The Basics of Starting a Mix - Setting Levels - Warren Huart: Produce Like A Pro 

Now you know how I start my mixes. How do you start your mixes? Do you want to see more videos like this? Let me know below!

I start my mixes like this... I ruin them always later :-)

Warren, you do realize that you have raised the bar for what all other 'RU-vidrs' must strive for.

Warren, Your generosity is beyond compare....You really are a diamond in the internet! Love you man G xxxxxx :)

If I get tracks to mix that I didn't record, one of the first things I do, even before volume and levels, is "track housekeeping," where I name, group, and color the tracks in a way that suits my workflow. I will also created busses and/or VCAs for the groups so that I can easily change levels on multiple tracks globally. During my second pass at volume and levels I like to place markers to identify the sections of the arrangement. Checking the overall levels is important in the beginning as well in order to leave enough headroom for mixing. If I get my kick and snare peaking at -18dBFS after processing I can be pretty confident in that regard. That's my yardstick to get everything else in the ballpark. I generally go drums, bass, lead vocal(s), guitars, keys, etc.

I almost always do drummers perspective when panning. As a drummer, I sometimes feel really unsettled when things like the hihat are on the right. Especially when you have a lot of toms.

This is pure gold. Warren, is there a chance to have another episode with the continuation of the same mix?

If you were a musician writing and recording from home, track by track; would you encourage this kind of organic work flow as you add tracks. Or would you recommend just slamming everything in mono and 0db?

Superb explanation of how to start a mix. I am glad I do more or less the same thing in the early stages of a mix. Have a marvelous day sir!

A little imperfection in the vocals! Nice. The fact that I was able to hear it and that you used it is awesome!

Thanks, Warren! Sending SoCal love up the 5 from San Diego!

I watch this video every time I'm starting a new mix. It's so valuable to be reminded of the basics.

Absolutley a great way to start. The best I have seen on this. I spent hours on a song my band recorded, I sampled drums, eq on each guitar and the even the bass. I then hated what I had. I done this to the same track and it is like day light and dark on the sound. Thanks!

Warren, you've done it again! Brilliant video. As a relative beginner, the hardest thing is getting started, but you bring your fun-loving, positive attitude to the table and give us an example of how to fly through the opening stages of a mix. This is a great thing for those of us who tend to be perfectionists and/or over-thinkers. Love it!

I start my mixes pretty much the same way but I do drummer pesrpective. I have a mix template with the most common plugins I use already loaded on the tracks but bypassed. I recommend templates for anyone who wants to save a bit of time and start a mix just a bit faster.

Thanks for another very informative video. I try to mix in mono at first in order to get as much clarity as possible via volume, EQ and compression, and then pan later - any thoughts on that? Another difference from your process is that I try to keep my faders at unity (0dB) since they are not linear and adjust volume via gain - any thoughts on that?

Thanks again, great video. What about normalizing all tracks to some level, say -12db as a starting point? What do you think?

Thank you Warren...always a good idea to revisit the basics.

To compare, listen to before mix at 2:22 and after mix at 14:25 The difference is really impressive with just volume and panning, wow

Great lesson - live music is just that - people and their instruments spread across the stage - it helps to remember that when mixing!

EXCELLENT explanation, Warren and MUCH appreciated! If you could, please consider Craig Sanderson request as there are quite a few of us that DO get mixes that are, well for lack of a better word, in a state of dismay. Thank you ever so much for your continued sharing of knowledge and audio mentorship (PLAPer)...

My only gripe with these videos (and I mean all of them) is they always start with great sounding stems, as if they have been eq’d on the way in. My mixes never sound this good from the get go. You could argue I need to work on my recording technique, but all my instruments are either dI or superior drummer 3 etc.

I didn't always do this but now I keep all my channels at -5 db and wait until the end to add any effects like reverb or delay or what ever. Also watch out for the bass monster it will crush all sounds

Thank you so much. Very useful.

Great video! Thank you!

