Collapsed Stereo Image
Suppose you’ve hard-panned a number of tracks, but your mix still doesn’t sound as wide as you’d like. What’s wrong with this psychoacoustic picture?
Your hard-panned tracks might have too much bottom end. Bass frequencies are inherently omnidirectional, meaning it’s hard for the human ear to determine where they originate. That’s because...
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Washy Sound with No Depth
Adding reverb to a mix is a great way to make it sound bigger. The larger the implied acoustic space, the more depth and width the production takes on. But running virtually everything through reverb in an attempt to make...
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The Chorus Doesn’t Climax
You had high hopes for your new power-pop ballad, but something is holding it back. Your tracks were all captured with plenty of dynamic range, the performances were killer, and the arrangement positively soars during the hook. Yet for some reason,...
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Too Much Compression
These days, many mixes are so overcompressed that they become irritating and fatiguing to listen to after only one or two minutes. Overcompression is like a plague...
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Not Enough Punch
A mix lacking detail will also often lack punch, or transient elements married to tightly focused bass-frequency content. When a mix’s spectral balance is already great, it...
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Insufficient Detail
When a mix is lacking in detail, boosting high-frequency EQ is often the wrong approach. When that just creates a glassy mix without solving the problem, try cutting...
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