what technique/tool/software/equipment has improved your mixes the most..?

[mjolnir]

consider the modular layout of an SSL console and replicate the advantages

[Razzia]

Honestly... time off, distance.
It wasn't something I consciously chose to do. I'd have a stretch where I was distracted with something else for months or just avoiding music because having to shake the rust off can be daunting. Then I'd fall back in love with it and listen to my older mixes/music with much more clarity as to where I went wrong

[Andreya_Autumn]

- HPF'ing all relevant signals etc etc

Interesting. Each instance of highpass filtering introduces a level increase and changes of harmonic content even if your cutoff is way below the signal's fundamental. This is easy to deal with if you just HPF a few particular signals, but if I'm understanding correctly you have potentially several instances of HPF on each track in a project. How do you deal with all those accumulative changes?

If you use linear filters (linear as in non-distorting, not linear phase), this is just not true. Changes in harmonic content would only happen if the filter is non-linear.

Using a non-linear filter for this task is not what I usually do, and I doubt the person who wrote that post does either. You certainly *can* do that. The sonic changes in the passband are at least as likely to sound better as worse. Though indeed I would do that once, not over and over.

Now it is true you *may* get a peak-to-peak increase if your high pass filter has some resonance and there's signal around the cutoff. You will also introduce phase shift around the HPF cutoff. Both of these are generally quite unproblematic, even cumulatively.

[Sound_Bear]

- HPF'ing all relevant signals etc etc

Interesting. Each instance of highpass filtering introduces a level increase and changes of harmonic content even if your cutoff is way below the signal's fundamental. This is easy to deal with if you just HPF a few particular signals, but if I'm understanding correctly you have potentially several instances of HPF on each track in a project. How do you deal with all those accumulative changes?

If you use linear filters (linear as in non-distorting, not linear phase), this is just not true. Changes in harmonic content would only happen if the filter is non-linear.

Using a non-linear filter for this task is not what I usually do, and I doubt the person who wrote that post does either. You certainly *can* do that. The sonic changes in the passband are at least as likely to sound better as worse. Though indeed I would do that once, not over and over.

Now it is true you *may* get a peak-to-peak increase if your high pass filter has some resonance and there's signal around the cutoff. You will also introduce phase shift around the HPF cutoff. Both of these are generally quite unproblematic, even cumulatively.

Please list a couple example plugins for linear and non-linear filters as per your outline. Also, I'd be genuinely stoked to see an oscilloscope screenshot where you put a slightly soft-clipped sine wave at 100 Hz through a highpass or low shelf at 40 Hz (these are arbitrary values) and your waveform doesn't change.

[Ah_Dziz]

Moving from multi track recorders with mixers and hardware synth to DAWs and plugins was the move for me.

For a very specific purchase that changed my workflow the most it was getting the old waves platinum bundle back in the day when I still ran a studio commercially. It was when I got that that I really learned how to use compression and gating and how to program reverbs etc. before that I had been mostly doing trial and error outside of making synth patches.

[Ah_Dziz]

The biggest move was the move from 4 track cassette to using cool edit to edit and process things digitally.

[heyheycnv]

Room treatment (OC703) and Sonarworks... then Arc Studio. You can't mix what you can't hear. Once I could actually hear what the music really sounded like, I got a lot faster with a lot less edits requested from mastering. It's not as sexy as a new mic or keyboard or whatever, but it made the most difference in my nearly 50 year career.

Agree. After treatment and Sonarworks my mixes sound so much better on everything they get played on.

Getting to a vibe and sound I really love nothing beats Satin for me. EQ/tone, compression, glue, distortion, delay/flange. It's a magical vst.

[Andreya_Autumn]

Please list a couple example plugins for linear and non-linear filters as per your outline. Also, I'd be genuinely stoked to see an oscilloscope screenshot where you put a slightly soft-clipped sine wave at 100 Hz through a highpass or low shelf at 40 Hz (these are arbitrary values) and your waveform doesn't change.

Linear (non-distorting) filters: Almost every stock DAW EQ and most other digital EQs, say Fabfilter Pro-Q, etc etc.

Non-Linear filters: Fabfilter Volcano, Cytomic the Scream, most of the filters in analog synth emulations, etc etc.


