Pro Mixing Secrets: How To
Create Clarity and
Separation in a Busy Mix
By Sara Carter | Simply Mixing
Pro Mixing Secrets: How To Create Clarity and Separation in A Busy Mix
Introduction
First of all, thank you so much for downloading this guide!
In it you’ll find step by step approaches that show you how to build clarity and separation into your mixes and its
written in response to members requests from inside our private Facebook community as well as the personal emails
I’ve received from my awesome email community.
The techniques in this guide cover most genres of music, the most notable exceptions being EDM and dance music,
although whilst these techniques will still apply, I find that the dance music genres tend to have a more specialist
approach to really make the synths and low end elements work together and these would be more suited to their own
guide.
Getting a grip on your mixes
The truth is that it takes a combination of several different techniques to create clarity and separation in a mix and you
might not need all of them, if any at all, depending on the quality of the recorded tracks and the arrangement.
Using the EQ techniques outlined in this guide, you’ll be able to create more space and clarity in your mixes, especially
when you have a mix that has many 10’s of tracks.
The three essential techniques in this guide will get you 90% of the way there and they are:
1. Eliminate nasty resonances
2. Get rid of frequency build-up (particularly in your low end mix)
3. Frequency “slotting” or EQ “carving”
Now, for this guide I'm going to assume the following:
You've spent at least one hour setting your faders and panning to create your static mix.
You know how to use an EQ plugin; what the frequency, gain and Q functions are.
You’ve gone through all the tracks in your session and found the stereo tracks that are really a mono sound and
don’t need to be stereo, like the bass guitar, kick or snare and you’ve made them into a single, mono track.
You’re happy with the arrangement; that it’s not cluttered or filled with unnecessary elements that don’t add
anything useful to the mix.
You have some sort of acoustic treatment installed and your speakers and mixing position have been chosen
with the optimum sound reproduction in mind.
Pro Mixing Secrets: How To Create Clarity and Separation in A Busy Mix
Pro Mixing Secrets: How To Create Clarity and Separation in A Busy Mix
Like I said above, there are many different techniques and circumstances that go into creating clarity and separation in
your mixes and this guide wasn’t intended to cover them all but what I have covered here will get you a good way
towards it!
So, let’s jump in to it!
#1. Eliminate Nasty Resonances
I use a 6 step method to find and reduce (or eliminate) resonances that just sound plain nasty.
Things like whistles, honk, mud and shash ( a great term I learned at the BBC!).
By getting rid of these useless and annoying sounds, you bring clarity to each instrument giving the mix the perception
of space and width as well as making each element of the mix fit together in a natural and pleasing way.
So how do you go about doing that exactly?
It’s important not to lose sight of the fact that what’s most important is how a track fits in the mix as a whole and not
what it sounds like in solo.
You probably already know that you could go through each track in a mix, solo it and get it sounding perfect, only then
to find that when everything is playing together it just sounds plain horrible, it just doesn’t work.
Soloing is a useful tool but it’s not to be relied upon or over used and this technique, whilst carried out in solo, forms
only a small part of the entire mixing process and is there to fix problems, those frequencies that should never be in
the mix in the first place.
Think of it as if you are able to go back in time to the recording session and get a better sound committed “to tape”
than that you’ve been provided or you’ve recorded.
Your Best Approach
Now, the technique I’m about to describe below can be done using two different approaches depending on your level
of experience.
Approach 1
Place an EQ plugin on every track and go through each track systematically using the steps below to find and remove
resonant frequencies.
Pro Mixing Secrets: How To Create Clarity and Separation in A Busy Mix
Pro Mixing Secrets: How To Create Clarity and Separation in A Busy Mix
This approach is best suited to the beginner or inexperienced mixer where you’re not sure if a track sounds good to
begin with, or you don’t know if it has the potential to work with other similar instruments or instruments that have the
same sonic profile.
Approach 2
Listen to each track either in solo or in groups (drums, keys, guitars) and listen for any tracks that jump out at you for
some reason or sound off in any way. You don’t have to know why at this stage, just that it sounds “not quite right” to
your ears.
Then, put an EQ plugin on an insert and go through the steps below.
The more experienced you are, the more likely you’re able to hear these tonal imperfections earlier on, like in the
static mix as it’s playing, with nothing in solo.
So decide where you think you fit and read on!
