Mixing is where a rough demo turns into something that sounds like a record. It’s also the skill most of us pick up backwards — hoarding random EQ tricks off YouTube before we understand why the mix feels wrong to begin with.
I rewrote this guide in 2026 to strip out the fluff. No magic plugins, no secret chains. Just the order I follow on every track, with real numbers to start from and tweak by ear.
What mixing actually is
Mixing is balancing every track in the session (levels, panning, EQ, compression, effects) until each part reads clearly and the whole thing holds up on any speaker. That’s the entire job. Sound design is a different job, and so is mastering.
Before touching a single control, figure out what every track is for. Is that vocal the lead or part of a background stack? Is the synth the hook, or just texture? Something that only exists as texture has no business competing for the hook’s space. Muddy mixes almost always come from tracks nobody ever gave a clear job to.
One honest observation while we’re at it: roughly 80% of a good mix is levels and panning. If bypassing every plugin makes your mix collapse, your EQ settings aren’t the problem; the balance underneath is.
Prepare the session before you touch a fader
Ten minutes of prep buys back hours later. My checklist:
- Clean the tracks. Strip clicks, pops, hum and dead air out of the recordings. Put a 5–10 ms fade on the edge of every clip so nothing pops at the boundaries.
- Name and color-code everything. “Audio 27” means nothing at 2 a.m. Route tracks into buses: drums, bass, music, vocals, FX. Four or five buses covers nearly any track.
- Gain-stage. Bring faders down until each track averages near -18 dBFS and the master bus peaks under -6 dBFS before any processing. Headroom is the goal, not a master already kissing zero.
- Pick 2–3 reference tracks from the same genre and check against them at matched loudness all the way through. Your ears drift over a session; references don’t.
- Freeze or bounce heavy synths. You can’t judge a session that stutters. When Serum instances are chewing through your machine, my Serum 2 CPU optimization guide goes over the multicore and quality settings that actually matter.
And the biggest shortcut of all: better sounds at the source. A patch with its EQ and dynamics already designed in barely needs surgery afterwards. That’s genuinely why making presets is my job. If you’re on Serum 2, take the free Serum 2 preset pack (250+ sounds) and notice how little corrective EQ they ask for next to raw init patches. For a broader palette across genres, there are also our Serum 2 preset bundles.
A step-by-step mixing order
Everyone lands on their own workflow eventually. This is the order that keeps me out of trouble:
1. Drums first
The drums are the skeleton, so they get built before everything else. Anchor on the kick (I put its peaks around -8 dBFS), then set the snare against it, and fit hats and percussion around those two.
Some frequency landmarks worth knowing: the kick’s fundamental sits at 50–60 Hz with its click at 3–4 kHz; snare body lives near 200 Hz, the crack near 2 kHz. High-pass overheads and hats at 300–400 Hz so they leave the kick alone. For glue, start with a bus compressor at 4:1, attack 10–30 ms, fast release, pulling 2–4 dB of gain reduction.
One more thing: EQ cannot save a weak sample. Drums that sound small at the source need a new source, not more processing. This is exactly why I keep processed one-shots and loops on hand; Drums Utopia is my go-to kit for house and future bass sessions.
2. Bass and 808s
The low end lives or dies on the kick–bass relationship. Two rules handle most of it: mono everything below 100–120 Hz, and never let kick and bass share a frequency at the same instant.
In practice that means either sidechaining the bass to the kick (2–3 dB of ducking is enough — felt, not heard) or carving a few dB from the bass exactly where the kick’s fundamental lands. High-pass every non-bass track at 100 Hz or above and the low end cleans up on the spot.
With 808s specifically, saturation beats boosting. Drive creates harmonics at 100–300 Hz, and those are what let an 808 read on a phone speaker. There’s a full walkthrough in the Serum 2 808 bass guide, and if the design stage doesn’t interest you, The best 808 Vol.1 is a kit of tuned, pre-saturated one-shots.
3. Music: synths, keys, guitars
Once the rhythm section holds, bring in the melodic layers. Be aggressive with high-passing; most pads and guitars give up nothing below 150–200 Hz. Pan for contrast: doubled guitars hard left and right, lead synth in the centre, pads spread wide. When two parts mask each other, EQ is not the first tool. Try re-panning, moving one part an octave, or just muting one. An arrangement fix beats a mixing fix every single time.
4. Vocals
Automation before compression. Ride the vocal clip by clip until it sits evenly, then compress lightly: 3–6 dB of gain reduction at 3:1 or 4:1. De-ess after the compressor, because compression pushes sibilance forward. And for keeping a vocal upfront, a short slap delay (80–120 ms) usually does more than reverb.
5. Effects
Reverb and delay belong on send/return tracks rather than inserts, so several tracks can share one space. Then filter the returns: high-pass near 300 Hz, low-pass near 8 kHz. Filtered reverb buys depth without the wash. If you’d rather build effects inside the synth itself, Serum 2’s new FX bus system is genuinely capable; routing and the standalone SerumFX version are covered in the Serum 2 effects guide.
