Curious About How You Guys Mix, What Order/Workflow?

[KevTav]

Just trying to get a feel for what you guys have been taught or believe is the right "order" of your mixing, especially with effects and automation.

Do you automate your BOUNCED tracks? Do you Bounce every track to go to pre-master? Do you have some MIDI tracks and AUDIO tracks then bounce those?
Do you automate your bounced AUDIO tracks only? Or do you Automate BEFORE bouncing?
Do you keep your tracks pretty dry until you bounce? When do you use Inserts vs. Sends?

I just want to see what people believe is the right order or what works best for them, what their habits are.

[PhillipOrdonez]

In my case there aren't any clear cut ways of going about it. I've started mixing everything in a different daw, so at one point or another, the process involves bounced stems.

If the project was started in Reason before the new modus operandi, then basically everything in terms of automation has been done already and I'm going to focus on just mixing for the most part. But even then I'll sometimes add extra automation and edit the arrangement if necessary.

Projects started in Reason after my new workflow mostly get bounced raw without much automation besides the most necessary. I'm foregoing any insert or send effects at this stage, and I'm basically creating stems to be arranged on the other daw before starting the mixing process. All this because I don't want to be at the mixing stage and then having to go back to the reason project to bounce an instrument again without any inserts. I rather add the inserts with the reason rack plugin in the other daw.

Then there are the projects not started in Reason but I guess you're not interested in hearing how things work there, but I'm using the RRP everywhere and loving it.

[TheDragonborg]

I just export the song to a stereo file... I just mix as I compose.

[xboix]

My methods have changed over the years but these days I do a rough mix as I go along but when the song is "finished" I bounce each track to separate WAV files, normalized and complete with FX and automation. I archive these along with the original project and any production notes etc.

Then I pull those tracks into a new project and work purely with those adding more FX and automation as necessary. I never do this stage in Reason - I used to use Cubase but now I use Studio One. If there are a lot of tracks I'll sub-mix down until I have between 4 and 6 tracks to balance.

[KevTav]

My methods have changed over the years but these days I do a rough mix as I go along but when the song is "finished" I bounce each track to separate WAV files, normalized and complete with FX and automation. I archive these along with the original project and any production notes etc.

Then I pull those tracks into a new project and work purely with those adding more FX and automation as necessary. I never do this stage in Reason - I used to use Cubase but now I use Studio One. If there are a lot of tracks I'll sub-mix down until I have between 4 and 6 tracks to balance.

Yeah this is closer to what I'm starting to do.

[TritoneAddiction]

I just mix as I compose.

Yep me too. Song writing, sound design/selection, mixing, even mastering, they all get blurred together.
I've heard all the tips of how you're "supposed" to do it, but it just doesn't happen that way for me.

[ShelLuser]

At first I used Ableton Live and my APC40 to try and mix my work. That "kinda" worked but also turned into a bit of a disaster (it's easy to loose track on the APC40, especially since you don't have any indicators on the controller to tell you what you're working on right now). So I started using the Live mixer itself using keyboard & mouse. But at this point in time I was more busy with learning, tweaking and just messing around than anything else.

Then Reason 6 happened and I fell completely in love with it. Upgraded from version 4 and... omg that mixer section. From that moment on I did all my mixing in Reason. Even bounced audio from Live so that I could use that in Reason for mixing. This worked quite well, had a lot to re-learn but...

Finally last year happened, I had a break which allowed me to heavily upgrade parts of my studio, in specific all of my software (Ableton, Reason & Max), I added Push to the setup and ended up adding Maschine & Komplete Ultimate as well and finally replaced my el-cheapo USB audio interface with an N.I. Audio 6. That was a major game changer... Especially after I added the Ozone mastering suite.

So these days I apply what I like to call "dual mixing". Live sits at the heart of my setup like it always has and I'm doing the final mix here. But I now turn to Maschine for percussion, basslines and general audio effects which I add to my Live project "as is" (= one track) and I do all the mixing / filtering of that stuff behind my Maschine. These days I usually add Ozone's 9 imager to my Maschine mastertrack which helps me to bring everything together.

As much as I love Reason's mixer section I have to admit that this new setup is a lot easier on me. Heck, I'm even warming up to the rack plugin which I've used quite a few times now (Europa + Polar + Guitar Rig 5 (all in Live)... holy moly!).