Studio Stuff

Ever worked on a song with another musician and found yourself waiting... and waiting... and WAITING for their part to arrive?

In this episode, we're talking about one of the biggest frustrations in music collaboration: getting people to actually finish what they started!

It all begins with a question from MCC member Ken Dobson, whose collaborator has apparently taken an entire YEAR to finish his contribution to a song. That opens up a conversation about deadlines, priorities, perfectionism, and why collaborating with other musicians can sometimes feel like being married... only worse!

We share our own experiences from both sides of the equation, including Steve's confession about being the guy who sometimes holds things up. We also discuss the challenges of collaborating with friends, what happens when the finished work isn't what you expected, and why a little organization goes a long way when working remotely.

Why musicians struggle to finish collaborative projects

How perfectionism can keep good music from ever being released

Why setting realistic deadlines makes a huge difference

How to handle a collaborator who keeps promising "next week"

How to keep friendships intact when a musical collaboration isn't working

Why planning and organization are essential for remote collaboration

Shoutout to Ken Dobson from our Mixdown Coaching Community!

Ken wants to know what to do when a fellow musician takes an entire year to contribute to a song. Should he accept the delay if the results are good, or send his collaborator to "Slow Musicians Anonymous"?

We explore what causes these delays and how to deal with them without damaging the relationship.

📩 Submit your question here: [Question Form Link]

We'll answer as many as we can in upcoming episodes!

Ever notice how you can hear everything that's wrong with your mix in the first 30 seconds, but after working on it for a while, those problems seem to disappear?

You're not imagining things! And if you've ever listened to a finished mix weeks or months later and wondered how you missed something so obvious, you're definitely not alone.

We're back for Season 3, and we're kicking things off with a great listener question about losing perspective while mixing.

We're diving into ear fatigue, the mental side of mixing, and the habits that can slowly make us lose objectivity. From listening at lower volumes and taking breaks to using references and changing monitoring systems, we share the techniques that help us hear our mixes with fresh ears again.

And as usual, we don't agree on everything! Especially when it comes to how we listen through a song.

Plus, we tackle another common home studio question: Should you convert MIDI and virtual instruments to audio before mixing?

Ben from Wellington, New Zealand asks:

How do you keep your ears from getting too comfortable with the mixes you're working on?

Ben finds that he can immediately identify problems when he starts listening, but within seconds, his ears begin adapting. We discuss why this happens and share practical techniques to preserve those valuable first impressions.

Gerald asks:

Should I render my VST and MIDI tracks to audio before mixing?

We explain why we generally prefer working with audio during mixing, including the benefits for CPU performance, session organization, reliability, and long-term project recall. We also talk about when keeping the original MIDI available makes sense.

👉 Got a question for us?

Send us your home studio, recording, mixing, or music production questions. We'd love to tackle them in an upcoming episode!

Your mix sounds great at a normal listening level. Then you turn it up—and suddenly the reverb feels too loud, the cymbals sound harsh, and the low end starts taking over.

So, does that mean the mix is bad?

In this episode, we’re breaking down why mixes can sound dramatically different at louder playback levels. We talk about how human hearing changes with volume, how your speakers and room respond differently when pushed harder, and why one bad listening experience at a friend’s house shouldn’t send you back into a full remix.

We also explain how to check your mix loud without chasing problems that may not actually exist—and why reference tracks are essential before making any major changes.

Why your ears hear frequencies differently at different volumes

Why bass, treble, reverb, and harshness become more noticeable when listening loud

How your speakers, amplifier, and room can change as the volume increases

Why one unfamiliar listening environment is only a single data point

How to use reference tracks when checking your mix at louder levels

Why your mix should become more exciting when turned up—not more painful

The Fletcher-Munson curves and how they affect what we hear

Why a mix can sound balanced quietly but harsh when played loud

How to tell whether the problem is your mix, the room, or the playback system

Why checking your mix loud is useful—but shouldn’t become your main way of mixing

The value of listening quietly, from another room, or while doing something else

How references help you understand what “normal” sounds like at high volume

Shoutout to Stefan Dawson from the Netherlands!