Headphones
To make absolutely sure it's not your room causing the problem frequencies, use headphones.
Pro Mixing Secrets: How To Create Clarity and Separation in A Busy Mix
Pro Mixing Secrets: How To Create Clarity and Separation in A Busy Mix
Whilst mixing in headphones can be tricky (I personally don’t like it) using headphones for this sort of focused EQ work
will stop you chasing phantom frequencies that your room might be tricking you into thinking are present in your mix
or soloed track.
Using a good set of studio headphones takes your room out of the equation and guarantees a better, more accurate
result. Better still, use the Sonarworks plugin to bring a flatter frequency response to your headphones for ultimate
accuracy.
Step 1
In your EQ plugin of choice, create a node low down in the frequency spectrum, say 10-12Hz and boost its gain
by about 15-18dB using a bell curve.
Make the Q (bandwidth) of the bell curve fairly narrow for example:
Use a Q of 6 in the Fabfilter Pro-Q or the Pro Tools stock EQ plugin
An example of a notch filter that uses a very deep cut.
Pro Mixing Secrets: How To Create Clarity and Separation in A Busy Mix
Pro Mixing Secrets: How To Create Clarity and Separation in A Busy Mix
Step 2
Solo the track and start playback
Take the Freq dial and start to move it higher and higher up the frequency spectrum
Listen for any tone you don’t like the sound of or a ringing or whistling that doesn’t go away as the track plays.
Go with your first instinct, its probably right
Pro Mixing Secrets: How To Create Clarity and Separation in A Busy Mix
Pro Mixing Secrets: How To Create Clarity and Separation in A Busy Mix
Step 3
Take the Q control and see if you can fine tune the bandwidth so it only contains the nasty resonance and none
of the good stuff.
Using an EQ plugin here that allows you to solo that frequency band really is a major help in this step. (Like the
Fabfilter Pro-Q3)
Step 4
Stop playback and bring the gain boost back down to zero dB
Play the solo’d track again and listen for a few seconds to reset your ears
Slowly start to drop the gain dial until the track sounds better to you
Stop as soon as it feels good and try not to go too far, you can always fine tune later in the mixing process when
you are listening to the track in context with all the others.
Switch the frequency band in and out to check that you’ve made an improvement.
Adjust as you see fit.
Pro Mixing Secrets: How To Create Clarity and Separation in A Busy Mix
Pro Mixing Secrets: How To Create Clarity and Separation in A Busy Mix
Step 5
Put a new node in, a little higher in the freq spectrum (as in step 1).
Continue where you left off and find more resonances if they exist.
Pay particular attention to the octave and its multiples of the first resonance.
The first resonance occurs at 750Hz in this example and also in its multiple at 1500Hz.
Step 6
Rinse and repeat!
In step 2, it’s important to determine that the resonance you think you've found isn’t actually a single note being
played by the instrument in question.
If this is the case, the note or frequency you’ve settled on will disappear as the song plays. This doesn’t need fixing as it
passes by so fleetingly it’s not really going to cause you any problems, but if it does continue to annoy you then a
more suitable tool to use would be a dynamic EQ or a multiband compressor.
These tools will automatically grab and reduce the offending note ONLY when it passes a set threshold and therefore,
ONLY when it is a problem and is poking out of the mix.
These two tools will be the topic of another video or blog post, so I won’t go into too much detail about them in this
guide.
Pro Mixing Secrets: How To Create Clarity and Separation in A Busy Mix
Pro Mixing Secrets: How To Create Clarity and Separation in A Busy Mix
Finally, you can use this particular technique to get rid of:
boxiness found in the 300Hz to 600Hz range
nasal issues in the 1k-2k range and harshness found in the 3.5k to 5k range
Grab and Go
Sometimes, you just want to grab an EQ plugin to quickly add clarity or to help a mix element cut through your mix.
By having a preset in your EQ plugin that has a handful of nodes already active and ready to grab and go will help you
move quickly and keep your creative juices flowing.
Have this preset as your default so you can quickly grab a node a go hunting for a frequency to help a particular track
to cut through a busy mix.
Remember to listen in context and NOT IN SOLO!
You can also use it to find and bring out the definition in your bass guitar track by boosting somewhere in the 650 -
900 Hz range without cluttering up the low end mix. Boosting the bass guitar at around 400Hz like this can help it be
audible on smaller speakers, again, without cluttering up the low end mix.