This is so great. I bought Mixbus 5 a week ago and this is exactly what I've been doing since. Adjust volume, pan stuff around, get rid of excess tracks, create groups and assign tracks to buses (and turn the drive/tape saturation UP). Bonus: I started working on this exact song last night. Now I know a bit more about what to fix and how to do it. Thank you :-)

For the life of me I can't understand why anybody would pan drums from the drummer's perspective... and I'm a former drummer! Surely your mix is just an intermediary between the band and the audience and unless you're being deliberately "creative" you would therefore want to represent the band as they would play to an audience directly. Imagine putting a track from the drummer's perspective synced to video of the band - everything is going to be panned audio-wise opposite to where it is visually which is utterly incoherent - the illusion that places the listener in an imaginary audience in front of the band is lost. To match your mix in the video the drummer would have to sit with his or her back to the audience and that's just rude!!! I'd be interested to hear arguments FOR panning from drummer's perspective.

Great video. I do a similar process. However, something that I've been trying to wrap my head around lately is bus master vs. Master fader. Do you send a mix of the entire song to a stereo Aux before going to the Master fader? I've read that this is where you would insert some overall compression or/and EQ and not on the Master fader. Perhaps you can do a show on that and explain the pros and cons?

Nicely recorded! I hate when the raw tracks sound awful.

I listen to the drum overheads to hear where everything is placed in the stereo field. Then I check the phase on the drums. Then normalize all clips to -6db peak and do a rough mix on the volumes and panning.

What a magnificent video! Awesome!

Great video Warren, Go back to the basic's!!

Moin Warren i looked so many videos about mixdown mastering from various yt channels and nothing fit to my sound.. because i got up to 5 different guitars at the same time and every technic failed.. after severals videos you said the magic sentance" thrust your ears" .. after 6 month of muddy sound i found my own mixing style and mastering... Warren huart and gregory scott are the best to find your way to produce your music. The rest at youtube show a way how to produce their music. Thx alot for sharing your wisdom i know this is not common!

Up until about 4 months ago I was still using a 8 track porta-studio. I never knew there was going to be more than panning and volume in a mix until today lol.

Priceless, bro!

Two things I have loved as I've discovered your channel and binged many, many hours of videos: 1. Even though I've engineered, produced, and mastered hundreds of my own projects over the years, what I know is infinitesimal to what I have yet to learn and always will be. 2. It's also nice that sometimes it helps me see how much I DO know as well and that so many things that are just instinctual auto-pilot knowledge for me are the result of 20 years of experience, studying, experimenting and just doing it, even if I had no idea how to do it "right." Thanks so much for this channel!

Great advice as always Warren.....I often despair that people (mixers) dont use their ears instead of some unobtainable theoretical maths bullshit......( that might have been a bit strong....)

Loving your videos Warren! I've been following your work for a number of years now. Thanks for the detail and time you put in to your content. It's a pleasure to see how you work in your music productions. All the best! Ken :-)

Hi Warren, love your tutorials man, you ROCK!!! Hey gotta question, if you were the guy who recorded that, would you have been doing any of that balancing as you were going through the recording process or do you wait til every tracks been recorded before you start moving faders and adjusting the panning?

Hey Mr. Huart, I have a question. Is mixing different in each genre, for country, pop, rock, dance, etc... or is mixing the same process in every?

these videos provide so much information and confidence in my personal mixes. Thank you

I've been addicted to watching your videos ever since I came across your interviews w/Hugh Padgham recently. I learn something new w/every video I watch. Your videos are a goldmine of information that benefit anyone...from someone trying to learn tips and tricks to improve their own recording and mixing to someone who just may be curious as to all of the elements that go into creating a recording and finished product. Thank you for making these videos - they are 1st Class, both entertaining and high value educational tools!

needs more cowbell

I start very much the same way getting it leveled volume and pan wise so I can Lke you said make an informed decision on the steps I take next I love how yo break down your work flow sometimes with a more complicated song its easy to get lost in the complicated parts so starting with the basics is vital As wealso do recording here and not just mixing and my mix sessions are from the recorded sessions I add in gain staging as one of the first steps usng the HoRnEt MKIII plugin saved my butt a couple of times Rarely do I get stereo tracks so I mix mostly in mono so panning alonfg with sidechaining later in the mix session really helps out Again thank you for being so generous with your time and knowledge

PLEASE REVIEW HARRISON MIX BUS 32 c v5

My standard practice has been to first apply the low cuts that I know I'll eventually do and THEN do the volume/panning. Do you see the order of that making a difference?

