The mix bus provides the final stage to tweak your mix, and this month we look at how to EQ it effectively
Jon is a London-based platinum award winning mixer, producer, composer and club remixer with a diverse CV that spans dance, pop, rock and music for media. He’s also a long term contributor to Computer Music. Jon usually handles final mixdowns, which is why we’ve got him to share some of his pearls of mixing wisdom here
Processing the mix bus can form an important part of your mix, and using EQ is probably the most common treatment.
That said, much like mix bus compression, it’s important to apply the EQ that’s needed, rather than use it out of habit.
When you’re mixing a track, you always have the option to adjust component tracks. This should always be your first approach, and is often more fruitful than applying excessive shaping to the overall stereo blend.
Nevertheless, there’s something quite satisfying about sweetening your overall mix with some EQ, and that’s what we’ll tackle here.
Much like mix bus compression, mix bus EQ can be quite subtle, and although plugin choice may be less critical than compression, it certainly helps to be aware of the EQ curve shapes you’re applying. Analogue emulations can also play a part as they often add their own mojo to the mix in the form of subtle harmonic distortions. To that end, knowing how your different EQs behave can be important, and we discuss this in the Pro Tip.
In this tutorial, we’ll look at how to set up your mix bus, showing you where to place the EQ, and then move onto various EQ treatments and how to use them.
> Step by step
1 Managing levels is important in the mix bus so you can leave some margin for mastering but also accommodate hardware emulation plugins that may well have subtle level dependent behaviours. To cover these eventualities, whenever you’re setting up mix bus processing, we suggest you place a gain plugin at the start of your chain.
2 Mixing often involves some element of comparison, either with other tracks you’ve mixed or with finished masters. Using some kind of A/Bing plugin can be particularly helpful with overall EQ and helps compare mixes at comparable levels. We’ve placed our plugin right at the end, leaving some free slots for other processors.
3 Adding mix bus EQ too early in your mix process can be confusing. Unlike compression, where mixing into the compressor can be beneficial from an early stage, EQ is best added from the mid stage onwards, and certainly after major EQ changes have been made to individual sounds.
4 The next decision we need to make is where to place the EQ in the mix bus chain. There is no single answer to this and it’s always worth remembering that anything placed after the EQ, such as a compressor, could be affe
