Well this is one of the conundrums for a mixing engineer--you can obviously mix a track to sound amazing on a specific system but is it really worth the song sounding off on other systems?

Obviously, due to the constraints of specific types of speakers your song will sound very strange if yo, for instance, try to get bass out of small laptop speakers. By boosting the low end you're missing you will get a CRAZY bassy mix when you switch over to something like a pair of Beats. (Not to mention there are frequencies that just can't be replicated on speakers that small). Like Artless Venture said, you have to trust your monitors and get the mix as perfect as you can there and it will hopefully translate to other systems.

Not sure about the high-end distortion? That sounds like it might be a playback issue or a mix imbalance or something

i wouldn't say there's too much going on right now but with the state of your mix it's hard to distinguish between the arrangement being too dense and the mix being too raw. i'd spend some time parsing out the melody and the chords--you probably want to highlight the most important track element so I'd give the melody more room to breathe

I find that getting a diverse sample pack and using subtractive EQ gets me great results. Every track is different and reeling in the release time and low/top end of my kicks is a must for me.
Would love to try the KICK plugin at some point though--I've heard good things.

Hey there I just wanted to start a topic for those of you that like to use a ton of USB-centric gear (for production or live performance). I perform with keyboards, PUSH, iLok, samples drives, even a guitar hero controller and I'm wondering if you've ever experienced any major latency or cutting out when using USB hubs. So far I've been pretty fortunate in that nothing has completely failed me but I'm concerned that using my laptop's two USB ports for separate USB hubs might be a little demanding for the computer. Any thoughts or knowledge on the topic would be greatly appreciated (also any thoughts on USB 3 vs 2 in your experience).

Well before I say anything: to each their own. If it works for you and you like the results, stick with whatever method you've been using!

As for me there are two things at play... first: I think the sonic quality of the mix during my writing process IMMENSELY influences what choices I end up making in the compositional phase. If everything feels really bright and big I might change my harmonic structure to match that 'vibe'. It's all about vibe to me and that means that I do about 75% of my mixing as I'm producing/composing the track. Very interlinked for me.

The second (and perhaps more important point to make) is that if you don't mix at all as you go, you might get used to the sound of your track and be afraid to make necessary changes because you've come to like the 'demo' mix. I've heard mixing engineers talk about this a lot. Artists give the engineer their rough mix but find themselves gravitating back to their original sound, even if the mixing engineer is making quality decisions to improve the mix. Point being, make sure to stay as objective as you can about your track and be sure to compare to reference tracks when in doubt.

Thanks for this, Schematic! Some cool tips in your post that I definitely wasn't sure about... I have a quick question about loudness while I have you... I'm not arguing for loudness over all things but in order to stack up against some other tracks, is it necessary to 'pre-bake' one's track elements with compression in order for the overall master to get pushed to the next level? For those that DO want to maximize loudness, it seems that a limiter alone can't get the job done while maintaining some semblance of dynamic integrity. Would love your thoughts on this (even though it's a touchy subject).

yep the first step to a clean sounding mix is a good arrangement. natural songwriters have a knack for spacing elements in time in such a way that there isn't too much overcrowding of a certain part of the frequency spectrum at one time.

of course, you might not always want things to sound super pristine and obscuring vocals or other elements is pretty fun/cool at times so definitely experiment and use your ears. but it's not a hard and fast rule that every element needs to be super pristine and identifiable at all times.

if you feel like your arrangement is good but your mix sounds too busy don't be afraid to do a little cutting with the EQ. subtractive EQ is your friend

i find this topic really fascinating--it begs the question: at what point is a certain technology so good that improvements upon it are imperceptible to the senses (of the average person)?

in terms of factoring in the "fidelity" of the senses there are obviously limitations (to our hearing) worth noting. one is that the AVERAGE person can't really consciously detect a volume difference of less than a decibel with any consistency. not to say that there aren't subconscious implications to have track elements a half decibel louder but it's worth knowing this.

i think inevitably delays become an important topic here because of the Precedence Effect--this is a good quote from the Wikipedia page: The "precedence effect" was described and named in 1949 by Wallach et al.[3] They showed that when two identical sounds are presented in close succession they will be heard as a single fused sound. In their experiments, fusion occurred when the lag between the two sounds was in the range 1 to 5 ms for clicks, and up to 40 ms for more complex sounds such as speech or piano music. When the lag was longer, the second sound was heard as an echo.

the above effect is hugely important when using delay effects and when working in stereo systems. the position of your head in the stereo field has a big effect on your perception of a sound (since both ears are hearing sound from both speakers but with a slight delay). factor in reverberations in your room and things get even more complicated which is why I feel the standard cheap bedroom setup with nearfield monitors is ill advised without proper acoustic treatment/speaker placement.

continuing my rant i just kinda wanted to ask--do you guys feel that super high sampling/bit rates really improve the sound quality? i usually work at 44.1K or 44.8K out of habit but I'm wondering whether you notice a difference and (more importantly) whether or not fans/listeners would care?