Topic

Mixing

  • How to choose studio monitors: size, room and placement first

    A practical guide to choosing your first or next pair of studio monitors: why the room and placement matter as much as the speaker, how to read a frequency-response spec, what size woofer suits a small room, and how to set the monitors up once they arrive. Placement guidance comes from Genelec and specs from Yamaha, read on 25 Oct 2026.

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  • De-essing vocals: how to find sibilance and tame it without a lisp

    Sibilance is the hiss of "s", "sh" and "t" sounds that jumps out of a bright vocal. This guide shows how to find it by ear and with a de-esser's listen mode, set threshold and range, choose wide-band or split-band processing, and fix the worst cases by hand. Checked against the FabFilter Pro-DS manual and the Ableton Live 12 manual on 25 Oct 2026.

    Workflows

  • Ear training for producers: a practical 15-minute routine

    Ear training for producers is less about naming intervals and more about hearing frequency, level and dynamics fast enough to act on them. This guide sets out a 15-minute daily routine, the free and paid tools that support it, and how to carry the skill into real mixes. Tool details were checked on 25 Oct 2026.

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  • Kick and bass relationship: tuning, phase and note choice before you reach for EQ

    When kick and bass fight, most fixes reach for EQ and sidechain. This guide works one level earlier: tune the kick to the song, pick bass notes that leave it room, and check the phase between the two so they add up instead of cancelling. It complements our low-end mixing and sidechain guides. Pitch maths checked against ISO 16 and the MIDI tuning convention, DAW steps against the Ableton Live 12 manual, on 25 Oct 2026.

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  • The laptop-only home studio: how to make finished music with one computer and headphones

    You can write, record, mix and release a track with nothing but a laptop and a pair of headphones. This guide covers which free or cheap software to start with, how to set the laptop up so it does not fight you, how to record without an interface, how to mix on headphones, and when an upgrade is actually worth buying. Prices and loudness figures were checked on 25 Oct 2026.

    Workflows

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