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...but I guess I'm puzzled as to why the final mix should be so much harder, which you implied. I plan on test running every song I do, like you say with all the hardware hooked up; my amp, mic & speakers, which are all pretty good.



The biggest problem is different acoustics and ambient noise at a live venue. Try to hook up all your stuff in a bigger space than just your bedroom or wherever you usually do your audio work. Set it up in a garage or somewhere like that.

I've done a few gigs where I brought a laptop and played Biab live. I mixed the Biab songs where bass and drums were in the left channel and everything else in the right then used a stereo splitter plug so I could put both sides into different channels of my PA. Then at least I had some control over the volume levels of the bass/drums vs everything else. What sounds great at home can be very boomy live. Splitting the stereo mix like that worked fairly well. It's still much better to have individual instrument control but try that first. It might be good enough for you.

Read the thread in the Off Topic forum about using reference recordings to test your mixes. You've probably been in lots of places where they're using precorded CD's for music and it sounds great. Those are professional mixes and I guarantee you your mixes are not at that level yet. It takes practice, lots of practice. The other thing is a commercial CD has been properly mastered so each song is at a good relative volume to other songs and the EQ's are similar. Comparing that to a bunch of individual songs you mixed at home is drastically different. You may mix say 3 songs in a row where the bass is similar but the 4th one it's way louder because you thought the song called for it. Playing that immediately after another song where the bass is good can take your head off at the same volume.

Bob

Biab/RB latest build, Win 11 Pro, Ryzen 5 5600 G, 512 Gig SSD, 16 Gigs Ram, Steinberg UR22 MkII, Roland Sonic Cell, Kurzweil PC3, Hammond SK1, Korg PA3XPro, Garritan JABB, Hypercanvas, Sampletank 3, more.