Musician Forum - Band Discussion Board - BandMix

If you know when the Mixing is done? This question is like asking a chef if the soup is done. It 'one thing to know. We can determine that point in the recording of commercial as one in which the optimum Constrained reached. This is the point at which the artistic vision realized practically subject to budget constraints; you know that the soup is done by Online Mixing and Mastering.

Some folks will always be adding 'finishing touches.'
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Test the song on several completely different sets of speakers.
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A good indication you're done is when you can play the song on your computer, on your Boom Box, in your car, and on your home stereo . . . and STILL hear every part of the song.

RhythmMan-2 wrote:Some folks will always be adding 'finishing touches.'
.
Test the song on several completely different sets of speakers.
.
A good indication you're done is when you can play the song on your computer, on your Boom Box, in your car, and on your home stereo . . . and STILL hear every part of the song.

And test at low and high volume. At some point, you've just got to say "it IS done!"

I made the 'final call' yesterday - the mixing is done for all 15 songs on my next album. Sure there were one or two places where this track or that track could be adjusted half a dB, etc, but after playing it numerous times on my monitors, truck stereo and last night on my living room 5.1 system, it's done!
No one volunteered to master it for me this time, so I've just used light compression, a brickwall limiter (and a final master EQ on a couple of songs that needed it per some other ears) to get it all to 'commercial level'.
Next up is copyright, BMI registering, Amazon-Createspace for hard copy CDs (and Kunaki for cheaper ones once I have a free barcode from Amazon) and CDBaby for internet distribution.
Finishing up a promo video tonight.