After setting the initial balance, there are three goals that I consistently pursue to achieve a clean mix.
In this tutorial, I dissect the full mixing process of a house track I recently made. In particular, I made use of iZotope’s Ozone 11 suite and some BABY Audio plugins for send effects and to spice things up. All plugins mentioned in this article are available on Rent-to-Own.
Isn’t Ozone 11 a mastering suite?
There’s more to iZotope’s Ozone than meets the eye. I’ve always considered the suite to be a one-stop shop for mastering—but when I was challenged to mix a song using its plugins, I thought, “Why not?”
Mixing with Ozone doesn’t sound that controversial, even though iZotope’s Neutron suite is the more obvious choice. As a fan of everything that can serve more than one purpose, I applaud the idea; Ozone 11 is not only a beast when it comes to mastering, but it’s also more than decent for mixing duties—both for the bread-and-butter tasks as well as for more specialized needs.
Get the free stems for the house track
Here are the stems and complete Logic Pro session so you can try out the techniques for yourself and maybe make an even better mix than I was able to. Check them out along with the tutorial video above, where I demonstrate the most important mix moves I made.
With all of that out of the way, there are three main goals I pursue in every mix to transform a song into something truly polished: separation, glue, and movement. We’ll dive into each of these in more detail below—but first, let’s get a bird’s-eye view of the mix.
Busing and top-down mixing
For this session, I have all of my individual audio tracks and auxes routed to buses such as the drum bus, bass bus (where the kick and bass live), instrument bus, and vocal bus, as well as one for all send effects.
From here, everything instrumental is routed to a beat bus, and everything vocals-related to a vox bus. This way, I can export the instrumental or acapella version by just muting one of them. These then go to the mix bus, which in turn goes to the master bus, and this is where I begin processing in this mix—I take a top-down approach. This is a mixing technique where you start at the very end of the mix (the stereo bus) and work your way back to the details (individual tracks).
The static mix
I have an initial fader and panning balance that I’m pleased with before moving on to processing—this is called the static mix. It’s like how when painting a wall, you scrape off old paint, putty the holes, and clean up before you even think about dipping the brush. After making a habit out of cleaning up the mixing session before starting with the processors, my mixes have improved a ton.
I almost always use mixing templates with all buses and auxes ready to go. These speed up my work by at least 30 minutes in every mix. You can have mine if you want to give them a go, tweak them to your liking, or just get some ideas on how to make your own. In addition to the templates, you’ll also get the Logic session I used for this song, along with the stems as audio files, so you can mix the song yourself if you want to.
Reference track
I used the track “Stop Playing With My Mind” by Barbara Tucker and Darryl D’Bonneau for a reference mix. I inserted it at the bottom of the session, muted, right next to the master fader, and routed to the stereo out. Whenever I wanted to check the relationships between tracks and groups, I would refer to this song, just hitting the solo button on and off to compare.
Now, on to crushing the three goals!
1. Separation
I want each track to shine in the mix. That’s not to say all tracks should be equally loud, but they should all have their place—some in the foreground, some in the background, and some on the sides and in the middle. And in really good mixes, some tracks have varying emphasis throughout the song.
The master bus
I started with an EQ on the master bus, boosting the highs by almost 2 dB and increasing the lower mid-range at 288 Hz by 1.8 dB, with a slight bell dip around 40 Hz. This enhanced separation, making the mix clearer and more open.
Still on the master bus, I boosted the mid-range from approximately 300 Hz to 3 kHz, treating an initial smiley curve to bring balance. I love a good smile just as much as the next person, and the amazing bass and the sizzling highs can be tempting to pursue when mixing—but not at the cost of balance. I don’t know who coined it, but a popular phrase in the audio world is that “the magic is in the mid-range.”
Kick processing
For the kick, I used the Ozone Imager to boost the lower mids from 100 Hz to 1.5 kHz, creating an artificial stereo field that makes the kick fuller. Using imagers is somewhat controversial, as it may lead to phase issues and other unwanted artifacts. And when using it on low-end material such as a kick, it can feel a bit “off.”
But, I didn’t touch the subs, and the Ozone Imager is quite gentle with the material in my experience. After double checking on headphones and my two sets of speakers, I found no unwanted reduction in quality—only the sweet, intentional benefits I was hoping for.
One thing I often do when I’m unsure whether or not something is in or out of phase is use a correlation meter. Logic has a great one in the stock Multimeter plugin, but there are other great options, both paid and free.
I also used the Impact plugin to add punch to the subs. Impact is an advanced envelope shaper, where you can split the audio into up to four bands and affect the ranges you prefer. This means you can leave certain frequencies untouched for more surgical shaping.
To give the kick a bit more body, weight, and consistency, I also added some gentle compression using the Ozone Dynamics plugin.
Bass processing
Similar to the kick, I used the Imager and Dynamics on the bass, enhancing everything above 200 Hz to add presence and clarity by spreading the low-mid texture out in the stereo field. Additionally, I added an instance of the Ozone Exciter to get some subtle saturation, emphasizing the body of the sound.
Drum loop processing
Along with a kick, clap, and two hi-hats were two drum loops, one drum and bass loop, and one conga loop. The former cut nicely through the mix and were placed slightly to the left. Conversely, the latter felt somewhat muffled and anonymous, so I compressed them to give them less dynamic variation and become more “in-your-face,” even though they’re supposed to live quite behind in the mix.