You would do the same the get the snare or kick to cut through the mix. Grab a node in the 2.5kHz zone and go
hunting for the best frequency that the ear can locate to bring clarity to that particular track.
A boost at 3kHz will bring out a piano and a boost at about 5kHz will lift a vocal and a boost at 100Hz will add
warmth.
An example of a Pultec style EQ plugin inside Logic Pro
Pro Mixing Secrets: How To Create Clarity and Separation in A Busy Mix
Pro Mixing Secrets: How To Create Clarity and Separation in A Busy Mix
If you’re not sure where to start, just grab a node and start sweeping around and stop as soon as you get the result you
were looking for and move on.
Don’t dwell or “um and ah” as we say in the UK, you’ll only start to second guess yourself. You can always come back
to it and re-assess later if you find it keeps grabbing your ear as the mix progresses.
Cut Vs Boost
A much cited piece of advice is to use narrow cuts and wide boosts, mainly because these are what sound most natural
to our ears.
As far as choosing to boost or cut, well, there’s no right or wrong choice because when you cut, you’re actually boosting
the neighbouring frequency bands and when you boost you are cutting the neighbouring frequency bands in terms of
the audible result, once you’ve gain matched it.
The only real difference is that you are either adding or taking away gain (or volume) thus affecting your gain structure.
So, do what you feel comes most natural to you and look out for red lights on your meters and you should be fine.
Don’t over think it, just do it and move on.
I usually cut undesirable frequencies and boost the nicer, wanted frequencies because that’s how my brain works.
Cutting is known as subtractive EQ and boosting is known as additive EQ.
Low End Mixing and Eliminating Mud
This next technique serves to clean up and tighten the sub lows, lows and low-mid areas of your mix.
This area is the tell tale give-away to a non-professional mix both in either the lack of it (thin mixes) or too much of it
(muddy mixes).
The reason being that the rooms we tend to mix in can be quite small and therefore, don’t allow the large bass
wavelengths to develop properly before being bounced back and the corners go one better and magnify the
frequencies before they spit them back at us, completely skewing the low end and giving our ears a false impression of
reality.
This creates room modes, which are points in your room where these frequencies bounce around, meet and then
cancel out (null) or re-enforce (peaks) giving the impression of super bass!
Pro Mixing Secrets: How To Create Clarity and Separation in A Busy Mix
Pro Mixing Secrets: How To Create Clarity and Separation in A Busy Mix
Together with room modes, speaker placement and where we sit can also add chaos to our listening environment.
Often we choose the most convenient spot rather than the best sounding spot, again potentially leading to a complete
misrepresentation of the mix.
Imagine setting up your studio monitors in a room mode that boosts 100Hz by 6dB. You will react to this
misrepresentation and think you have an awesome low end but when you take the mix elsewhere, you find it doesn’t
translate well at all and sounds thin and weak.
Invest in some proper acoustic treatment and all will be well. You don’t have to spend a lot, just a few hundred dollars
to create a balanced sounding room to work in and trust.
Make The Low End Mono
Hopefully, as a pre-requisite to the techniques in this guide, you have made sure your low end sources are all mono
UNLESS you have a particular bass synth sound that needs to have some stereo content, depending on the genre of
music you’re mixing or the arrangement.
Typically, the sources I’m talking about are:
1. Kick drum
2. Bass guitar
3. Bass synth
These sources are best panned to the centre. In terms of frequency, I’d say everything below 80Hz needs to be mono.
Keeping the stereo sides free of these low frequencies, help to keep things tight and focused, leaving room for the
other stereo instrument sources like guitars, keyboards, etc to come out and play!
Having got all that cleared up, we can really get on with the second technique which is high passing using EQ filters.
Pro Mixing Secrets: How To Create Clarity and Separation in A Busy Mix
Pro Mixing Secrets: How To Create Clarity and Separation in A Busy Mix
#2. Using High Pass Filters For Clarity
A high pass filter (HPF) is a filter type that eliminates frequencies above a set point, sometimes called the corner
frequency.
To take the famous Spiderman quote: “with great power comes great responsibility”;
using high pass filters gives you the “great power” to completely ruin your mix.