Stefan asked why a mix he loved suddenly revealed too much reverb and harshness when played loudly at a friend’s house. We explain why that reaction is completely normal—and how to decide whether the mix actually needs fixing.

A mix will not sound exactly the same at every volume—and it shouldn’t.

The real goal is to create a mix that stays balanced and musical while becoming more exciting as the volume rises. Check it loud, check it quiet, compare it with trusted references, and always make your final decisions in a listening environment you know.

👉 Got a question for us?
📩 Submit it here: Form Link
We pull topics directly from your questions and YouTube comments.

And if you’re digging the show, hit follow/subscribe and leave a quick review.
It really helps more home studio folks find Studio Stuff.

Two listener questions, two real studio problems this week. First up, what happens when a mix has too many great ideas competing for the same space, and how do you tell someone their part has to go without bruising their ego? Then we get into toms, arguably the hardest drum element to get right, and walk through our full process for cleaning, tuning, and sampling them until they sit huge in the mix.

We're talking arrangement, ego management, and the honest truth about how many "real" tom sounds you hear on records are actually sample-blended. Spoiler: probably all of them.

You'll Learn:

Topics & Stories:

Listener Q&A:
This week's questions came from two YouTube commenters. One asked how to know which parts to cut when a mix feels too dense, and how to deliver that news to a bandmate without the drama. The other asked for help getting toms to sound big and clear when everything else in the mix is dialed in.

👉 Got a question for us?
📩 Submit it here: Form Link
We pull topics directly from your questions and YouTube comments.

And if you’re digging the show, hit follow/subscribe and leave a quick review.
It really helps more home studio folks find Studio Stuff.

The Great Preamp War: Why Both Sides of This Viral Video Drama Are Actually Right

So a video dropped last week and the whole audio world lost its mind. You know the one. A long, seriously impressive comparison of cheap interface preamps against a Neve-style preamp, ending with the verdict that they're all basically the same. Cue the passionate response videos and a very loud week online.

Here's the thing: we hadn't talked about any of it before we hit record. This episode is us taking both extremes and working through them in real time. We give massive credit where it's due (that comparison video is months of work and incredible storytelling), but we also dig into the part that got everyone fired up, which is testing one clean piece of the chain and then making a call about the whole puzzle. Somewhere in the middle of the car analogies and the tier rankings, we land on what actually moves the needle when you record.

You'll Learn:

Why a clean preamp comparison doesn't tell you the whole story

What pushing a preamp actually does to your sound, and why some pros build their entire mix around it

Where the preamp really sits on your recording priority list

Why your next upgrade is probably a mic, not a preamp

How good mic placement quietly outperforms expensive gear

👉 Got a question for us?
📩 Submit it here: Form Link
We pull topics directly from your questions and YouTube comments.

And if you’re digging the show, hit follow/subscribe and leave a quick review.
It really helps more home studio folks find Studio Stuff.

Your drums sound massive on their own, then they hit the mix bus and the limiter starts fighting back. In this episode we tackle a great listener question about keeping kick and snare transients under control so they don't trigger your limiter and squash the life out of your mix.

We get into the difference between transients and body, why the spike you can't even hear is the one wrecking your loudness, and how to fix the problem at the source instead of patching it in mastering. We also talk drum bus processing, the high pass trick that instantly calms things down, transient shaping as a subtractive tool, and where clipping fits into the chain.

Plus, a question about studying other engineers turns into a bigger conversation about stealing concepts rather than copying mixes, why a great album matters more than a famous name, and the new wave of unknown mixers making incredible records on laptops in their bedrooms.

You'll Learn:

Why transients and body are two different things, and why punch lives in both

How an inaudible spike can still trigger your limiter and kill your loudness

Why the drum bus is the best place to control peaks before they reach the two bus

How high passing your kick instantly calms your mix bus

Using transient shaping in reverse to soften spikes without losing impact

Where to place clipping and limiting in the chain (and why you want it before mastering)

Topics & Stories:

The launch of Bus Ride and the most honest plugin testimonial ever recorded

Why week five of mixing is apparently a pivotal career moment

The "use your ears" gospel according to gear forums

Falling in love with albums instead of mix engineers

The rise of unknown mixers making world-class records in their bedrooms

Listener Q&A:

We answer a question about preserving kick and snare transients without overloading the mix bus or mastering limiter, plus a question about whether we study other engineers and who we actually learn from.

