Originally Posted By: PaulH
That said I am frustrated with my mixes, no where near as dynamic and loud as professional recordings. The phrase "well duh" comes to mind knowing you can't match a basic home studio with professional studios but it is annoying me. Plus I don't know how to mix. I have the basics but it's alot of trial n error and many many hours of editing.

Paul, I am also fairly new to the whole production side of things. Here are a few things I recommend that have helped me a lot,

- The book Mixing Secrets for the Small Studio - I bought this and read it cover to cover a couple of times and still refer to it! the author has a wealth of additional info at his website for free including raw tracks to use in your own mix experiments.

- The video tutorials from The Recording Revolution - I bought their videos on editing, mixing, EQ, compression, mastering and vocals. I have watched most of them once but they are great for watching over again.

- I wanted to get some KRK monitors but I really do not have a room where I can use them effectively so I am stuck using headphones. I bought a decent pair of headphones and also bought the VRM box from Focusrite. The headphones are a nice private way to mix but you can have issues with the stereo separation heard in headphones not translating well to speakers so the VRM box attempts to resolve that issue by simulating various studio monitors.

- And I recently purchased Izotope software for mixing, vocals and mastering. Have not used it extensively yet but I am absolutely amazed at how much better my mixes sound just by using their presets.

My personal (amateur) opinion is you may already have enough hardware and just need to focus on training, practice and maybe software.

Last edited by JohnJohnJohn; 12/12/13 01:53 PM.