Over-use makes for a thin, harsh sounding mix and under-use leaves you with a muddy, woofy mix that nearly blows
out your car speakers.
Pro Mixing Secrets: How To Create Clarity and Separation in A Busy Mix
Pro Mixing Secrets: How To Create Clarity and Separation in A Busy Mix
Low-Mid Build Up
All instruments have frequency ranges that overlap with other instruments in a mix and the most common area for
this to get out of hand is in the low-mids.
Typically, it’s the 100-250Hz area where this build up occurs because nearly every instrument, including vocals, has
this range in it’s sonic profile, except for the obvious high frequency instruments or percussion.
Filtering is the best way to eliminate low mid build up and is a necessary step to take in every mix to ensure you get
the clarity and separation you need for a pro sounding mix.
Let’s take a look at using high pass filtering:
Rule #1
Always apply a high pass filter in context.
Remember, you’re using the filter to clear up build up’s and overlapping frequencies between two or more instruments
so in order to apply the correct amount you need to hear what the filter is doing.
Rule #2
Apply the filter until you hear it effecting the sound, then stop and come back a tiny bit until just before that audible
change occurs.
With these two rules in mind (not really rules, I just said that to stress their importance!) you are highly unlikely to ruin
your mix, yet at the same time you will have cleared out low end rumbles and overlaps and on your way to getting that
tight, focused low end and also you’ve created more mix headroom so come mastering time, your mastering engineer
(or you!) can make your mix loud.
Low end flab makes your mix bus compressor work really hard and if not controlled, its energy creates audible
pumping that 9 times out of 10 you will hear in the lead vocal. It has the effect of “ducking “ the vocal with every kick
hit for example.
The same thing happens when this flab hits a limiter when you’re trying to make your mix loud enough for release. The
low end blows up and sounds terrible.
Pro Mixing Secrets: How To Create Clarity and Separation in A Busy Mix
Pro Mixing Secrets: How To Create Clarity and Separation in A Busy Mix
Typical High Pass Filter Applications For A
Rock Mix
Kick and Bass
1. Place an EQ plugin on both inserts of the tracks
2. Decide which one is going to be the lowest in your mix (there can be only one!)
3. Listen to the drums and the bass guitar or bass synth
4. Go to the lowest instrument (let’s say the kick) and start the apply a high pass filter from 10Hz moving
it higher until you can hear it start to clean up the sub lows.
5. Do the same on the next track (the bass) and apply the high pass filter.
6. Take the filter higher than the kicks filter until you can hear it make room for the thump of the kick and
the sound becomes much tighter.
7. You’ll typically end up with the kick HPF filter between 15-35Hz
8. You’ll typically send up with the bass HPF filter between 40-60Hz
Rock Bass and Electric Guitars
Pro Mixing Secrets: How To Create Clarity and Separation in A Busy Mix
Pro Mixing Secrets: How To Create Clarity and Separation in A Busy Mix
The bass is already set but the electric guitars need dialling in to crossover into the top end of the bass guitar, so that
together they form one solid wall of guitar POWER!
This is easier to do if all your guitars are routed through a group aux or bus so you can apply just one EQ plugin and
treat all the guitars at once.
1. Solo the guitars and bass during a chorus section
2. Start to take your HPF up the frequency range until the guitars just start to sound thin
3. Pull the HPF back down a tiny bit and edge up and down as you try to find the best roll off frequency
4. Test by bypassing the EQ to see if the muddiness returns
5. Check the blend of the two after this process because the levels will probably need re-balancing.
The best blended sound between the bass guitar and the rhythm guitars should have the two
sounding meshed and powerful, where the bass guitar isn’t overpowering the guitars, in fact, you might think the bass
is a little too low but when you mute it, the guitars sound thin and weightless.
Bring the bass back again, and you’ll hear the full, powerful sound common in all good rock tracks.
I find I usually settle somewhere in the 80-100Hz region for the HPF on electric guitars.
Now, bring back your drums and re-assess how the three elements are sitting together and, whilst in context, re-adjust
any EQ moves you’ve just made so that you are happy with the blend.
Rock Vocals
Pro Mixing Secrets: How To Create Clarity and Separation in A Busy Mix
Pro Mixing Secrets: How To Create Clarity and Separation in A Busy Mix
Now, with your basic instrumentation in a place, bring in the lead vocal.
