Okay. Lemme just get back to my note, my notes. Um, alright, so
[00:24:43] presets. It came up just now when I spoke about, you know, people looking for plug and chains, what presets should I use? Well, my personal opinion is I don't use any, uh, very rarely I use presets for revert. Sometimes I often start with a preset there and then work my way through it and now change it, adjust it.
[00:25:03] But when it comes to accused compression, uh, noise gates. Every single plugin is starting from a default setting, and then I tweak it until it suits the desired sound and it needs to suit the source material. That's the part, the part of it. So personally, I don't suggest you use plugins, but this is something we, sorry, plugin.
[00:25:25] Presets, but this is something we can probably expand on in another live session, another day. Good. There's a lot more that I want to share. For example, the way I use subgroups, how funnel mixes and how I use certain meters to gain stage my, my mix wisely to make my life easier when I mix, let's say an entire album.
[00:25:46] There's a few things that I actually had on my to-do list today, but I guess we need to leave this for another day because we're running out of time. I try to keep this session short, about half an hour. So lemme just sum up a couple of things. Uh, welcome again, thanks for hanging out with me. This is the first time I'm going live here from Mix Artist Studio and I want to keep sharing this kind of content on the Mix Artist Academy website.
[00:26:10] And the very best place to watch those videos is of course right there in the blog. And if you are an email subscriber, please subscribe on this website please. You will get a notification every time a new piece of video or content is out there. Now that I've done this today, I will probably, uh, go into editing mode tomorrow and the day after and take shorter snippets for, uh, social media and publish them there as well.
[00:26:38] So you can re-watch some elements of it. But if you wanna see the entire thing, uh, please go to the blog where you'll find, uh, the entire, uh, section, not just the highlights. Uh, I warmly recommend to, uh, please, uh, sign up to. Please subscribe to the email newsletter and then you get a notification every time something else is out.
[00:27:01] Okay, next time around I will dive deeper into how I organize my sessions and pro tools, how I prepare a session for mixing and how we gain stage wisely. And this is probably come, gonna come up, come up very soon, so stay tuned if you want to hear about it, subscribe to my email newsletter. Uh, go to mixartist.academy and uh, yeah, sign up there so we can stay in touch and I can notify you when more content is out.
[00:27:30] Okay, that's all my notes for today. The Time's Up, it's about five o'clock. Uh, I'll try to do it, uh, every Monday from 4:30 to 5:00 PM. Let's see. Hopefully I get in a good routine and I'll be back. Stay tuned. Subscribe to the email newsletter. Thanks everybody. That's all for today.
Copyright © 2026
Created with