And yes, even with the former type of filter you will (usually) see a change in the shape of the waveform after filtering. But this does not mean that the harmonic content has changed! The filter will change the phase relationships inside your signal. ...unless it's a special kind of filter that does not do this but instead has some latency and pre-ringing, but let's save that for another time.

Phase changes are little delays/time-offsets. But unlike a regular delay, they affect different frequencies by different amounts! In analog circuits, this happens because of things like slow vibrations having a hard time getting through capacitors, whereas fast ones struggle to get through resistors (simplifying here). Related phenomena are also present in digital filters. In fact the phase shift is what makes the filters work in the first place.

But the point is, your slightly distorted sine wave has overtones in it after distorting. Those vibrate at different (whole-numbered) ratios, and the fast and slow ones get delayed by different amounts. This changes the shape of the wave, without changing the harmonic contents! See this illustration: https://www.desmos.com/calculator/xewqdmatd8

The formula there says "Take the first 31 harmonics in the overtone series, each one quieter than the last". And the p slider controls the phase relationships betwee them. If you made a synth play all these waveforms, and put a spectrum analyzer after, it would show the same image constantly.

[Andreya_Autumn]

And if the Desmos feels unmusical, here's some screenshots as requested:

Without.png

With.png

Same harmonic contents, different waveshape.

[Raddler1]

I have this technique I've been swearing by lately. Play one of your reference tracks in let's say itunes, then open your DAW and mute the master and just hit play and let the timeline roll along silently while listening to your reference track in the background. At that point, really start to focus on what you're hearing while continuously staring at your DAW ONLY (don't have any other windows open). Then, start to question and observe things like the levels of individual elements (esp the kick and bass), the width and depth of the mix, brightness, reverb tails etc...Even go as far as pretending that what you're hearing is something you created and ask yourself, would I have a tendency to want to make the kick louder, hats brighter, EQ the bass etc.. Whatever you would be inclined to change is your issue. It's kinda like reverse engineering to reveal your mixing errors. Might sound like a strange technique, but it works wonders for me. First time I did this was a revelation how horribly loud and bright my cymbals were.

Obviously easier to purchase an A/B plugin, but regardless how you reference the track, the trick is to really look at your DAW while you're doing this. Something about what we see and hear and how it affects our mixing decisions.

[Tendou]

I spend about 3k to finally treat my room. It was a lot of work too but the HOFA products do have real quality. The difference is night and day, I even typing on my keyboard was different (in a good way). It was the best decision Ive ever made

[DCrown]

ReaEq and ReaComp and Waves Renaissance plugins are the tools I use regularly. You improve by doing - learning by doing. Chose the best mics for your room and instrument, that's of course only possible if you get the opportunity to test several mics.
The most important things are composing, song writing and arrangement skills and of course performance skills, all these skills will improve your mixes a very lot

[Sound_Bear]

Please list a couple example plugins for linear and non-linear filters as per your outline. Also, I'd be genuinely stoked to see an oscilloscope screenshot where you put a slightly soft-clipped sine wave at 100 Hz through a highpass or low shelf at 40 Hz (these are arbitrary values) and your waveform doesn't change.

Linear (non-distorting) filters: Almost every stock DAW EQ and most other digital EQs, say Fabfilter Pro-Q, etc etc.

Non-Linear filters: Fabfilter Volcano, Cytomic the Scream, most of the filters in analog synth emulations, etc etc.


And yes, even with the former type of filter you will (usually) see a change in the shape of the waveform after filtering. But this does not mean that the harmonic content has changed! The filter will change the phase relationships inside your signal. ...unless it's a special kind of filter that does not do this but instead has some latency and pre-ringing, but let's save that for another time.

Phase changes are little delays/time-offsets. But unlike a regular delay, they affect different frequencies by different amounts! In analog circuits, this happens because of things like slow vibrations having a hard time getting through capacitors, whereas fast ones struggle to get through resistors (simplifying here). Related phenomena are also present in digital filters. In fact the phase shift is what makes the filters work in the first place.

But the point is, your slightly distorted sine wave has overtones in it after distorting. Those vibrate at different (whole-numbered) ratios, and the fast and slow ones get delayed by different amounts. This changes the shape of the wave, without changing the harmonic contents! See this illustration: https://www.desmos.com/calculator/xewqdmatd8

The formula there says "Take the first 31 harmonics in the overtone series, each one quieter than the last". And the p slider controls the phase relationships betwee them. If you made a synth play all these waveforms, and put a spectrum analyzer after, it would show the same image constantly.