I routed both loops to one aux each, hard panned to opposite sides and featuring separate versions of BABY Audio’s Crystalline with slightly different settings. This made both loops sound richer and made them feel as though they were surrounding the centralized kick and clap sounds. Crystalline offers an array of useful functions like synced decay times and built-in ducking—it’s fun and fast to use.
Instrument bus processing
I treated everything except percussion and bass with an instance of Ozone’s Clarity. This plugin makes the source material clearer by dynamically suppressing certain frequencies while making other parts of the spectrum punchier and more intelligible. In this case, I suppressed the subs and the highs and made the low mids more present, while still avoiding muddiness.
Right after, I inserted the stock Logic compressor to apply sidechain compression with the kick as the source, pocketing the upper frequencies of the kick to make it stand out more.
All in all, these steps helped achieve the goal of separation, though I’m always experimenting with different techniques to get closer.
2. Glue
The second goal is “glue”—the opposite of separation—which binds everything together.
The clap
The clap, which in this song operates like the snare, needed to melt together better with the rest of the percussive sounds. I sent this track to a bus sporting an instance of Crystalline, and tweaked the send level so I could barely hear the effect in the context of the mix. This created the feeling of glue without the clap sounding wet.
The main melody
In this song, the main melody consists of a series of minimalistic key plucks, split into a left and right channel with some pitch processing (done in the production stage) to make them bigger. To expand the presence of these, I routed them into an aux, again consisting of an instance of BABY Audio’s Crystalline, making the keys glue more naturally with the rest of the mix.
The master bus
I expanded on the master bus’ plugin chain with a series of plugins that aimed to glue the tracks together into a cohesive whole.
1. Stabilizer
I inserted an instance of Ozone’s Stabilizer on the master bus, using a preset to soften transients and smooth out some sharpness. This plugin is similar to oeksound’s Soothe2 and BABY Audio’s Smooth Operator, suppressing certain frequencies intelligently. Out with the bad, and in with the good.
2. Spectral Shaper
This plugin also lives in the Soothe2 soundscape. I used this to clean up the frequencies below 40 Hz, ensuring a more cohesive low end. I tried the same thing using a multi-band compressor, but the result was slightly smoother with this plugin.
3. Impact
Here, I expanded the lower mids while slightly reducing the higher mids, highs, and subs, balancing out previous enhancements on the kick. It also retrieved some of the transients tamed by the Stabilizer. I guess I was doing some pushing and pulling at this point, but it’s all about finding the sweet spot.
4. Low End Focus
With this plugin, I smoothed out the low end even more and made it a bit more intelligible. I set the cut-off point at around 260 Hz, including some of the low mids in the processing, as opposed to what I did with the Spectral Shaper.
5. Maximizer
I used the Maximizer plugin as an upward compressor as opposed to a limiter (a quite welcome new feature in Ozone 11), adding punch to the percussion with transient emphasis.
6. Vintage Limiter
With True Peak disabled and a ceiling at -2 dB, the Analog setting fitted best, providing slight gain reduction and further cohesion. I turned down the output to compensate for the increase in volume, saving the final volume maximization to the end.
7. Maximizer (again)
This was the final limiter in the mix, boosting the volume about 10 dB (I mix low). I used IRC (Intelligent Release Control) 3 Balanced, which sounded best on this material, with True Peak disabled and -1 dB for the output to ensure no rogue peaks went into the red.
With these plugins enabled, I found myself content with the result, and could easily have left the mix at this point. However, there was one more goal to be achieved—making the mix ear-catching and emotionally rich. I needed to facilitate some movement.
3. Movement
The third and final goal is to create movement in the mix through automation and sidechaining.
Volume automation
On the mix bus, I automate the level by about 1 dB before the drop, creating dynamic shifts. This is a classic trick that gives the drop or chorus more impact. Since the dip in volume is only 1 dB, you don’t necessarily hear it, but you certainly feel it.
Panning automation
Midway through the song, there’s a variation where most of the bass frequencies are muted. I made a pan automation so that the bongo loop switches from being slightly panned to the right to being hard panned to the left. This is yet another trick to give the drop some impact.
BABY Audio wizardry
I inserted some instances of BABY Audio’s Transit on the instrument bus and the mix bus. On some of them, I created a combination of delay and reverb throws and automated them so they would come in and out of the soundscape to create some interest and flavor.
In conjunction with the transitions, I also added some riser and downfall effects, such as white noise sweeps and laser sounds—all within the plugin, with no additional synths or samples needed. This is why I absolutely adore Transit; you can make the song move in surprising ways just by using the built-in presets, and when you start tweaking, it’s like opening Pandora’s box.
The kick and bass
By inserting a stock compressor on the bass and using the kick as a sidechain input, I created a groove where the sustain of the kick bleeds into the bass, enhancing the rhythmic feel. As a result, the low end started moving and grooving in a pleasing way.
The 3 goals behind a clean mix: Conclusion
After setting the overall balance of a track using the volume faders and the pan pots, these three goals are my top priorities in every mix. And fortunately, having access to state-of-the-art audio plugin technology makes reaching these goals a breeze—it’s a rare pleasure to use imagers, saturators, and envelope shapers with so little unwanted artifacts.
So, here comes my last recommendation—give some of these plugins a spin (they have free trials) and see how they can enhance your sound. Please note, though, that simply inserting plugins on an unbalanced mix and exaggerating the settings is a surefire way to end up disappointed. So, lock in your levels and tweak with intention, and gold linings will start to appear around your songs. Happy mixing!
Try iZotope’s Ozone for free, and then rent-to-own it until it’s yours:
August 23, 2024
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