6. Balance passes and automation
Now loop the track and make small moves: guitars down 1 dB under the vocal, the pad riding up through the bridge, a filter opening into the drop. Automation is what breathes life into a mix. Check against your references at matched loudness, walk away for a while, then listen the next day on different speakers before calling it finished.
Starting points that actually work
None of these are rules, only defaults you adjust by ear. But they get you into the neighborhood quickly:
| Element | Move | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Kick | Boost 50–60 Hz and 3–4 kHz, cut 300–500 Hz | Weight plus click, less cardboard |
| 808 / bass | Saturation before EQ; mono below 120 Hz | Audible on small speakers, stable low end |
| Snare | Boost ~200 Hz (body) or ~2 kHz (crack) | Pick one; boosting both gets harsh |
| Vocals | HPF 80–100 Hz, cut 300–500 Hz if boxy, shelf +2 dB above 10 kHz | Clarity and air without sibilance |
| Pads / guitars | HPF 150–200 Hz, pan wide | Space for kick, bass and vocal |
| Reverb returns | HPF 300 Hz, LPF 8 kHz | Depth without mud or hiss |
Common mixing mistakes
- Too many layers. Eight stacked pads sound smaller than two good ones. Solo each track against the mix; if it doesn’t earn its spot, mute it. Density and fullness are different things.
- Ignoring gain staging. Start the mix with everything slammed into the red and every plugin down the line behaves worse for it. Keep headroom; the master can always come up at the end.
- EQ boosts everywhere. Cutting should outnumber boosting. A 2 dB cut in the right spot beats a 6 dB boost in the wrong one, and ten boosted tracks just produce a louder, harsher edition of the same mud.
- Over-compression. Meters barely moving while the track feels flat? Back off. Most sources want 2–4 dB of gain reduction, not 10.
- Fake width. Slap stereo wideners on everything and it all collapses to nothing in mono. Real width comes from panning, doubles and short delays. Then check in mono. A hook that vanishes there needs fixing now, because club systems and phone speakers will expose it for you later.
- No references. Your room lies and your ears lie, especially two hours in. A reference track at matched loudness is the cheapest mixing tool in existence, and almost nobody uses it consistently.
Mastering, briefly
Mastering is the final polish applied to a finished stereo mix — never a rescue mission. When the mix is wrong, the fix is going back into the mix.
A simple chain that works in 2026: gentle bus EQ (moves of 1 dB or less), a glue compressor pulling 1–2 dB, optional saturation or a clipper ahead of the limiter, then a limiter with its true-peak ceiling at -1 dBTP. Loudness depends on where the track is going: about -14 LUFS integrated lines up with streaming normalization, while club-oriented genres commonly get mastered hotter, around -8 to -10 LUFS. Every extra dB of loud costs dynamics, so push until the punch starts to suffer, then step back.
When sending a mix off to mastering, export a 24-bit WAV with 3–6 dB of headroom and nothing limiting the master bus.
FAQ: mixing music
How long does it take to mix a song?
A producer mixing their own track needs anywhere from two hours to two days. The speed comes from good source sounds and a repeatable order of operations, not from rushing. If a mix refuses to come together after a few hours, sleep on it; fresh ears fix more problems than new plugins do.
Can I mix on headphones?
Yes, and in an untreated room, headphones are often the more honest choice. The caveat is that stereo width and low end translate differently on them, so cross-check on at least one other system; a car stereo and a phone speaker make a surprisingly useful pair. A mix that survives all three is done.
What level should I mix at?
Individual tracks averaging around -18 dBFS, pre-master mix peaking under -6 dBFS. Don’t chase a LUFS figure while mixing; loudness belongs to the mastering stage. Monitor at moderate volume (roughly conversation level) and only go loud in short bursts; at high volume your ears flatten the frequency response and every mix suddenly sounds great.
What’s the difference between mixing and mastering?
Mixing balances the individual tracks inside the session. Mastering processes the finished stereo file (final EQ, glue compression, limiting) so it translates across playback systems and lands at a sensible loudness for its destination. Two separate jobs, and keeping them in separate sessions (or on separate days) keeps you objective.
That’s the whole system: prep the session, build upward from the drums, cut more than you boost, reference constantly. And if you want the shortcut on the source-sound side, the free Serum 2 presets are sitting there: 250+ patches that already sit right in a mix, leaving your time for the balance instead of the surgery.
I run Monosounds.studio and make the packs myself. Ten-plus years of producing, 97+ releases, 16,000+ downloads. Every Serum 2 preset we ship passes a CPU check on a mid-range laptop and gets used in a real track before release. If it does not survive a mix, it does not go in the pack.
More about Maxim & the studio →
