Delivering Your Session
Getting your session ready and organized is the most important part in making sure your mixing project goes smooth and stays cost effective when you deliver it to us. Listed are helpful tips to get your sessions ready for the mixing engineer.
Reference Mix:
Providing a rough reference mix you have done. This will help us get an idea how you want your song to sound. This would include effects and processing.
Editing:
It is important to make sure your session is properly edited and ready for mixing. This includes making sure all tracks are properly tracked. All unwanted sound or noise in between tracks should be removed. Vocals should be edited with all unwanted sound removed. This includes headphone bleed and silence between tracks that should not be in the mix.
Our basic mixing package does not include extensive editing. If we do find some minor issues in a mix that requires editing, we will fix the issue. However, if we find that major editing is needed that will heavily improve the mix, we will advise you to make the needed edits or an extra charge will be required for the extra time.
Effects:
It is always a good idea to record your effects to a separate stereo track(s). This will help the mixing engineer recreate the effects or use the existing processed recorded effects. Be sure to not process the effects to the tracks directly. Always have it processed to it’s own separate track. This will give the mixing engineer more control.
An exception would be if you are using outboard effects for such instruments as guitars and other instruments with built in effects.
Labeling Tracks:
Label your tracks with the correct name and notes. This will help the mixing engineer navigate the session faster and be more organized.
Audio Compression:
Recording tracks with heavy compression is not advised as removing compression from processed tracks is not always possible. A good rule is to use a “small” amount of audio compression during recording and then process the track with plug-ins to the signal flow in the session. This will allow the mixing engineer to process the correct amount of audio compression for each track.
Exporting Tracks from Another Audio Program:
If you recorded on another audio program other than Pro Tools, you will need to export your tracks as consolidated Wav files.
First consolidate all the tracks so the start and end points are the same. This will ensure that all tracks are in sync and are in the proper location when imported into Pro Tools.
Last export all the audio tracks as Wav files and save them in a folder. This will be the folder you should give for mixing. We recommend that the lowest settings for the Wav files should be 24bit/48K for music going to CD production.
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