👉 Got a question for us?
📩 Submit it here: Form Link
We pull topics directly from your questions and YouTube comments.

And if you’re digging the show, hit follow/subscribe and leave a quick review.
It really helps more home studio folks find Studio Stuff.

Studio Stuff Podcast #47 | Staying Sharp in the Studio: Sleep, Food, Panning, and Everything In Between

It started with Chris being half asleep on a phone call. And somehow that turned into one of our more useful conversations.

This episode is about what it actually takes to stay sharp in the studio, and we don't mean productivity hacks or morning routines. We mean the real stuff: sleep, food, hydration, ear fatigue, monitoring habits, and how all of it directly affects the quality of your mix decisions.

We break things into categories because there's a real difference between doing some vocal tuning on a tired Saturday morning and making final print decisions on a mix that matters. Knowing where you are in that spectrum changes how you should approach the session, and honestly, whether you should be in the session at all.

Then we get into a question from the MCC live stream about panning. Does moving a sound off-center actually change its tone? We dig into what's really happening physically, what's happening perceptually, and why your DAW's pan law settings matter more than most people realize.

You'll Learn:

Topics and Stories:

Listener Q&A:

Big shoutout to Bullfrog from the MCC live stream for sparking the panning conversation. We talk through why panning a sound changes how it feels in the mix, the role of pan compensation, and why phantom center is one of those concepts that quietly affects everything you do in stereo.

👉 Got a question for us?
📩 Submit it here: Form Link
We pull topics directly from your questions and YouTube comments.

And if you’re digging the show, hit follow/subscribe and leave a quick review.
It really helps more home studio folks find Studio Stuff.

Studio Stuff Podcast #45 | Your Phone Knows Your Mix Has a Problem. Do You?

We get into three listener questions this episode, and at least one of them might change how you check your mixes going forward.

The first question comes from Northern California, and it is one we have probably all experienced but never quite pinpointed. A listener notices his mix sounds great in the car and on AirPods, but something about the iPhone speaker makes his reverb sound harsh and brittle. When he tries to fix it, the mix loses something on the other playback systems. We dig into what the phone EQ curve is actually doing, why reverb returns tend to live right in the problem zone, and why other people's mixes don't have the same issue on the same device. The phone is not broken. It is telling you something true.

The fixes we talk through: high pass and low pass your reverb return as a first move, add a touch of pre-delay to separate the wet from the dry, and check the whole thing in mono while you are at it. We also make a small promise to ourselves to start checking mixes on our phones more often, which is either a great habit or a rabbit hole. Probably both.

The second question is about signal flow. Specifically, what is the advantage of routing your mix to a stereo bus group channel rather than going straight to the output? We walk through how we each handle this in our sessions, why the output channel stays completely clean in both cases, and what happens if you run room correction software like Sonar Works and forget to bypass it before you bounce. Chris also explains why keeping that group bus as a middle man makes it easy to import your mix bus chain from a previous session into a new one, which took a few extra words to explain but is genuinely useful.

The third question is a bonus, and it is a good one. Does anyone actually track their time on a mix, and if so, how? Steve uses his feelings. Chris blocks time by the day and lets the song fill the window. We also look at a free plugin called Project Time Pro by Hoffa that logs your session time automatically the moment you open the session. Great concept, one small flaw involving an open Cubase session and a backyard barbecue.

You'll Learn:

Why the iPhone speaker exposes reverb problems that other playback systems let slide

The two-move fix for harsh reverb on phone speakers: high pass and low pass the return, then add pre-delay

Why pro mixers EQ their reverb returns way more than most home studio producers realize

The case for keeping your output channel completely free of plugins

How a stereo bus group channel makes your mix chain portable between sessions

Why blocking time might be smarter than tracking it, and what a free session timer actually does to your workflow

Topics and Stories:

The phone speaker that knows too much

Why Chris is finally going to start checking mixes on his iPhone

The Sonar Works bypass you absolutely cannot forget before bouncing

Steve's feelings-based approach to pricing flat-rate mixes

The goldfish and the bowl

Project Time Pro and the barbecue problem

Listener Q&A:

We had three great questions this episode. Keep them coming. Submit yours using the form in the show notes or leave a comment on YouTube and we will get to as many as we can.

