Back when I worked in an untreated room, I worked in headphones exclusively and then tested a few commercial speakers. What can help is to do some of your mixing with the highs and lows filtered out and mono at the same time so you can focus on the relationships in the mid range. I don’t know how much engineering knowledge and skill you have outside of mixing, but making sure you have the bases covered is good. You need to balance the technical knowledge with the creative when you mix. Also, if you’re not good at editing after 3 years of mixing, then get good immediately. A bad mix can be avoided with a couple of hours of editing. Beyond that, you could invest in a few courses, maybe a book like Zen and the art of mixing, or pay an engineer or producer to consult your mixes 1-on-1.

@Versatyl Ultra can you elaborate about that? I’ve had a lot of success with Chat GPT, though I can say that it can be very dumb. I use it for idea generation and refinement mostly.

Try DaVinci Resolve. It’s a free nls and video processing suite. Professional videographers use it all the time. I actually convinced my business partner to switch from adobe to it.

Hey! I’d love to connect though I don’t have a podcast. I’m building a network of service providers to refer artists to when I can’t help them.

Either way, do what you gotta do, to get your music out AND not regret the quality — this is a marathon not a sprint. I think the best move depends on your genre. The quality of the engineering is always important — but it’s more crucial in certain genres. NOTE: Building w/a beginner is a waste of time if the mix quality isn’t decent out the gate. You need good product to build a fan base. The money for a good mix is small compared to what it takes to market a song on a grand scale. Invest in it seriously — time or money. I’m a producer and from my experience, it’s worth it to learn mixing if you use beats in your music. Digital sounds have been much easier for me to mix coming from acoustic production. Acoustic genres require more finesse in my opinion while genres that really on beats can afford to be over-processed. I’d say this is only a slight rule of thumb. Mixing is hard to do well either way, so the initial mixes you do will always suck. Here’s some tips if you want to DIY: Learn the basics of engineering: recording, signal flow, DAW operations, etc. Hire an engineer or producer to consult your mixes. You’ll improve much faster and ensure quality while staying in a more attainable budget. Mixing requires you to balance technical and creative skills/thinking well. It takes time to learn to do, so don’t be discouraged. Be patient. YouTube is okay, but if you want to learn mixing while not having to organize random advice, then buy a book or two. I’d recommend Mixing with Impact or Zen and the art of mixing. Look up “Cambridge mixing multitrack” for a library of songs to practice on. Don’t bother with studio monitors, get a professional set of headphones and stick with them. My favorites are Sony MDR7506’s and Beyerdynamic DT770’s. Studio monitors only work as well as the room is treated. Foam room treatment is a waste of money 90% of the time. Learn editing first, then mixing. It’s very easy to learn the former compared to the later. Mixing unedited or badly edited tracks will not make them sound better than they are.