I Paid 3 Mixing Engineers to Mix the Same Song... and I'm Not Impressed

I paid three different mixers to mix the same song ranging in price from 100 to a thousand dollars now I haven't heard them yet but we're about to find out if 10 times the price means 10 times the quality all right let's dive in so here's the rough mix that was sent by the band [Music] [Music] all right and let's Jump Ahead to a course [Applause] [Music] so this song was given to me by one of the members of my program and I had never heard it before I'd never mixed it myself before or anything like that I have no familiarity with the song or with the multi-tracks no bias at all basically we just acted as the middleman and hired out the mixers and all I have here is version one two and three that's all I know so let's check him out I mean right away I know we've got to just adjust the levels here to get them more matched when they ask us [Music] their face is done with fear and rejection so we've got one version that's quite quiet and then the other two that are fairly loud [Music] [Music] I mean the tough thing is that you know this quiet mix is still peaking louder than the other two but the other two sound a lot louder right so you know that's that is something that's baked into the mix so I think we're roughly level matched you know at least for comparison's sake I'll probably just have to use my volume knob to to really evaluate it but let's check out a little more of version one here birthday girl [Music] [Music] okay [Music] you can hear like the low ends like pumping that stuff is jumping out weirdly [Music] all right let's hear number three [Music] version one and three are pretty similar [Applause] alright honest first impression I honestly don't think any of them are that great uh version one is probably the best I'll spend some more time listening though [Music] the truth is gone [Music] yeah I mean that's the splash symbol is louder than the vocal there gone hidden with no remnants left for us to find what of the past have we buried now when I hear the verse I like the third version better very interesting [Music] okay it's obvious that version two is you know in in last place here but it's a little tough between number one and number three I wanted to have a really big range in price to compare these mixes so what I do know is that one of these mixes cost a hundred dollars on Fiverr and I'm gonna I would bet money that that's version number two and then another version was about 500 bucks on sound better and then another version was a thousand dollars also on sound better but I still you know aside from the Fiverr one I think I still don't know which one is which here and because two of these are pretty close here you know mixes need to evolve right so I think what I'm gonna have to do is just listen to all of these start to finish to feel like what is what is the reaction uh how much does it pull me into the song how interested do I stay throughout the song so you know it's all going to get edited down but rest assured I am definitely gonna listen all the way through to these mixes great [Music] [Music] all right so I've fully listened to all of these mixes now let's start with what's good and bad about them let's start with version two which I'm going to move down here as the last place mix now this it just it doesn't sound professional right and you could argue that the rough mix actually sounds a little bit better and it's it's really like a level thing and a Dynamics and compression thing you can see the transients are not as well controlled and you can hear that too like when the especially the kick you can hear it just kind of pumping a compressor I don't know if that's drum bus or that's on the mix bus or both it's interfering with the vocals everything sounds very scooped so we've got kind of this low mid thumpiness and then a huge hole in the mid-range and then a pretty harsh kind of crispy top end vocals are pretty harsh [Music] and there's like almost no guitars [Music] I mean just turning those guitars up a lot would would have helped this mix [Music] the Dynamics are the big problem here just really not handled in the way you'd expect to hear on a professional mix now what about the other two again they're pretty close [Music] and there's parts of each of them that I like so it's kind of hard to choose which one I think is best I like the brighter drums and guitars in that one but this one sounds a little more glued and consistent overall I think the one thing that I I guess disagree with about both of these top two mixes is how wet they are like it seems like there's a lot of Reverb on not only the vocals but on the the instruments the Acoustics maybe and the drums yeah you can hear how much reverbs there and it sounds like that continues all the way and to me that makes it sound very cloudy and kind of hard to distinguish all the elements especially in the mid-range and the lower mids it keeps the vocals feeling a little set back instead of really standing forward I would have mixed this a lot drier [Music] modern Pro Rock mixes they're they're not that heavy in the Reverb and both of these kind of have that maybe less so on this one where are you from when they ask us I think that's why version three even though that I can tell it's a little bit wet the vocals are a lot more up front and there's it's just a little drier overall which I like still don't like hearing the the Reverb tail on the vocals though [Music] they both have a bit of a crunchy character to the top end especially in the drums and the symbols like you can really hear the compression smacking [Music] in version three he's just set them a little further back whereas version one the drums are a little more up front [Music] and the [Music] end it's really tough I think they both did a good job in this section here near the end [Music] I like how it goes from the really big build to that Reverb tail on the last hit and then this really small intimate vocal into the last chorus that's cool and kind of both of them did that [Music] Okay so here's what I think these are very close I'm going to say that version three is the best one here version one second place version two third place version three I think it's just a little more control especially when you listen to the whole song it's nothing really jumps out as being overly harsh or off balance it's got a nice vocal that's very crisp and clear and up front the entire mix it never gets drowned out whereas version one I again it's it's very close but there's there's something in there that's here I'll try to