I really like them, but I honestly just mix through them in bypass and then check in the different rooms I have. My last two mixes have been pretty good after switching to this workflow (and implementing the foundation method from the mixing cheatsheet booklet). Make sure you give yourself a couple minutes just listening to your references, at least initially when switching among the rooms. That’ll really help give you clarity when you’re stacking your mix up against them. Good luck! I don’t really even use my old sennheiser cans anymore thanks to VSX, and I love those things.

Using saturation to help with perceived loudness, and which types of saturation suit different situations (i.e. tube for weight/body I think, tape for mellowing the high end, etc.)

I do it because it’s what renews me, even if I’m just learning a new cover or practicing for a gig. People, no matter who they are, who call themselves artists just because they can write a magic sentence or two and get a track in 30 seconds are completely missing the point of this whole endeavor.

@Shane Doyle at what point in my comment did I mention suffering? The creative journey gives you the reward of learning something and then using it to express yourself, which using AI to wholesale create a song inherently does not. I’m sorry, but actually taking the time to write, track, mix, and master music is not the same experience as just writing a couple sentences and letting a machine do all the work. No matter how many prompts you write, the machine is doing all the creating, and it’s disingenuous to equate the art of legends to a song written by AI. That’s like saying, “Hey Paul, write me a song about a lady named Eleanor” and then thinking you wrote one of the Beatles’ hits. Further, struggle produces growth: surely you’ve had personal wins where you thought a track wouldn’t come together, but then you figured out what to do and were able to apply that down the road. Or, I’d venture to guess you have a much better grasp on the whole process of music production now than when you started, despite some bumps in the road. Where is the progress if everything someone ever “creates” is “perfect?”

Matching the level of your track and the reference helps you determine how they stack up, as our brains are just trained to think “louder is better” oftentimes. You can go either way with it, but the move is usually to bring down the reference track to your mix’s volume. Essentially, you want to make the elements of your mix sound as close as possible to the reference in terms of tone/balance/etc. at the same volume, because then it’ll sound right when you do get up to commercial levels. Also, like James mentions, it gives you targets to shoot for in terms of sound/vibe/etc. For example, if you were trying to make your quieter mix have a low end as loud the reference track at its normal volume, you’d probably do drastic, unneeded EQ or volume moves that’d ruin your mix when you tried to balance and bring in other elements. Reference plugins usually have a volume match option, so they may be worth looking into. I use Metric AB, but I know a lot of folks on here swear by Reference. Using YouLean to separately get the levels of your mix and the reference and then volume match appropriately is definitely a good, free option. Good luck! Soon as you get the hang of using them, it’s an invaluable skill 🤘🤘

@Blake Burleson Thank you! Glad you dig it! 🤘🤘

@Pan Man thanks! Also, solid choice for a gif 🤘🤘