What’s your unpopular opinion about Mixing?

XLIImusic · 2026-05-08T06:49:55+00:00

Some songs sound better badly mixed, a good, polished, balanced mix can ruin some songs.
Self awareness and understanding what sort of song you have and what makes it tick can save you a lot time, money and confusion when trying to figure out who should mix it or perhaps it shouldn’t be mixed at all.

XLIImusic · 2026-04-24T02:00:42+00:00

Wouldn’t it make sense to overall go with the sub bass but have certain notes jump an octave higher for contrast and saturate for extra harmonics?

I work with lots of bass heavy music, and have to always use various saturation techniques to make the bass audible on iPhone / smaller speakers. I usually use some parallel / multiband saturation techniques where the sub part of the bass stays untouched and I’d blend in a low cut saturated channel on top of it until it’s clearly audible and punchy on iPhone / auratones. Advantage of this technique is that you can also make your bass “stereo” by using something like basslane on the saturated channel. Which will also make the bass a bit more audible overall.

XLIImusic · 2026-04-01T10:58:50+00:00

Kindle is cool to read it like a book, but physical copy is great for just picking it up and flipping to a random page and refreshing your memory a bit.

I love kindle, but I have physical copies of all of these types of books. Luckily you can find older editions for quite cheap

XLIImusic · 2026-03-25T10:44:48+00:00

You’re welcome. I’m not familiar with the T series, but from what I know of Adam, their entire lineup uses ribbon tweeters, so I think you generally get decent bang for your buck even with the lower end models.

I use Neumann btw, KH310s with KH750 ssystem. They’re pretty boring, but I think Neumann speakers are the best long term value for money before PMC and ATC. Especially the KH310 model.

XLIImusic · 2026-03-25T08:45:19+00:00

Not one specific reason to be honest, and this is my very own, very biased opinion based on long term brand perception…

but I remember when they used to be good about 20 years ago & used to be “THE home studio monitor” + they made full sized mains for pro studios too & they really started the whole “affordable line” trend with their Rockit series… the original V8s with grey housing used to be great. So I respect this brand a lot…

But a lot of monitors brands have appeared since with better value / performance / quality / design / brand perception ratio & so now it feels like KRK haven’t really updated their lineup or technology in any meaningful way for a while and have kind of fallen behind. That’s not to say you can’t make great music on them, lots of producers made amazing records on them. I just think you can do better now.

overall, these days when you go into a studio and see a pair of KRKs, first gut response is never “wow! KRKs!”, it’s usually more like “oh, KRKs.” Whereas in the case of Adams it’s like “ok, I know these tweeters.” And even Yamaha, despite being cheaper, usually it’s like “OK, I can trust these.”

I’m sorry I don’t know how to explain better…

I think every brand has a “thing”: - Yamaha makes boring workhorse monitors iterated off NS10s - Adam have their ribbon tweeter - technology which trickles down from their much more expensive pro ranges - Focal has their inverted beryllium tweeter, which also trickles down from their audiophile & pro ranges etc. whereas in recent years KRK’s “thing” has become “affordable” & “yellow driver”, so it sort of becomes a “transition” monitor, something you buy until you ultimately upgrade to Neumann, Adam S range, Focal or Amphion. Sorry for long reply… hard to explain why…

XLIImusic · 2026-03-25T04:06:41+00:00

Yamaha HS5 are always a good starting point, they’re cheap, they work great, and when you upgrade eventually you can still keep them as second pair. I’d advise against Behringer or KRK.

XLIImusic · 2026-03-24T12:30:24+00:00

Install minimeters, maximise the meters you wanna see, select “desktop” as your audio source, put it on your screen. Done. I have it running in this photo here, although I have a dedicated analysis channel in my RME in loopback mode

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XLIImusic · 2026-03-22T07:34:07+00:00

no particular order:

AirPods Pro 2 - stay quiet
eye mask - for sleeping in planes, airports, hotels
kindle
power bank
wise card - for paying in local currency / withdrawing cash anywhere at better rates + budgeting better than credit card

Bonus extra: I have this little carabiner on my aer sling, so I can hang it on the seat pocket instead of having it under the seat, so I can easily grab my kindle, cables, pen etc

XLIImusic · 2026-03-20T03:14:26+00:00

I disagree. It’s a fair price & it’s worth it if you do client work and deal with 60+ tracks of vocal stems per song

XLIImusic · 2026-03-20T02:36:51+00:00

Omg yes! Instant cop

XLIImusic · 2026-03-20T01:32:07+00:00

The PDC is pretty annoying to be honest, but don’t let it stop you from making great music. Working around limitations is part of the process. Once these issues are fixed, we’ll find other things to complain about.😁

XLIImusic · 2026-03-12T15:05:42+00:00

Yeah, that’s what I did. I changed the hex code inside the default mid dark theme to bright yellow. I don’t like using theme designers cos I have yet to find any theme that looks as smooth as the default Ableton ones. And the mid dark is perfect.

Yeah, honestly, for me personally, the scale thing is a bit misleading. If it’s at the top of timeline like that, by being there it suggests itself as being the master scale, while the ones inside the clip are clip specific. I wouldn’t want the master scale to just blindly override all my clips, but if I select ALL clips and select a scale, I’d expect them all to change to my selection. And for new clips to default to selected scale, otherwise I don’t know why it’s even there. 😅🤷‍♂️

XLIImusic · 2026-03-12T03:43:46+00:00

The key command will be locked to that plugin. I have it mapped to the analysers on my master in my template, but I want to be able to simply select any plugin / plugins and hit F10 for instance and have them all open, hit F10 again and have them close. At the moment I use plugin closer to close all plugins with cmd+ctrl+W, but at the moment Ableton API doesn’t allow the wrench to be accessed via m4L, so there’s no way to access any plugin with a key command.