show you there's something in the mid-range that's just ah I don't know it just doesn't quite sound polished this 800 900 range and the drums and guitars let's see what it sounds like if I dip that out [Music] to me that sounds a little bit cleaner and I think the low meds are just a little much in that mix and then version three which I think is the best [Music] I like the vocals here I just I would like to hear more mid-range and attitude and aggression out of the guitars probably in the 1K area [Music] yeah yes Father gray missing some of that forwardness in the guitars and maybe even in the drums in this mix but overall I'm going to say version three is the best here I'm gonna say version two was the cheapest the Fiverr version and I'm gonna guess that these are in order of cost I'm gonna guess that the what I chose is the best here is the thousand dollar mix second place is the 500 mix third place is the hundred dollar mix so we're about to find out if I'm right now aside from the differences in the mixes themselves it's always interesting to see whether the overall experience you know from hiring the person their communication just how the whole process went was it different from one mixer to another and in this case even though there was a 10x spread in the price they all handled it pretty much the same and pretty professionally no one asked for anything different in the tracks no one had any questions about the material once they received it they all just gone on with the job and sent the mix back when they said they would I will say that the quickest turnaround was from the lowest price option but they all commented that they enjoyed the song and enjoyed working on it two of them sent the mix as waves for review one of them was an MP3 which is fine with me I don't really care one of them did have a comment though and said that hey I sent this mix with a limiter on just so you can hear it more with a finished loudness level but if you want to hear it without the limiter let me know whereas the other two they just sent it as is but what we did find when searching for mixers to hire is that on sound better the the low mid-range price guys like 250 to 350 per song of which there were a lot of them available they were less straightforward things like specifying how many revisions they would offer before charging one of them had a sliding scale of rates depending on how many tracks were in the session another one said that his process isn't to mix the song fully he'll he'll mix it halfway kind of like a rough mix and then go back and forth with the client until the client's happy which sounds like a total nightmare to me and unfortunately this one's not very surprising but we had a couple guys respond to our first inquiry immediately discounting their rates and all of those things to me they just show a lack of confidence and a lack of professionalism and it just complicates the process for no reason I think it's much better just to say yep I listened to the song I'd love to mix it here's my rate and here's one I can give it to you all right moment of truth let's find out who did what mix and if my guesses were right starting with third place which I thought was version two let's see who did version two okay that was the Fiverr one we were right about that one that was a pretty easy guess 101 bucks I mean what kind of quality mix are you getting for a hundred bucks I mean it's kind of in line with the price right so no big complaints there all right let's see version one which I put in second place the second best mix version one who did it that was the mid-tier price that was the 550 mix from sound better okay so I was right the quality followed the price exactly here so that means that version three was the high-end engineer from sound better at a thousand dollars so in this case a higher price did mean a Better Mix now to be totally honest I'm a Little underwhelmed by the thousand dollar mix it's decent but it's not fantastic and honestly 100 I know that there are students that we've mentored inside of my training program that could deliver a Better Mix than this I'll even link below to a playlist where you can hear some of the work that our students have done but as far as this test goes the hundred dollar mix sounded like a hundred dollar mix and the jump up to 500 was well worth the Improvement in quality but there was a lot less difference between the 500 mix and the thousand dollar mix and that actually isn't very surprising you know I found from mentoring people inside my program also from just experiencing the industry and knowing what my peers are doing you know up to about 500 per song for mixing you're mostly getting paid for the job right your skill and your time but once you start to push beyond that especially approaching a thousand dollars per mix or more it's it's not just about that you're also getting paid for your taste your reputation your your track record the trust that people have in you based on what you've done before and also probably charging a premium because of how in demand you are so in that sense it's exactly what I expect to hear you know the lower the price is the more variation in quality you're gonna get whereas if you're paying you know 500 or up to a thousand or more per mix you're pretty much always going to get a pro mix regardless of who you go with it's just what's your choice whose stamp do you want on it and if you want me to teach you how to deliver mixes that are even better than these and get paid for it then check out the link to my training program below and by the way I also did this experiment for mastering where I paid five different mastering Engineers ranging in price from 20 bucks to over a hundred dollars to master the same song and the results of that test were very different it actually completely blew my mind so if you haven't seen that video yet go check it out right here and we'll see you next time [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: Hardcore Music Studio

Views: 245,590

Keywords: jordan valeriote, hardcore music studio, how to mix, how to mix music, mixing tutorial, mixing tutorial for beginners, music mixing tutorial for beginners, mixing engineer, mix engineer, home studio, audio engineer, home studio mixing, how to become a music producer, how to become a pro mixer, how to mix better, how to mix music like a pro, mix workflow, mixing for beginners, mixing music, mixing techniques, mixing tips, mixing workflow, music production

Id: YValhXrUsCw

Length: 17min 8sec (1028 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 24 2023