Get Better Mixes Using Two Volume Levels

One of the best techniques I learned for getting a good mix is to work at only two volume levels. One that's nice and full without being loud, and the other very quiet. And mixing really quiet is actually one of the best tricks to set instrument levels and compare your mix to references to attain the loudness you're going for. And there's a lot of science to it. And this video is going to talk to you a little bit about using volume levels to achieve some of that. So if you've ever been confused by that, or would like some guidance on that, then this video is for you.

My name is Zion and I'm the founder of the Triple Threat Artist online producer course and community. And together with my friend, Josh Doyle an amazing producer, we work together with students to help them become Triple Threats, which is a singer songwriter producer. Nowadays the line between songwriting and producing is so blurred and some of the best songs are actually written by producers as well. So if that interests you, if you think you could use some help in that area, please check out the links below. We also have some freebies that could help you that cost nothing. So check it out below.

All right, let's get into this video … all about using volume to make better mixes.

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One of the first things you need to know is something called the Fletcher Munson Curve. Now you don't have to know this inside and out, but just understand the gist of what it's about. It is a phenomenon that we perceive frequencies - We perceive the tonal balance of a sound or music or talking differently at different volumes. So when we hear something very quiet, we actually hear, even though the tonal balance of the song hasn't changed, we interpret it a little bit differently than when we hear it really loud.

Now I'll put an article down below that you can check this out, but there's a whole graph of how we perceive sound. So what can we learn from that? How does that apply to us? Well, it applies to us because we need to understand how things sound when they're real quiet. We need to understand how our mix is going to sound when it's quiet.

And when it's loud, a lot, a lot, a lot of beginning producers and mixers, they produce everything they're doing - They produce really, really loud because they enjoy hearing it in full and they're bouncing around in their studio and having fun. And they don't realize that when you turn the volume down, the tonal balance of their song sounds completely different.

So mixing engineers often work at two or three different volume levels and that's it. They don't keep changing the volume. What I suggest is you find a volume level that works well for you before you go into your master bus. So this is my master bus here. I've got three plugins. I got a VU meter. I always like to start out with a VU meter, which is a way to kind of get things dialed in to about the same volume, same loudness originally, so you're not clipping. And then after I get those dialed in, so let's check this out. (music playing).

So I might turn this up just a little bit to get my volume on the VU meter to be - right around zero is really where I want, and this has a headroom of 18 decibels. (music playing)

So that's pretty good. I don't get it super dialed in because the song changes so much. I just find a place in the song that I think would be sort of a good place to average it and make sure my kick, especially the kick on a hip hop song, isn't just cutting through too much and overtaking the song with volume. A huge mistake I see with a lot of mixers, especially in the hip hop world or lo-fi world is their kick and their snare are way too loud, but they don't realize it because at a low loud volume, your ears actually kind of compressing those frequencies in that sounds good. And again, it has to do with that Fletcher Munson Curve.

So now that we've have our VU, the way we want it, I'm gonna go ahead and turn that off. We don't need to see that anymore, and we're going to bring it into the Ozone. Now I will say I'm mixing right now with my Apollo twin, the volume is set to about negative 28. That is where I like to mix it before I start to master. Once I turned my master bus on, I turn my Apollo twin down to about negative 40. And this is, to me, it sounds full without sounding loud. And I liked that volume a lot. And we're going to start mixing there. So I'm going to turn this on. (music playing)

So with Ozone on and my volume turned down from my studio monitors to negative 40. Let's see here, how that sounds. (music playing) And I've got my high area - my high frequencies over about 8,000 Hertz are a little, a little high and it's that high hat I know it is. I'm going to grab that high hat. We're going to adjust a little bit and pull up that. And I'm going to just turn that down just a little bit more. (music playing)

So now it starts to sweep or get back down into this area. I basically am saying, I want the high hat to be more in the high mid and take out some of those really high areas. Now this curve - my tonal balance curve for lo-fi hip hop is a little bit different than you would may maybe say for modern music. Modern music, your low subs are going to be a little lower. Your low mids are going to be a little higher. It's got a little bit different curve to it. It's more like that. And then lo-fi hip hop. I've analyzed songs. And the ones I like are about like that. So it's a very different curve. And I strongly suggest using the tonal balance plugin. This is by Isotope comes with Neutron. So I love this thing, but that's the point of this is just to talk about volume really.

So we're mixing at this volume. I've got a nice, solid feel. I've, I've kinda dialed my, my tonal balance in, and I've got a loudness here. I can adjust the loudness using this threshold meter in the maximizer of Ozone, but I've already got it pretty, pretty close. But to check that what we're going to do is we're going to actually turn on the reference. I have five different songs of other low-fi songs. I've already mixed that I've pulled clips in, that are saved into Ozone. And I can reference them by turning this button on right here. So let's listen to that. (music playing).

Okay. So as you can see, each of those have very different texture to them, different instruments. They sound very, very different, but they're all mixed at about the same volume, pretty close. They're all pretty hot too. You don't have to mix things this hot, but they are. So I'm going to compare now my song by turning this button on and off to one of these other songs. So here is this one's called smoke, and we're gonna turn that off and listen to the mix in my DAW. (music playing).

Yeah. If that was too loud or too soft, I could go into my maximizer and I could adjust this threshold here and it would turn down the music and put less compression on it. Or I could crank this even higher. It probably gets some distortion in it, and I may have to adjust other things as well, like the character of the compression, but I could get even louder. So let's just experiment and see what that's like. (music playing)

So that is a good way to now we can kind of set the volume of what this is supposed to sound like. I think this is pretty close. Now this is where the last trick is that I really, really strongly advise, take a utility plugin and drop it on the very end of your master bus and set the volume. It's just a gain stage, really - set the volume to something significantly lower. I've decided negative 23 is good for me. And now when you hear my mix, it's going to be very, very quiet, but that'll help me understand what the loudest instruments are in this mix. (music playing)

So what I did is I, again, I just am turning the volume way down and so I can just barely hear it out of my speakers. I didn't change the volume knob on my interface. I'm keeping that at negative 40, which is what I like when the Ozones is turned on. And then I am changing. I'm just turning on this utility plug to drop the volume significantly. So I can hear what is the main instruments that are cutting through.

Now, oftentimes what I see with a lot of new producers, new beginners is their kicks and their snares are way too hot and they're cutting through the mix. And when you turn it down to a really low volume, all you hear is just that snare or just that kick. And it's not a very pleasant sound at a low volume. So by doing this, it helps you understand where all those instruments are relative to one another with their volume.

So again, as a review, understand what the Fletcher Munson Curve is, understand that our ears hear things differently at different volumes. The sound actually changes our perception of the tonal balance - actually changes at different volumes. Find two or three volumes that you love mixing it in, stay with that before you put the mastering plugins on and after, and then also find a volume that you can mix at that's very, very quiet that you can just barely hear and it'll help you reference your volume against other songs to figure out how loud it needs to be. And it can also help you dial in what the tonal balance is at a very low volume and understand whether or not you have frequencies or instruments that are cutting through too much.

That's it for this week. If you got something out of this, or if you have a question or comment, please send me an email. My email is below. Check out our courses, subscribe to our YouTube channel. We'd love to hear from you.

Thanks guys.

Zion

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