Mix masterclass with Jon Musgrave
If your mix just won’t gel, this month’s technique could be just what you need to finalise your track’s core elements
#17
Amixing technique that’s commonly mentioned but not always understood is submixing. This technique groups audio signals together prior to the main mix bus and can help balancing and mix cohesion.
Long before DAWs with massive track counts became the norm, mixers began grouping together and processing similar tracks to help them balance their mix. Sometimes this was for convenience, but could equally be down to limited resources, and the need to share specific processors. Either way, it turned out to be rather good at getting the mix to gel, and certain mixers even became well known for their submixing methods (Michael Brauer is probably the most famous example).
In a DAW environment, resources are usually limited by our CPU’s capabilities, so running our favourite compressor on numerous tracks isn’t often a problem. Even so, submixing can still form an important part of our mix, both from an organisational and sonic perspective. And once set up, it can also save time, be more CPU efficient and allow us to process each submix as one.
In this tutorial, we’ll investigate submixing using regular buses. This is a universal method that should work on all DAWs. That said, many DAWs now include their own streamlined options for setting up submixes, and we discuss some of these in the Pro Tip.
Right then, let’s get to it.
> Step by step
In this tutorial, we’ll take a universal approach to submixing using regular busses, and this should work on all DAWs. Nevertheless, the first thing to appreciate is that we are not using busses to split the signal, as we do with an auxiliary. Rather, signals are routed solely to busses to premix them prior to the master bus.
The simplest way to do this is to set up a fresh bus or busses, with faders at unity. Then on your individual tracks, use the track output option to switch the routing from the main output to the required bus. The audio will now pass from your track to the submix bus, then from the submix bus to the main output.
There is no requirement to set up submixes for everything. In fact, doing this can sometimes be more confusing. If you’re new to submixing, select elements that clearly go together but happen to be on multiple tracks. Drums or vocals for example. You can create submixes whenever you like, but doing so at early