👉 Got a question for us?
📩 Submit it here: Form Link
We pull topics directly from your questions and YouTube comments.

And if you’re digging the show, hit follow/subscribe and leave a quick review.
It really helps more home studio folks find Studio Stuff.

Studio Stuff Podcast #44 | Mic Shootouts, Genre Comfort Zones, and the Music We Love Mixing

You've got two mics, one singer, and a session to run. Which one do you reach for?

In this episode, we dig into that exact scenario, starting with a great question from Johnny in Denmark. He's got a Rode NT1 and an SE V7, and he wants to know how to think about the choice. We break down the real decision-making process: it's not about which mic is "better" on paper. It's about tone, sibilance, room sensitivity, how much work you'll have to do in the mix, and what the song actually needs.

We get into why sibilance is often the first thing that eliminates a mic, why a dynamic sometimes just solves problems a condenser can't, and why committing to two mics at once is a completely valid move when you're still learning what your gear does. We also talk about building an internal catalog of your mics over time, so eventually you walk into a session and already know where to start.

Then we shift into Ian's question: what genre do we feel most comfortable mixing and mastering? The answer comes pretty quickly for both of us, and it connects directly to where we each started.

You'll Learn:

Topics and Stories:

Listener Q&A:

Big shoutout to Johnny from Denmark for the mic question, and to Ian for sending in a two-parter. We tackle the first half of Ian's question this episode, what genre we feel most comfortable mixing, and we're saving the second part for an upcoming show.

Got a question for us? Drop it in the comments on YouTube or hit the link below to fill out the form.

👉 Got a question for us?
📩 Submit it here: Form Link
We pull topics directly from your questions and YouTube comments.

And if you’re digging the show, hit follow/subscribe and leave a quick review.
It really helps more home studio folks find Studio Stuff.

Studio Stuff Podcast #43 The Da Vinci Problem: Knowing When to Let Go of Your Mix

You've been in the mix for hours. It sounds pretty good. You think it sounds pretty good. But you keep going back in, tweaking, adjusting, making that one last pass. Sound familiar? In this episode, we dig into the question MCC member Frank Robinson sent our way: how do you know when to stop? And is anyone ever actually happy with their final mix?

We also get into a comment from our friend KP, who wants to know whether mixing in Cubase versus Pro Tools actually makes a sonic difference. Spoiler: it's mostly about who's driving.

You'll Learn:

Why the last five percent of a mix can take longer than the first eighty percent

What "pushing food around the plate" actually means as a creative signal

How the sleep test, the scrolling listen, and the AirPods check each serve a different purpose

Why time-constraining your mix sessions might be the most practical habit you can build

Whether your DAW choice genuinely affects your sound, and what actually does

Topics and Stories:

The Da Vinci problem: why art is never finished, only abandoned

Chris's graveyard of mixes he refuses to listen to anymore

Moving furniture in a prison cell as the perfect metaphor for overmixing

Steve's logic-to-Pro Tools workflow and why he uses two different tools for two different jobs

The rich guy with thirty cars: which one do you take to church, the track, and the road trip?

Why Chris drives a Volvo and Steve has a Ferrari, a Bugatti, and several Hondas

Listener Q&A:

Big shoutout to Frank Robinson from the MCC! His question: how do you decide when to stop tinkering and call the mix done? And is anyone really fully happy with their final mix? We spend a good chunk of the episode on this one because it deserves it.

We also dig into a comment from KP, who floated the idea of a Cubase vs. Pro Tools mix-off. We address the DAW question seriously, and then immediately give KP a hard time about the competition idea.

👉 Got a question for us?
📩 Submit it here: Form Link
We pull topics directly from your questions and YouTube comments.

And if you’re digging the show, hit follow/subscribe and leave a quick review.
It really helps more home studio folks find Studio Stuff.