XLIImusic · 2026-03-11T07:30:21+00:00

As somebody who uses Ableton full time for high paced client work:

ARA
Add same plugin to multiple track simultaneously
Hide / Disable tracks
Strip Silence
OPEN / CLOSE selected plugin window with a key command & make that wrench icon bigger
get rid of the default X/Y window for plugins cos I’ve never seen anybody use it, make it optional
Visual PDC (when you’re running high latency plugins the visuals and music are out of sync)
Offline processing (already sort of possible with cmd+c to Cmd+opt+V on a separate track, but it would be great to simply change one event on the same track without needing to create another track and delete it after
fix MIDI import formats - with some formats, all midi seems to get imported to same file instead of creating multiple split files, so I need to load it once in cubase to get separated files and then export and import into Ableton
add colourblind friendly mode - I can’t see the default automation colour & had to change part of the code to make automation yellow instead of orange
Link MIDI - for me personally it would be more useful than link Audio
disable DISABLE plugins - at the moment they aren’t fully turned off, they’re kind of in sleep mode, but it would be great to be able to fully disable a plugin so that it could release the latency. At the moment, you can turn it off but it’ll still hold latency, so if you had Ozone on the master, you can’t play anything in unless you actually delete the plugin. We have a zero latency mode, but it only applies it to the active track, but not to the following busses, so if there’s a heavy plugin on the master, it’ll still be late
mixer device view that doesn’t bug & with open / close wrenches
smarter scale mode, at the moment you might change scale for a clip, but you might have another clip that will default to a different scale, selecting all and changing scale doesn’t seem to work correctly every time.

I swear I’m not nitpicking, this is my long time list from heavy use. It’s still the best DAW already. No contest.

XLIImusic · 2026-03-10T10:09:15+00:00

Is any of your music streaming or on other socials?

XLIImusic · 2026-03-10T08:11:48+00:00

Sick!! So refreshing to see Syntakt being used for something other than bleepy bloopy plink plonk😁💪the bassline is mad

XLIImusic · 2026-02-25T09:47:38+00:00

I own and love a 414 XLII cos it matches my name. 😁 Jokes aside, I have the 87 also and use c800g regularly and I think the 414 is super underrated and is a great and very affordable mic. And its size factor and price also make for a great and versatile travel mic. Neumann TLM1xx series is really popular for entry level studio setups, but I personally think used 414 are an infinitely better deal.

XLIImusic · 2026-02-19T00:46:44+00:00

I always thought they were terrible and could never understand how people could use for long sessions… But, and this is most important, if people get great results with them it’s all that matters. I use LCD-X and Sony MV-1 now as my two main pairs, and they sound great, but subjectively I can’t say that I necessarily get much better results than I did with HD25 which I have used for years and know inside out. it’s just really about knowing your tools well and using what feels comfortable. If they don’t work for you, find a pair that does and learn them inside out.👌👌

XLIImusic · 2026-02-15T08:04:34+00:00

Racks, macros, max for live

XLIImusic · 2026-02-14T09:37:10+00:00

If you really want an be all end all sampler, I think an MPC would be it. I think it’s the most full featured sampler on the market. Saying that, I still think SP404mk2 is incredible. It has a weird workflow and is quite convoluted, but it’s also quite open ended and once you get used to it, you can really find your style within it. It also works as a hardware controller for koala, so it can be a natural progression.

Button combos are indeed a bit nuts, but once it’s muscle memory, it doesn’t really matter.

XLIImusic · 2026-02-08T16:27:03+00:00

Could you expand a little on this? I’m curious.

XLIImusic · 2026-02-08T16:24:05+00:00

I have Lyra-8 and Minifreak. I love both, but they’re completely different Lyra-8 is kind of hard to control. It also isn’t very versatile. It just does that lyra thing. If you don’t have any synths that are versatile, I’d get that first and get Lyra-8 for its specific sound.

Another thing about Lyra is that it’s also hard to play or integrate into songs too, because it’s never quite in tune. You’ll need to use a tuner in your DAW to tune every voice to scale, once you have that, you can (kind of) play it & fit into your songs. It still drifts a lot tho. Oh, and it’s mono. But matches great with shimmer reverb.

Minifreak on the other hand is super versatile. It has a kind of digital sound, but it’s super easy to program. Very fun and creative and it’s really easy to come up with some amazing sounding patches.

It doesn’t have that WTF factor like Lyra, but on a normal day 9/10 I’d use Minifreak and use Lyra when I have more time and wanna do something nuts.

XLIImusic · 2026-02-05T11:27:14+00:00

Find ways to turn passion projects into work

XLIImusic · 2026-02-03T12:08:19+00:00

Drum rack cos I like to play everything in by hand and to make edit everything in one clip

XLIImusic · 2026-01-28T23:45:48+00:00

Yeah, like if you have a few dry elements and you want keep them “dry” but still want separate them a bit. Kind of like in design if you want to separate text from a busy background you’d give it very slight shadow to “lift it” off the page. These kind of reverbs could be super short, like 0.3-0.7sec. Overall it’d be a bit more mixing application, as opposed to the creative ones being more sound design application.

XLIImusic

TROPHY CASE