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Mixing/mastering 2025 is a wrap

2025 was an amazing year in terms of audio engineering.

John Summit, Experts Only, Jamie Jones, Hot Creations, Atlantic Records, Kyle Walker, Mad Decent, Lee Foss, Repopulate Mars, Fallon, Kamino, Kaysin, Alterboy, Loofy, Nervous Records, Kero Kero Bonito, Hood Politics, Straight Up Breakbeat…and tons more.

A few hundred songs in 2025 in total, including full mixes + masters, stem masters, and stereo masters.

A few thousand songs in the past decade – prob over six thousand at least.

 

[video] Mixing kicks

I’m running you through the things I take into account when mixing kickdrums.
I always think of kicks as having a few different “parts”, and I go through them here.

I love working with all styles, but work a lot with house among other styles, and have mixed and/or mastered music by John Summit, Luke Vibert, Defected Records, John Summit, Armada Music, Repopulate Mars, Octo Octa, etc.

Reference songs for producing/mixing/mastering

As a mixing and mastering engineer, I’m often asked about good reference songs, so I did a FREE post on my Patreon listing some refs I use often with some most popular genres (DNB, house, hip hop, trap, techno):
https://www.patreon.com/posts/49752366

Later this month I’ll be doing two EXCLUSIVE videos:
1) how to reference efficiently and
2) how to set up your own mastering project in your DAW.

So if this is something that interests you, sign up to my Patreon.

vocal mixing chain

My favorite vocal chain right here.

• I always bring the level down to -18 based on peaks using Hornet Plugins VUmeter, so the analog compressors after it will have ample headroom, not introducing distortion (unless I want it, and sometimes I do).

• FabFilter ProQ3.
I use this to cut off the unnecessary mic lows and thumps as well as cutting out some of the low-mid room resonance that always happens, more or less. 
It’s amazing how a vocal immediately sounds way less “homebrewn” when you get the boominess 120–250 Hz out; I usually watch out for two separate peaks in that range.

• Universal Audio LA3A and LA-2 compressors. 
At some point I was experimenting with vocal comps, and just ended up having these two in a row: creates very transparent compression, and even if you squeeze the vocal really hard (7-8 dB), you literally can’t hear it. Just amazing.
Also, as a bonus, if you run the signal harder into these, the analog-modeled input stage creates this sweet distortion that can be so useful if the vocal sounds a little too tame and some vibe is required. Kind of “radio-ish” distortion.

Continue reading vocal mixing chain →