Awesome video. Thank you ever so much, Warren. I guess I tend to do too much too soon.I use to apply EQ and compression to e.g the drums as soon as I balanced them and move then on to the bass and other instruments. This video is an eye opener for me. I try to have the discipline to get a good overall balance and panning at my next mix before I start to do anything else. I'm curious how it will work for me. I think it's a very good approach to follow your example, especially when there's no rough mix available to listen to to get a first impression,

noob here- i've been starting by hard panning the OH mics left and right, and then using a graphic eq to take the highs out of the kick, and the low-lows out of the snare, cymbals and vocals. I use the bass control on amp plugins for guitar. interesting that you pan from the audience's pov as my instinct has been the opposite. i'm definitely gonna try this first thing when i next record :)

Thanks Warren for this new video

very interesting video. Thank you.

Thankyou so much for clarifying that primary mixing process. You are a very good teacher esp. "so what have we learnt". Cheers.

Thank you, Warren! I can't stress enough how much this has helped improve my mixing.

Thanks so much for this video! Quick question pls: at about @11:20 you say you're turning the verse guitar 'down less'. do you mean up less? It looks like it's at a lower level than the chorus guitar. I'm just trying to make sense of what you did here. I see -3.9 for ch guitar and -5.9 for verse guitar. Thank you so much

I thought first we need all the tracks balanced to -18dBFS, and after that start to mix them. Is it wrong way?

Thanks Warren, good stuff! :-) My amateur home recording mixing is much like this, but usually keep the stereo width within 60% L&R as I feel headphone wide stereo can sound synthetic and living room listeners probably are moving around going back and forth past the stereo speakers getting more L or more R at any given moment...so no titillating stereo and almost-mono will keep the integrity of the mix better in that scenario. I try to capture the tone on the recording so I tend not to use many plugins...just reverb to taste and mostly limiting to control dynamics.

Hi, Warren, thank you for the very informative video. I've been recording a few years now but have only just started being more diligent with the mixing process. I,m now doing them very similar to this. very good to have it reiterated by someone who knows what they're doing.I've got a lot to learn but I'm enjoying the process . Many thanks

Brilliant. In this world with endless amounts of plugins and tutorials on how to sound like this and that, bringing it all back to basics is a serious reality check. Thank you for this video Warren.

No, no, no, HATE audience perspective! Screws with my air drumming! lol

hello Warren! why in headphones, not monitors?

I never pan the hihat mic. I like it when the close mic for the hihat stays in the middle and the overheads/rooms create its stereo image. When the hihat mic is panned, to me it sounds like there's a bit too much spread and that can be distracting.

Agree with this method 100%

Thanks for the knowledge.

hey warren did you by any chance already do clip gain on all the tracks before you did the static mix? this part is soo confusing to me...

I’m still very much learning and finding my own best practices, but what I’ve learned over the last 3-4 songs is this. I’m a composer/producer so I’m always working on my own music soup to nuts, and not somebody else’s, so this is obviously a bit of a difference to yours. I start with a tracking file in Cubase. Get all the scratch vocals, guitars, bass and drum loops written. Then sequence them with the arranger track until I get a layout I’m happy with. Duplicate the file which is now my arrangement project. I’ll track the final vox in context to the full song now. Record overdub guitars where needed. Ad drum fills and other little bits and pieces. I’ll render all the stems out to WAVs and bring them into a mixing project template which has all my eq and compression plugins instantiated and control surface mapping in place. I’m really glad you mentioned baking any FX from the tracks into the stems as I’ve long hummed and hand over this. I’m going to take your advice and give that a shot on my current track. The delay and mod and verbs and even compression added during arrangement are a part of the sound design, so I can see now that they should be treated as such and baked into the mixing stems. I also export all my stems at 0db so all volume faded mixing is done in the mixing project. I don’t like having a backing synth track so quiet with the fader at 0db in the mix. Thanks for another great lesson

Nice video Warren, what do you use for converting audio to MIDI for the drum samples? Soundreplacer?

I tend to apply EQ to all of my tracks, then I go to volume and panning, then I will apply any compression necessary to the tracks, then apply compression and EQ to the bus tracks. However, I think I'm going to try this method next time.

