Make Your Mixes POP With Mix Bus Processing! | Make Pop Music

In this video, we talk about mix bus processing. We go over what it can add to your mix, when you may want to use it, and we give an example to show you how mix bus processing can add shine, punch, glue, excitement at the end of your mixing process. Watch as we build a mix bus chain to get a mix sounding radio ready!
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DAW / Program I Use:
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My Gear:
DAW: Cubase 11 Pro
Desk: AZ Studio Workstations
Main Microphone: Lewitt LCT1040
Monitors: Focal Shape 65s with Focal Sub6
Interface: UAD Apollo Twin USB
MIDI Keyboard: M-Audio Code 61
Keyboards: Roland Juno DS88, Roland Juno 106, Arturia PolyBrute
Guitars: Fender American Professional Stratocaster, Gibson Les Paul Studio, Taylor 214 CE Plus
Preamps: Heritage Audio HA81A & Audient ASP800
Microphones: Advanced Audio 251, Slate ML-1, Shure SM7B, JZ BH-1, JZ V67, Lauten Audio LA-320, Lauten Audio LA-220, Lauten Audio LA-120, AKG P170, Sterling ST59
Camera: Panasonic G7
Lens: Rokinon 12mm f2
Camera Lights: Neewer LED Light Panels
Timestamps:
Preview 0:00
Intro 0:25
What Is Mix Bus Processing 1:37
Why You Should Use Mix Bus Processing 2:33
Before The Mix Bus Processing 3:40
Handling Dynamics With Compression 4:37
Adding Excitement With Saturation 6:12
Refining The Balance With Smart EQ 8:16
Taking The Dynamics Up A Notch With Multi-band Compression 9:37
Mix Bus Mid Side EQ 11:19
Final Limiting 12:54
Before and After Mix Bus Processing 13:50
Mix Bus Chain Recap 14:25
Final A/B Without Limiting 15:02
What This Mix Bus Chain Did For My Mix 15:18
Outro 15:55

[@jentaro]

One of few channels I can hang around over the tenth minute mark. Just too interesting.

[@werey2]

Absolutely the best source of mixing and production information online

[@A.JayWeber]

Bro I won't blow your comments up again. But this new pacing... The extra 2.5 seconds on the bypassing...WHOOH! I use Logic Pro X and today I still learned so much. This was such a great video! Thank you Austin

[@AaronHoeyMusic]

I literally was searching KZbin and google for this very topic today and boom, this comes out! Amazing

[@Linkoftimeg]

Another great video. Thank you for making these videos.

[@archiebeatz]

Awesome tips Austin! Thanks for sharing.

[@arianagrandefan9306]

Thanks Austin! Great video

[@channelmames]

That Perception A/B is genuis man... genuis. Praise Ian Shephard

[@ek3098]

Thank you soooo much for these videos!! 🎧

[@princemaxwhoobayangbon1516]

You are great, my man!

[@SpaceLeopard]

Great video. I was curious where other producers were putting elements like tape saturation and gulfoss/soothe2 in the mix bus chain.

[@robertm8188]

Super helpful thank you!

[@sushmitha5740]

U r really soo talented....i have really learned a lot from you.And one of my request is plzz do a music production video on k-pop music

[@fayelk5885]

Hiii Austin, first thanks everything you're doing for us artists/producers. Would love for you to make a video where you show us how loud and what volume level you think sounds best for each layer/instrument. Thanks :)

[@pedrosilvamusician]

The answer to that always depends on the other instruments. There are no "sound best" volumes. You should have the volumes set to whatever you want. Sometimes you want the kick to pop, sometimes you want the kick to be quieter and lower, there are no rules, it's just a matter of taste really

[@favourhenshaw197]

FINALLY!!!

[@MusokeMSK]

Hey Austin, I also set my ceiling to 0.1. Do you use "truePeak" Limiting on the L2 or do you turn it off? I heard various mastering engineers on KZbin say they turn it off because they prefer standard limiting for the sound.

[@zerogives]

Love from Italy

[@LanewoodStudios]

Hey Austin, really enjoying your videos. About that meterplugs leveling plugin though. I think you are supposed to leave that engaged when AB’ing and then you can take out the chain via the plugin and not enable/disable your inserts in Cubase.

[@MakePopMusic]

You can! But since I had to go through each layer one by one, I would’ve had to reanalyze AB every time so I just left it off except for the full chain examples.

[@alexsap_production4702]

Great!

[@BestTop-tj3kx]

Very Very Good 👍

[@leaveitorsinkit242]

How good is the Perception AB plugin?

[@bogackvrak2073]

Great content as always Austin. Please do a how to make a song like Taylor swift reputation album sound video. much loves ❤

[@michaelblissmusic883]

I notice you have a drum aux, drum and bass aux, etc... what do you use for processing on the individual aux channels? Do you have a video explaining what you usually put on your aux channels? Thanks for what you do!

