Virtual Records

🎚️Tape saturation on the master One of the good mastering tricks is to add tape saturation to your whole mix. By adding a controlled amount of tape saturation during mastering, you can give your music a rich character and glue the mix together better. This technique can be subtle but can significantly enhance the warmth and depth of your tracks. There are many good tape saturation plugins on the market. From UAD, Waves, Softube, Slate Digital etc. Find what works for you the best. @natemixing

🎚️ Translation in three points. If your mix survives these, it survives AirPods, Bluetooth speakers and laptops. 1. Midrange carries the song. Roughly 800 Hz to 4 kHz is the part of the spectrum every playback device reproduces. If the vocal and the main hook are clear there, they'll be clear everywhere. If the vocal is buried there, no amount of sub or air will save it on a phone. Be careful on top, too: a sharp boost around 8-10 kHz turns piercing on earbuds tuned bright. 2. The core must work in mono. Lead vocal, kick, bass: solid in the center. Small speakers collapse to mono instantly and wide stereo tricks vanish or cancel. Width is an enhancement on top of a mono-proof mix, not the structure of it. 3. Details need to sit above the device. Consumer playback adds hidden compression and loudness processing. Quiet layers you can hear on monitors disappear. If a detail matters to the song, push it a little louder than feels natural in the studio. Then test on the real devices, at low volume. If vocal and groove still read, you're done. @natemixing

Understand the song before you touch it. Otherwise you’re mixing your idea of the song, not the song. A fader move without a reason is a guess. Every reason comes from what the artist is trying to say.

🎚️ Vocal reverb setup can have three layers, each with its own job. • Short (0.5-1 s): puts the voice in a room. Audible, blended, sometimes mono. • Medium (2-3 s): the sound of the song. The one people would call “the reverb”. • Ghost (8-12 s): way down in level, almost inaudible. It gives the feeling of a huge space without pushing the vocal back. Each layer sits at a different level. Together they feel like one space. @natemixing

🎚️ My mastering chain The idea behind the chains I create for mastering is always next: Compression → Bus Processor (if I use it) → EQ → Saturation and enhancers → Stereo Stabilizer → Limiting @natemixing