Mixing Mistakes I Made (So You Don't Have To)

I've made every mixing mistake. Some of them for years before I figured out what I was doing wrong. Here's the stuff I wish someone had told me when I started.

Mixing Loud

I used to mix with my monitors cranked. Everything sounded great. Huge, punchy, exciting.

Then I'd listen the next day at reasonable volume and wonder why it sounded thin and harsh.

Loud playback tricks your brain. The Fletcher-Munson curve is real—at high volumes, you perceive more bass and treble. So you end up mixing with less of both, and when you listen at normal levels, the lows and highs disappear.

Mix quiet. Obnoxiously quiet. If it sounds good at conversation volume, it'll sound even better loud. The reverse isn't true.

The Solo Button Trap

I spent so much time making things sound perfect in solo. That kick drum? Punchy, tight, tons of low end. The snare? Crisp, present, great tone.

Then I'd un-solo everything and it was mud. The kick I'd spent 20 minutes crafting was fighting with the bass. The snare I'd EQ'd to perfection was masked by the guitars.

Solo lies to you. What sounds good alone often sounds bad in context. Now I only solo to find problems—a weird resonance, a click, a noise. All tonal decisions happen with everything playing.

Over-Processing

More plugins = better mix, right?

I had chains that were embarrassing. EQ, then compression, then another EQ, then saturation, then limiting, then more EQ to "fix" what the saturation did. On every track.

Most of that processing was fighting itself. The compressor undid what the EQ did. The saturation added frequencies I then cut with the second EQ.

Now my channels have maybe 2-3 plugins. Sometimes just one. Sometimes none. The mix got better when I stopped trying to "fix" things and started trying to make good recording/arrangement decisions instead.

Ignoring Arrangement

This is the big one. No amount of mixing can fix a bad arrangement.

If your verse has 47 tracks playing simultaneously, it's going to sound cluttered. EQ won't fix it. Panning won't fix it. Nothing will fix it except muting things.

I've had mixes where the breakthrough moment was removing tracks, not adding processing. That rhythm guitar you spent three hours recording? Maybe it doesn't need to be there. That pad that fills out the verse? Maybe it's fighting with the vocal.

Mixing is not arrangement. If you're constantly fighting for space, the problem is probably that there's too much stuff.

Chasing Loudness

For years, I smashed limiters. -6 LUFS? -4 LUFS? I wanted it LOUD.

The mixes sounded flat. No dynamics. The drops didn't hit because there was nowhere to go. Everything was at 11 all the time.

Loudness wars are over. Spotify normalizes everything anyway. That hyper-limited master you uploaded? They turned it down to match everything else. Meanwhile, you crushed all the dynamics for nothing.

Now I master to around -14 LUFS integrated, peaks around -1dB true peak. It actually sounds louder than my old hyper-compressed stuff because it has room to breathe.

Comparison-itis

I'd pull up a reference track and immediately feel like my mix was garbage. The reference had this huge low end, this crisp top, this width. Mine sounded like cardboard.

What I didn't realize: that reference was mastered. Of course it sounded bigger. Comparing your mix to a mastered track is like comparing your sketch to a finished painting.

If you're going to reference, level-match (turn the reference down so the perceived loudness is similar). And compare to the mix stage of professional work if you can find it. You'll feel a lot better.

Not Taking Breaks

I'd sit in the studio for 6 hours making "tweaks." At hour 6, I'd made the mix worse than hour 2, but I couldn't tell because my ears were fried.

Ear fatigue is real. After 30-60 minutes, your perception changes. You stop hearing the high end as clearly. You start making bad decisions to compensate.

Take breaks. Every 45 minutes, walk away for 10. Check your mix the next day before you call it done. You'll catch stuff you missed.

The Big Picture

Most mixing mistakes come from the same place: not trusting the process and overcompensating.

Trust that quiet monitoring reveals problems. Trust that simple processing is usually enough. Trust that the arrangement is the foundation. Trust that your first instinct was probably right.

The mixes that took me 2 hours are usually better than the ones that took 8. At some point, you're not improving—you're just anxious and making changes to feel productive.

Ship it. Move on. The next one will be better.