First off, I appreciate the in-depth reply. However, as far as I can see, there's some discrepancy between what you describe and what I outlined - I don't see any soft clipping in the upper image. Let me just reference this video by Paul Frindle for now, which you can recreate on practically any setup with stock plugins, and let me know if you disagree that aside from the level increase there's a change in harmonic content (which does sound like phase shifting and may or may not be negligible depending on context).



Edit - re: phase shifting, I should have said change in timbre instead of change in harmonic content, strictly speaking. That doesn't change that I'm genuinely interested whether someone who inserts HPF after every reverb or saturation on the basis that these may introduce rumble or subharmonics really understands what they're dealing with on the technical (as opposed to habitual) level. All the more if they, like the user I was responding to, use lots of visualization and therefore have more ways to detect the side effects of the HPF than someone who mixes only by (relatively untrained) ears.

[Andreya_Autumn]

Ok. Just to be 100% clear: "Harmonic content" as I understand it means, which frequencies are present in a sound, and at what relative amplitudes. Nothing more or less. This is most effectively visualized by a spectrum analyzer. "Timbre" is ultimately a bit more subjective. Not a technical measurement. But the harmonic content as defined above is definitely the thing that shapes timbre most directly.


Now, the fact that the waveform I showed above isn't exactly the same one as was used in that video is irrelevant. A soft clipped sine is just a periodic wave with some harmonics in it, and so is the waveform I used for those screenshots. The phenomenon observed is the same. And indeed, his results are the same as mine! Turning on the HPF offsets the relative phases of the harmonics, which changes the *shape* of the wave, but *does not change* its harmonic contents.

If he had shown a spectrum analyzer in that video as well, I'm fully confident it would've wiggled a little at the moment he turned the filter on, but afterwards showed the exact same frequencies at the same relative amplitudes, same as in my test. Our ears are spectrum analyzers too, and listening to that video I hear no difference when the filter comes on, nor do I expect to.

Now, the harmonic contents do not change, I assure you. But does the timbre change? Well, most people would say no, as the conventional understanding is that we can't hear phase shifts. In practice that doesn't always hold water though. It is true for the pure sine wave case. "I can hear that it's happening half a cycle later." isn't an experience anyone has... But for more complex waves we do sometimes hear a difference. The most plausible explanation being that our listening systems (and our ears) are not fully linear, so changes in total amplitude can matter. That waveform peaking a bit higher may cause your headphones/speakers/ears/room to react a bit differently to it.

When I did the screenshots above, I did notice such a phenomenon actually! The filtered wave sounded subtly different than the unfiltered one, even though the harmonic contents are identical. Only at fairly loud volume on headphones, which agrees with the above theory. Another thing you can test is to listen and compare a sawtooth wave with and without the polarity switch off. Most headphones can sound very noticeably different when the jump in the waveform is outwards compared to inwards.

So that's the grain of truth in what you're saying: filters introduce phase shift, and unless you're dealing with just a simple sine wave, phase shifts *can* impact perceived timbre. And more pragmatically, if your filter happens to increase amplitude, you've lost a bit of headroom, which you might've needed if you're worried about loudness.

But here's the thing: These highpass filters are going on complex signals, not super steady period waves like these. On realistic signals, the phase interactions are complex enough that you're not often going to see large amplitude changes. And if you do, amplitude is just as likely to decrease as to increase. And the aforementioned timbral changes from phase shifts range from subtle to inaudible, so you might not get any of that either. And again, if you do it's about as likely to sound better as worse!

I'm sure you are right though that lots of folks mistakenly think these HPFs have no side effects. And for sure, I don't advice throwing HPFs on tracks for no reason! If there's nothing down there, no need to filter.

But I think I can fairly confidently say I understand the repercussions. And I would still advice folks to filter bass out of every track that doesn't need it*. Any cumulative side effects of the filters are will be far less problematic than the muddy low end.

*And not just bass! Same principle applies in every part of the spectrum really: removing unneeded frequencies in one track makes room for other elements in that range.