Again, like the guitars above, place a HPF on the main vocal track and whilst listening to the drums, bass and guitars
slowly creep up the vocal HPF until the muddiness disappears and the vocals sounds like it’s nicely bedded into the
track.
Vocals don’t really occupy the range below 100 Hz, so there’s no reason to have extra unneeded energy muddying up
your vocals. With female vocals you can go a little higher at around 200Hz.
Without this low-mid muddiness, your vocal compression will sound much more solid and consistent too.
If that’s not enough, you might find that there’s a build up in the 200Hz area, so just use a narrowish bell curve, to
search for and remove this build up like we discussed earlier.
You would carry on applying this technique for all your remaining instrument groups with the principle idea being to
remove clashing frequency ranges in similar or like sounding instruments so there is a gentle crossover point between
them and you can imagine them all knitted together along the frequency spectrum.
Effects Returns
An often overlooked area to apply HPF (and LPF) is to your effects returns.
Muddiness can build up really quickly and can have you unwittingly hunting around for the culprit, when really it’s
your reverb returns that are the guilty party.
Use a 250Hz HPF to clean up your reverb as well as a low pass filter (LPF) at the same time to save your high end
getting too harsh and out of control. Start at 6kHz and see how that works for you.
Many effects plugins have a HPF and LPF built in so, by all means, use them instead of an additional EQ plugin to save
some CPU. Sometimes, however, I find I also like to pull out some of those boxy frequencies from the effects returns
so the built in filters won’t be able to handle that.
Pro Mixing Secrets: How To Create Clarity and Separation in A Busy Mix
Pro Mixing Secrets: How To Create Clarity and Separation in A Busy Mix
In a really busy mix, using a HPF might not be enough or it might make certain instruments sound too aggressively
affected and so the next technique can be used instead of, or alongside high pass filtering in another attempt to make
everything fit together and seemingly in their own space.
This is called Frequency Slotting.
#3. Frequency Slotting
Whilst I suspect this might be a made up name by some YouTuber, the principle (regardless of name) is commonly
used to carve out “slots” for the fundamental frequency of an instrument to sit whilst taking away that same
frequency in a similar sounding instrument, like, yes, you guessed it, the good ‘ole kick drum and bass guitar again!
For example, you might want to boost at 60Hz on the kick drum so, you would cut a little 60Hz in the bass guitar.
Pro Mixing Secrets: How To Create Clarity and Separation in A Busy Mix
Pro Mixing Secrets: How To Create Clarity and Separation in A Busy Mix
Eq applied to a kick drum
Complimentary EQ applied to the bass guitar
Pro Mixing Secrets: How To Create Clarity and Separation in A Busy Mix
Pro Mixing Secrets: How To Create Clarity and Separation in A Busy Mix
The same might apply to the guitars and keyboards.
You might want to boost the guitars at 120Hz so, you would cut 120Hz in the keyboards or vice versa, depending on
the production and your mix goals.
It’s used to great effect when working with multiple electric guitar parts.
First, you will probably pan the parts opposite to each other but what can end up here, especially where the parts have
been recorded using the same mics on the same cab in the same position and on the same pick ups, is the parts still
sound kinda mono.
By instantiating an EQ plugin on each guitar track and using a moderately high boosted bell curve with a medium Q,
you would sweep around to find a nice sounding tone to boost, on say the left panned track, then on the right panned
track you would cut that tone.
Then, sweep around using a new bell curve to find a different, yet pleasing, tone in the right hand track and go back to
the left hand track to cut that same tone, in effect applying the opposite EQ to the left panned track.
To make the concept easier to understand, take a look at these screenshots:
Guitar panned left
Pro Mixing Secrets: How To Create Clarity and Separation in A Busy Mix
Pro Mixing Secrets: How To Create Clarity and Separation in A Busy Mix
Guitar panned right
You can see how this “slotting” would compliment the HPF technique to really enable you to get all the
instrumentation to lock together without overcrowding or frequency build up in a busy mix, its well worth sitting down
and planning this out, heck really, you should do it as early in the process as possible, even before anything is
recorded.
That way, you’ll ensure the best possible outcome for your mix and it will make the mixing process go as easy as pie
and faster than a really fast thing.
Clarity
After cutting out the muddiness and boxiness, you will still often need a bit of shine or “air” to really get the clarity
you’re looking for.
