I was just watching this video on YT and I recalled reading through this thread. With the discussion about referencing and different ways people do it, I thought it was interesting that he describes using a similar process to Mike Senior’s book (mentioned above). It’s a very long video, but if you start at 1:11:30 he describes and shows his referencing process.
Personally, I use a combination of the 2 “opposing” approaches being espoused. While mixing, I tend to use a single reference. When finalising the mix, I start pulling up a variety of “benchmark” mixes for comparison.
I like the way Brian describes in the video “re-calibrating” his hearing by means of a variety of references - I’ve found that to be a very helpful tactic too.
I’m of the opinion that referencing, like mixing, is a different process for everyone. While there are good starting points and principles, the specific process is bound to be something you eventually personalise.
For me, mix referencing has ALWAYS been important, even way back when I was trying to bounce 4 track cassette deck mixes down to stereo, before I knew what to actually call it, I did it - badly - but I did it nonetheless.
…so ultimately, the important thing (again IMO) is to just do it.
I love reference tracks , digging in a trying to match sonics, I always use Ozone Matching with a reference track against my track and just nudge it a bit more if it needs it. I find this works well and even a bit helps with translation to other systems. . Melda EQ also have this feature. I find that it gives you a few % towards completion and 99% of the time it ends up staying on.
Is it best to stick a limiter on the stereo bus of your mix to bring it up to volume of the comerciql mix?
Is it best to add further processing on the stereo buss to make it sound more equal to tye commercial mix?
How do you add prossessing to the stereo bus without it effecting your mix if you want to remove it afterwards as its only for reference purposes?
The short answer is yes. But it’s important to normalise your reference and measure its loudness first, so that you know what you’re aiming for. There is no set method of matching your own project’s overall loudness to the loudness of the reference track, every time you change the level of something in your mix the overall loudness will change to a degree, so you need to keep checking all the way through the process. Place an LUFS meter on the master bus, a quick check on the denser parts of your mix will give you a ‘ball park’ idea of your mix’s loudness, but of course you will need to do a full scan of the project to get an accurate reading.
If you’ve processed each individual channel as far as you can, then yes, the next step is to introduce processing on the master bus.
Not quite sure what you are asking. If you have processing on the stereo bus as part of your efforts to match up to the reference track, then leave them on. Is that what you mean?
I mean, it’s not ‘only for reference purposes’, the idea is to match you mix up to the reference track as closely as possible, and if the master bus processing is part of that exercise, don’t take it off. In fact don’t take anything off. The aim is to leave your mix sounding the same as the reference track, not to match it up and then remove all the processing. If you remove the processing, then it won’t sound the same any more, and the whole exercise will be pointless.