What happens to things like the acoustic guitars in a mono listening situation when they are hard panned L and R like in this song?

Hi Warren, What about Kick and Bass level? What do you think about the King's technique setting kick at -3dbvu? Do you think it's useful or you could have a pumping kick all the time? I'm really struggling about drums and bass levels

Sir. Regarding image field reproduction/analysis. i didn't check this vid-but i always saw your smaller, treblyer monitors to the centre, with bigger bassier ones to outside. just heard you talking about putting high hat sound to outside here. and i was taught by Prof. Christoph Both (Cello, Upstream, Paul Cram, Don Palmer, etc, etc) at his Acadia U. studio the same theme-mix bass towards centre. which i have agreed with, thinking of certain weak result tracks with this bass pulling your ears to one side and eventually becoming painful. so is this speaker set up done as it somehow balances the total effect on ze brainpan? ok-i was just thinking about how it may be-so, if you Mixed with treblyer monitors on outside, they would replicate Even More Advanced Trebles! to exterior, so reversing speakers makes trb/bz work as hard as they can for getting 'home'. Yeah, Baby! comme-ci, comme-ca? ppps-cannabis oil rules

Actually a question Warren: About mixing ( before it's mastered) If i'm referencing a track by let's say, ACDC. It's already mastered...you see where i'm going here! I'm referencing my unmastered mix to a mastered track. Please help me sleep at night! Thanks again!

Great ! thanks , I set Sw in my new room now I know 1 step further how my new room sounds with good volume levels in a song ^^ panning the bv vocals so it sounds like a bunch of guys are in a room ^^. and panning the drums in from adience perspektive is good to know. ( kick snare to the middle , toms 20 percent right , cymbal 60 left ? ) whatever I look it again when I mix next time. Thanks Warren, right level setting is so important. buildig up the basic skills is so important right.

Hey Warren, I gain staged all of my tracks -18 to -12 peak and every fader is at zero. I’m trying to make specific instruments in my mix be louder than the rest. will moving the faders after I gain stage mess up everything I did?

why is this guy so awesome??!!! why??

I guess I do something similar, but I work from the functional point of view: first of all, I mute everything and then unmute the most rhythmical part-usually the drumkit and try to enjoy.If I do, I would unmute the bass or whatever acts as glue between drums and melodic instruments, and get the balance right. And so on, adding one track at a time and fixing the levels. When everything is unmuted, I pan. When all is said and done, ABBA splits ;)

For the sake of sheer neutrality, I sport my Beyerdynamic DT 880 Pro headphones, and try to balance everything in mono as best as possible, without any effects, reverb, or eq. I usually don't gain stage at this point either.

Warren. I am an avid listener to your various channels. One thing that would help add clarity to the many videos you have that evaluate “classic” or exceptionally recorded or produced songs/albums would to give some perspective to what type of equipment was used. By this I don’t mean a rundown on whether a Scully, or MCI tape machine was used, but rather was it recorded to… for instance two 4 channel machines , eight channel … ping ponging two eight channels, 24 track, etc. Not only would this help explain technical limitations of the recordings, but in most cases inspire us to achieve the excellence that was attained within the limitations that they worked within. It might give some perspective as to limitations/ effectiveness of use of stereo field, complexity of mix, etc. Keep up the awesome work. Matt Shannon

Thank you I'm struggling with my mix right now everything I do sucks and I'm using the Studio one 5 Professional the latest version it has a plugin called PIPELINE in stereo and mono it is supposed to hook up your hardware I have like 5,200$ in rack gear I was trying to hook up to my master bus, but it sounds horrible I have Pro tools 12 too but I like Studio one more so I'm using it instead.

Hi Warren Long time fan, first comment... I was wandering how you pan your drums. Do you pan from the drummers perspective (hats left, 1st tom left, 2nd tom slightly right and floor tom further right. I know this is a known point of discussion. I find that when mixing from the drummers perspective, I can mix in a way that the listener is litteraly sitting between the musicians. With the drummer in his back, the bass and vocals in front of him and everyhthing else panned to taste around the listener. What's your point of view? Best regards Wim

One more perspective, to improvise.

What are the benchmarks you are aiming for in terms of levels in terms of peaking on the individual tracks as well as the the Master Bus at theis stage before Eq & Compression? Thanks!