Pro Mixing Secrets: How To Create Clarity and Separation in A Busy Mix
Pro Mixing Secrets: How To Create Clarity and Separation in A Busy Mix
Often found in the high frequency range from 8kHz and higher, a little bit of this "air" goes a long way, especially when
added to multiple tracks, so go carefully and sparingly at first to avoid bringing back any harshness you’ve dealt with
earlier.
This is where you would commonly use a shelf filter.
A shelf filter is a filter that allows the boosting or cutting of all the frequencies above the set corner frequency.
A slight shelf boost at 6-10kHz will help to bring out the air in an acoustic guitar and an 8-10kHz shelf boost on the
cymbals can bring shimmer to the drums if they need it.
At the end of the mix, after the car test and the reference checks you may find that your whole mix needs a little top
end shimmer.
I have a Chandler Curve Bender EQ plugin on my mix bus that I go to to make my final tweaks to the entire mix where I
tend to make a 1dB boost using a shelving filter and flick between 12kHz and 16kHz to see if it adds the sheen I’m
missing.
Similarly, using the same EQ, I’ll go to the HPF and roll off around 20Hz from the entire mix.
Pro Mixing Secrets: How To Create Clarity and Separation in A Busy Mix
Pro Mixing Secrets: How To Create Clarity and Separation in A Busy Mix
Conclusion
There’s only so much space in the frequency spectrum to fit all of your tracks into and the larger the arrangement, the
space for each part gets smaller, so taking another look at the arrangement in a busy mix might be the only option you
have left after exhausting the techniques above plus the additional techniques that I haven’t mentioned in this guide.
The more tracks you add to your arrangement, the better you have to be at EQing to make them all fit together so that
they have the clarity and separation you desire.
Pay particular attention to any clashes or overlaps you might create by adding yet another track:
guitars and synths
synths and strings
piano and strings
guitars and vocals
guitars and the snare drum
The list goes on but just knowing that these clashes exist whilst building the arrangement will help you plan it out
better and it’s true when they say “less is more”.
Pro Mixing Secrets: How To Create Clarity and Separation in A Busy Mix
Pro Mixing Secrets: How To Create Clarity and Separation in A Busy Mix
Have a Plan
Keeping a mental tally or better still having a written plan in a notebook will help you keep on top of all your EQing
decisions.
Decide ahead of time which instrument is going to occupy what particular area of the frequency spectrum so you don’t
feel like you’re aimlessly cutting and boosting whilst keeping your fingers crossed that it will all sort itself out in the
end because it won’t, well it hasn’t worked so far for you has it?
Finally, whilst there are a ton of EQ cheatsheets out there you only really need to grasp the following simpler
summary of the frequency spectrum and it will serve you well:
# Common Name Frequency Range
1 Sub Bass 20 Hz - 60 Hz
2 Bass 60 Hz - 250 Hz
3 Low Mids 250 Hz - 500 Hz
4 Midrange 500 Hz - 2 KHz
5 High Mids 2 Khz - 4 kHz
6 Presence 4 kHz - 6 kHz
7 Sheen 6 kHz - 20 kHz
If you’d like more free guides like this you can contact me directly by emailing Sara@simplymixing.com and tell me a
little about your mixing struggles and what you’d find most helpful right now or you can take 5 mins to fill out this
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Keep mixing!
Sara :)
Pro Mixing Secrets: How To Create Clarity and Separation in A Busy Mix
Pro Mixing Secrets: How To Create Clarity and Separation in A Busy Mix
More about the author - Sara Carter
Sara Carter is a BBC trained, mixing and mastering engineer based in Basingstoke in the UK. She started recording and
mixing music in the mid-’90s from a small home studio until eventually landing her dream job working from the
famous BBC's Maida Vale Studios and Broadcasting House in London.
She’s worked with a wide variety of recording artists from Beyoncé and The Black Keys to The Cure and Rod Stewart
and has been credited on records by Corrine Bailey Rae and KT Tunstall amongst many others.
Sara now runs her online mixing and mastering business Music Mix Pro in the UK working with unsigned rock and indie
bands from all over the world. She also writes regularly for the Production Expert blog and has been interviewed on
the Working Class Audio podcast and the Recording Studio Rockstars podcast.
Pro Mixing Secrets: How To Create Clarity and Separation in A Busy Mix