Producer guides & studio notes

A realistic timeline for ear training, from your first humbling session to hearing attack and release. Plus what speeds it up, what stalls people, and how to tell it is working.

Compression is invisible until you stop listening to the loud moments and start listening to the gaps between them. Here are the cues that give it away and what each one says about the settings.

Engineers don't recall 437 Hz. They know about eight landmark bands and estimate what sits between them. Here are the eight, what each one sounds like, and the drill that makes them stick.

Most producers train frequency identification and stop, which is where progress stalls. Here is an order of operations for mixing ear training, and why each skill has to come before the next.

Most ear training tools producers recommend do not run on a phone at all. Here is what genuinely works on iOS and Android, and which drills survive a commute.

Six ear-training tools are free the whole way through, and four more have free tiers that cap you somewhere. Here is what each one gives you before it asks for money, checked August 2026.

TrainYourEars costs EUR 49 once and trains EQ on your own music; SoundGym costs $142 a year and covers far more of the mix. Here is which one fits which producer.

SoundGym and ToneGym are made by the same company, but one trains mix-engineering ears and the other trains musicianship. There is no bundle, so wanting both means paying twice.

SoundGym's free plan is not a trial that expands. It's the same three games on every workout, permanently. Here's the full free vs Pro split and what to do if it's not enough.

SoundGym costs $142 a year and its free plan never grows past three games. Here's the honest arithmetic against the alternatives, and clear buy-it-if and skip-it-if lists.

SoundGym is $142 a year and its free tier repeats the same three games. Here is what else exists, with prices checked in August 2026.