I do about the same thing with stacked bgvs but I'll pan them maybe 2 or 3 percent apart. For example, the high octo 100 left right, and the other high bgv 97 left right. Sometimes if theres a single low bgv in the group of the stack bgvs I'll Aux it to a doubler to kinda fill in the gaps. Sometimes that works 👌

I am fairly new to the music production process. I have written and recorded 50 or so songs and they all sound like mud, no clarity or separation. I have listened to what seems like hundreds of so-called teaching tutorials but none of them have shown me the beginning basics like you have. Thank you! I look forward to learning more. Specifically adding EQ, compression, reverb, etc. And than mastering. Please tell me where to go so I can learn all there is. Thank you again for a great lesson!

I always start the same way, except that I didn't consider the arrangement of the backing vocals on the panorama in this way.

Hey Warren, So .. kick and snare samples. Where do you source the samples, is it addictive drums? And how do you choose one for the specific song? Thx

Question, I've started growing my sideburns but my mixes aren't any better. What am I doing wrong? Jokes aside, good video thanks

Great... Respect Mr Warren.

Hi Warren, I'm a Logic user and in the process of learning Protools. How did you revert to the original set up and back to your level/pan mix?

This helps me stay focused at the beginning of a mix!

Amazingly helpful video exactly what I needed!!

hi and thanks again for all help....you know what would be a marvellous thing to do?...request from us, your amateur followers to submit a mix so you can hear live and comment briefly about things are wrong or right...(5-7 min vids)...not a better way to learn but to understand our own mistakes. If you consider this pls don't just scroll our posts as "mastering" is an unreal goal,i think anyway, but a balanced mix is sometimes doable. Can maybe create a platform to send audio files in a resolution you think is ok... no competition or prizes or anything.....could be fun...thanks again and cheers

Thank you Warren!!

Do you leave your Sub group/Aux channels/Bus groups what ever you want to call them at unity gain or do you also adjust them accordingly ?

Besides this, what are all the steps you do before starting to mix?

Thanks !!! What about gain staging whats a healthy level per track? Or max level per track ?

Warren another great how-to video! I do a lot of live multitrack recording (at gigs and in-studio) with everyone playing together (no overdubs) where there can be a lot of leakage. Could you do a video with some suggestions on how best to prepare and mix these types of recordings? Thank you in advance.

what DB do you bring up the kick when you start your mix? I usually bring it when it reads 6 DB on the meter.

Ii had to stop and laugh-not at you, but…a few years ago I got some tracks done in a club from a small combo for mixing. I guess because I started out as a drummer I always ask if they want the drums mixed from the drummer’s perspective or the audience’s. In this case, because they wanted to mimic the live feel of sitting in the audience they said from the audience’s perspective. So, I did the mix (including blending in the mics they had in the crowd for that live feel) and sent the mix back for their approval. They sent me an email and stated that the mix is not what they asked for. Without going into the back and forth, they said the drums were mixed backwards. I, of course, was adamant that I had done them right and maybe their speaker cables were reversed or some such, but no, the other instruments were panned correctly. When I finally asked the right question I learned that their drummer was left handed and played on a left handed setup! The more you do the more you learn.

I always struggle with the balancing process because of a few things and I dont really know how to deal with them. The first is perceived loudness. This is usually common when balancing the kick with the snare or when adding stereo guitars in as the guitars feel so much more up front than the drums do which makes them sound overpowering at even quiet levels. The second is when dealing with elements on different ends o the audio spectrum ( kick and snare being an example again) as they are so far apart and dont really lock into each other. Any advice would be greatly appreciated

Hey bro, thanks for that video, im going to apply it now, im working on my 1st client , I've been sent a song to mix, so ill will apply that right now.

Before doing your levels is it a good idea to get all the channels to around -18db so they’re plugin ready? Then when it comes to levels maybe put a gain reduction vst at the very end of the effects chain on that channel instead of adjusting the faders to keep them all at 0db. Once you’ve got round to putting the overall shape of the track down with eqs, saturation, compressions etc tweak the volumes with the faders this time for more fine control as they’re all at 0db? I’m very new to this so have no idea if I’m just making it harder for myself.