Mixing Secrets for the Small Studio (Sound On Sound Presents...)

As a mature 'student' wanting to cement my existing knowledge of the mixing process, as well as explore the yawning gaps in that knowledge and develop a consistent workflow, I found this book to be almost perfect.I'll get the few (minor) niggles out the way first - and these are repeated in my review of Mike Senior's other book, Recording Secrets for the Small Studio. You should read that book as well - in fact, read it first, as it is focused on the capture of material. Get that right and you're in a much better place when it comes to the mix.Firstly, in the niggle list - the speech bubble call outs are not useful (to me, anyway) as they are no more than verbatim lifts from the text. Fine if the text consists of sprawling passages with no breaks, but this book is usefully broken down into short, titled sections, so the need for those additional highlight bubbles is minimal and they become a distraction. More useful might have been something like another short comment from a respected producer/engineer/artist on the subject being discussed.Secondly, the larger secondary text boxes are often annoyingly placed, such that they unnecessarily interrupt the flow of reading a section or require you to turn back to a previous page to read them. It might make for an interesting layout, but it gets annoying. To be honest, in most cases I couldn't see a reason for the passages to be treated as supplementary text boxes as the topics often deserved inclusion in the main text.Finally on the minor niggle front, the quality of the graphics was up to Focal Press's usual standard - variable. I don't get how a thirty quid book can't offer consistently high quality images and illustrations. Screenshots, as always, look the worst.So, those weeny complaints aside, in pretty much every regard I found the book to be brilliantly structured, clearly written (with enough humour to raise a smile in some of the drier sections) and with an excellent progress from one chapter to the next. It is pretty much laid out like an all-purpose mixing session workflow sequence, starting with prepping the material, moving on through balancing, compression, EQ, and so on. It's crammed with useful tips from Mike and from respected producers and engineers.The book exposed huge gaps in my knowledge and some terrible practices I had developed over the years. The arguments for and against doing things in a certain way were clear and compelling and made total sense, often backed up with comments from the industry experts. It was interesting to compare this with a lot of other free and commercially available mixing training to see how many seemingly elementary mistakes many other people are making. It made me feel a little better about my naivety! In fairness, the 'rules' are made to be followed, bent, broken or ignored as appropriate for the situation at hand, and the end result - the final mix - is the final proof of the pudding. So, for example, while Mike promotes using EQ in the first instance to CUT rather than BOOST to balance a track in the mix, he also goes on to say that there are times when doing the opposite might work better for your desired result. I doubt that people like Brian Eno or Tony Visconti slavishly followed all the rules in the studio. Of course not. While I am sure these pioneer producers have a solid understanding of the 'correct' way to do things, they took those rules and wrapped their own experimentation and fearlessness around them to come up with something different. As a basis for developing your own techniques, or simply as a standard guide to straightforward, logical mixing, either way this book is a fantastic source.I have read it once, cover to cover, and now plan to go through it again with a specific mix on my desk, applying Mike's logic and workflow. I'm rarely excited about reading the same book twice - especially back to back - but on this occasion I am raring to go. I don't think I will pick up another book on mixing for a while, but I will buy a few masterclass style video tutorials to supplement this. It will be interesting to watch these given the solid understanding I now have of the mixing process.

I really do love this book. I've only just started to learn how to record and mix myself and had been muddling along looking up the odd YouTube tutorial when I got stuck, but just "having a go" without really having a structured methodology to apply. Hence my early mixes were typical of a small studio producer: too much instrumentation, very muddy, cluttered sounding and just obviously amateur in sound quality.What I love about Mike's book is that he give you a method to follow. I read the book first cover to cover and his approach really appealed to me because it was saying: here's where you begin, next do this, then do this, etc etc, building on each layer till you get through the whole process and come out the other side with, at the very least, a well balanced mix. He spends the first few chapters giving advice on monitoring and supplementary monitoring so you can really hear what your mix sounds like. He gives you advice on acoustically treating your room etc so once you've passed through the first few chapters and followed his advice at the very least you will be equipped to "hear" your mix properly and therefore make properly informed balancing decisions.Mike then explains the pro mindset to approaching mixing: editing first and getting everything sounding tight before you move onto balancing and using your various mix tools. He supplements every chapter with quotes from countless interviews with the world's best mix engineers and has really done an excellent job about finding the points of commonality between all these great engineers and how they approach mixes to construct an A, B, C, step by step guide that someone learning the art of mixing can take. Once you're well versed and producing great commercial mixes you can adopt any non-linear method you like if it gets you results. But for someone like me who didn't know where to begin, it was just so great to have a structured method to follow.The other thing Mike does is augment the book with online resources which I frequently refer back to ask I go through each chapter. He gives you links to freeware plugins to supplement the plugins you might have in your DAW and recommends affordable plugins where he feels necessary. Mike genuinely seems to have a desire to give home studio or small studio producers the right tools to create competitive mixes.This book has helped me adopt a professional mentality to how I approach recording, editing and then mixing. I can't recommend it highly enough, it's really a fantastic guide for someone keen to learn how to mix to commercial grade in their own studios and this book does a great job of demystifying audio production terminology. It's not an idiot's guide by any stretch of the imagination. You will need to concentrate and get your head around some difficult concepts but if you persevere and work through a mix project with the book, you'll see your skills as a mix engineer improve dramatically.Not sure how useful it would be to an experienced mix engineer as that's not the perspective I'm writing from. But from discussing some of the ideas I've learnt with friends of mine who are experienced and studied audio production etc, it's been quite rewarding telling them some practices I've adopted that they didn't really do! :-) Good luck!!

Not for beginners,Beginners u can go for audio engineering 101 by Timothy A. Dittmar

Excelente libro, son de esos libros que no puedes solo leer una vez y va siempre al grano con los problemas que los estudios en casa tienen en cuanto a problemas derivados del incorrecto (o hasta nulo) tratamiento acustico de un cuarto común y corriente, recomendaciones para obtener el mejor sonido en cuanto a monitores, audífonos de referencia y sobre todo el detalle de cada pasó en el proceso del mixing en un contexto exclusivamente de home studios.Un libro que me ha abierto la mente en cosas que desconocía sobre el proceso del mixing y sobre todo que está respaldado por comentarios de grandes personalidades de la producción en audio.

Penso che sia uno dei migliori libri mai scritti sul tema! Ma non solo. Questo libro ti da una miriade di informazioni che ti permettono di perfezionare le tue abilità nel missaggio. Tratta veramente tantissimi aspetti e ti da le informazioni per poterti costruire uno studio che suoni abbastanza bene da poter missare un brano che poi suoni bene in qualsiasi ascolto e circostanza. Il tipo ne sa veramente tanto!!! Lo consiglio veramente tanto a chi è interessato alle produzioni sonore.

This book teaches you very well that mixing isn't just turning some knobs here and there. It demystifies all the hard work and understanding of sound and technology that is required to mix in commercial quality.It took me a long time to work through this book and I certainly can't remember everything I've learned but I'm going through it again now and make concrete notes to come up with my own mixing checklist.The learning effect of this book is works best when applying the covered techniques on a real world project. So if you have some sample songs to mix, those can go very well with you as you go through the book.

Livro cheio de informações preciosas para quem deseja realmente estudar o assunto e obter resultados relevantes através do conhecimento! Indispensável a qualquer pessoa séria nessa área!