When you joined, I asked what you were stuck on. Gain staging came up more than anything else. So I wrote down everything I actually do, start to finish. The part of the mix nobody bothers to teach because it isn't glamorous. It's attached below as Field Guide N°1. Read it in order. It's built to take you from "I think my levels are fine" to knowing exactly where your signal sits at every stage, and why that matters before you touch a single plugin. And real talk: thank you for being here. I'm one guy building this in public, and a room full of people who want to get sharper is exactly what I was after. Iron sharpens iron. That's the whole point of this place. This is N°1 of a series. More coming. After you read it, tell me the one spot in your gain chain you've never been sure about. I'll go deeper on the most common one in the next guide.

If you came in off the video — no, that wasn't clickbait. MIXSTEIN is real, it runs in my actual sessions, and you just walked into the room where it gets built in public. Quick on me: 20+ years mixing and mastering, real outboard — Neve 5059, SSL Fusion, the WesAudio chain — and I'm building MIXSTEIN because every "AI mixing" tool I've tried treats your song like a preset. MIXSTEIN isn't that. It's Mixing Intelligence, not AI — an instrument that learns you, not the internet's average. What this room is: producers and engineers sharpening craft out loud. Real gear, real sessions, real decisions — and the why behind them. I post the build as it happens (the wins and the stuff that breaks), break down real mix moves, and you get first crack at the MIXSTEIN beta before anyone outside these walls. What it's not: a place to lurk. The people who get the most here are the ones who post. So let's start the first real thread 👇 What kills your mix momentum? The exact moment a session stalls — vocals won't sit, low end turns to mud, last night's mix sounds flat this morning. Be specific. That stall point is exactly what I'm building MIXSTEIN to kill — and your answer shapes what I build next. Welcome in. 🎛️

Man, I did NOT expect this — thank you. Reading every single comment. 🙏🔥 A lot of y'all are asking where to sign up for the beta — it's coming, and I'm pulling the first testers from the free community (link in the description). Early access + the behind-the-scenes builds drop there first. One question — and your answer literally decides what I point MIXSTEIN at next: 👉 What part of mixing kills your momentum the most — GAIN STAGING, DE-ESSING, or BALANCING FADERS? Drop it below.

I just want to let everyone know if you downloaded the first Gain Stage PDF that it was the wrong PDF that I uploaded. So I did link the correct one and make sure that you download that. Sorry to spam your inbox, but I wanted you to know this. So if you downloaded it, the correct one is now up. Thank you. Thank you.

I'll go first. I'm TouchTone DSG — 20+ years behind the console. Hybrid studio running Neve 5059 Satellite, SSL Fusion, FATSO, Lynx Aurora N, MPC Live II, and Ableton. I came up on boom bap, fell in love with anime/LoFi remixes, and I geek out over signal flow and compression topologies more than any normal person should. Right now I'm building an AI-powered mixing assistant trained on everything I've learned in 20 years of sessions. You'll see that journey documented here first. Your turn: 🎛️ What's your name / producer tag? 🎧 What's your setup — DAW, gear, anything you're working with? 🔥 What are you working on right now? 🎯 What's the one thing you want to get better at? Don't overthink it. Just drop in and say what's up. This is the room where nobody judges your setup — we just care that you're putting in the work.