You finished the mix at 11:47pm. The client signed off an hour ago. Now you’re staring at the export window in your DAW and asking yourself the same questions every engineer asks at this moment of final mix delivery: WAV or AIFF? 24-bit or 16-bit? 44.1 or 48? One file or three? Do they want…
The album got mastered three weeks ago. You moved on. You’re halfway into a new project when their name lights up your phone again. “Hey, can we just bump the vocal up on track 4? Tiny tweak. Shouldn’t take long.” Welcome to the never-done client: pleasant, complimentary, and somehow always finding one more thing. You…
Almost every mix engineer hits this question within their first year of taking on clients. You finish a mix, the client loves it, and they ask: “Can you master it too?” Maybe they don’t have a mastering engineer lined up. Maybe their budget is already stretched. Maybe they just want one point of contact and…
You open the session for the first time. The vocal is clipped. The kick was tracked with the same mic as the snare, three feet away, and you can hear a fan running through every quiet section. The guitarist printed reverb on the DI, the bass was DI’d through a noise gate set wrong, and…
You sent the first pass on Tuesday. They said it was sounding amazing. They had a few notes, you turned them around by Friday. You sent the revision, and then nothing. A week passes. Two. You check the email thread for the hundredth time, wondering if you missed something. You send a gentle bump. Crickets….
You spent two days on the mix. The kick is finally hitting. The vocal sits where it should. The low end is tight. You bounce it, send it, and wait. Then the email comes back. “Something feels off. Can we make it sound more like the rough?” This is demo-itis mixing in its purest form,…