Hearing Common Mix Mistakes

Mud, harshness, flatness and hollowness are four symptoms pointing to four different moves.

Related

MixdownPhase CheckHeadroom

The problem

Mix mistakes rarely shout; they pass as fine until another system exposes them. Critical listening should attach a symptom and an action to each fault.

How it works

Four families cover most of them. Build-up in the low midrange makes mud, and the symptom is bass and kick fighting over one octave. Excess highs tire the ear, and the symptom is cymbals brighter than the voice. Over-compression removes transients, and the symptom is drums with no attack and a flat whole. Phase trouble collapses mono, and the symptom is elements disappearing when one speaker is muted. Too much reverb is a different kind of distance, where the tail covers detail.

Settings and judgement

Listen quietly for balance first, check phase in mono next, then compare brightness and bass with a reference. Solo each element to confirm it stands alone, then return it to the whole. For harsh highs, look for a pile-up between two and four kilohertz instead of adding more EQ. For low mud, high-pass first and then decide whether to cut.

What to listen for

Whether bass and kick share one line, whether the voice is buried, whether cymbals draw attention before the content, and whether detail returns when the reverb is bypassed.

Common misconceptions

That loud is good, or that every track needs EQ. The problem often sits in the arrangement and register rather than a plug-in; mastering cannot rescue a midrange that has already turned to mud.

Sources

• Owsinski, Bobby，The Mixing Engineer's Handbook（Cengage）— 混音常见问题章节核对，未引用
• Katz, Bob，Mastering Audio（Focal Press）— 单声道检查与动态判断章节核对，未引用

Used for fact-checking only; all prose is original.