[@MakePopMusic]

I do! I explain everything in template video! 😁

[@AdelSweezy]

did u add The god particle to the preset ? lol

[@Vrainy]

If you could do something like how to create your groove from scratch for RNB that would be awesome. I'm currently trying to fill my brain with knowledge about different genres so I could get my own sound. Thanks for this new and great information Austin! You rock

[@lameerjhontv6860]

That's great man, Keep in mind. Your production is a combination of all the music you listen to. Subconsciously pulling from the music u listen to. So try to listen to more and more different genres, for instance, if you know Darkchild, he would listen to classical music to get inspiration for RNB tracks. So just start listening to all kinds of music, Feeding ur mind with a bunch of things to pull from

[@Vrainy]

@@lameerjhontv6860 that's what I'm aiming for! thanks for the tip!

[@dreamchaser7123]

Great tutorial as always bro. I got a question - does it make sense to "pop" my mix bus when I only create an instrumental and don't produce the whole song with an artist? I mean that i send out my instrumentals and they record to them and then some engineers will mix it afterwards after i give them stems/trackouts. I'm just thinking if I just don't lose my time trying to hard mix my instrumentals like an engineer would do, because they will mix vocals and my instrumental once again anyways, so maybe i just stick to basic leveling and EQ

[@MakePopMusic]

I wouldn't just because typically mix bus stuff won't get bounced into the stems when you export, but try it out and see if it helps you land more projects!

[@dreamchaser7123]

@@MakePopMusic thank you!

[@Juliano_DJOL]

Good question and one I used to go back and forth about (and still do lol) and of course depends what you are producing for. When I make tracks for my library I use my own master chain that's more complex then when Im making anything for a certain artist or know where its going I will master or try to master it if I don't think they will. Super double edge sword tho! What I say now is try to develop like 2 or 3 personal mix bus chains for different things like your library, streaming, and to be Mastered (or no mix bus processing) add your small boost/flavor to tracks going into your library/archieve, this way they have similar levels and sig sound. I do most anything that makes big changes while mixing in the tracks or session then normally use a stock or basic limiter or the T Racks suite if bouncing a 2 track to send someone. Some of what I was saying was referring to mixing and adding effects on the tracks. You can also try to remember that a good master or mix engineer can make it work with just about anything, but the better it sounds when you send it to them the better it will sound after they do their thing. When I used to do more music I wld ask Clients for a copy with and without master bus limiter/fx or preferably a copy of the session. That way if any of the FX are causing problems or making things hard to mold together they can be adjusted. I used to go crazy mixing my beats tho and then I was like there's no reason to go crazy getting the most polished levels and perfect everything when u still have to add vocals. But then again the better it sounds the better it sells so again DEF a catch 22! Now a days I just keep stock 4-6 sends with FX and basic limiter (not cranked too hard) on master, but I also tend to mix and produce w a comp/limiter on my master bus but this can also be said not to do. When I Master I will usually bounce the song out to a 2 track and put all the songs from that album in the same session and then do my master bus stuff there but will still add slight limiter when bouncing before too. Just watch out for that squashed over limited/comp sound which you can get when pushing it too hard.

[@prankmoments9692]

How found Pop type music any website. Can you please tell me?

[@theonlyA01]

I mean, I make alternative rnb, but this certainly helps

[@contraspower6302]

🙏🙏🙏🙏

[@kaiquesfalsinsilva6240]

What to do if I don't really hear the differences with/withou the bypass?

[@MakePopMusic]

What are you monitoring on? You should hear a pretty stark difference. I can hear a difference on my macbook speakers.

[@ziebanez]

It sound like you use a lot of distortion before the mix bus processing!? Anyway...the best plugin you have there is the Waves Linear Phase Multiband Compressor! (IMO) It just make everything POP in such a good way 😃(I also use it to control the lows)

[@MakePopMusic]

There’s pretty much no distortion in the mix before the mix bus. May just be the audio compressing on KZbin 😂

[@ziebanez]

@@MakePopMusic Hmm. It must be youtube then. It sounds like a lot of distortion around 300-800 Hz

[@udderhippo]

Great vid, but one small request for future tutorials: when you A/B, it's better to not speak inbetween as it makes it far more difficult to hear the *change* from A to B. Other than that, great vids :)

[@szymonrupertwieczorek]

Uploaded 5 minutes ago... Next time I'll be first here

[@sebianuu107]

what is the name of the song?

[@MakePopMusic]

Lately by Birdsall!

[@sebianuu107]

thank you!

[@wtfshuk]

conmment

[@MakePopMusic]

Based

[@SpaceLeopard]

Yo Austin, there is a spam account on telegram pretending to be you, posting comment replies here promising a "gift" if you hit them on telegram. This comment is more to warn others but thought you should know too. Cheers