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Mixing Basics: Understanding the Fundamentals

New to mixing? Here's a crash course to help you understand what AudioNova's AI is doing under the hood — and how your prompts shape the sound.

🎚 What is Mixing?​

Mixing is the process of balancing, shaping, and enhancing the individual elements of a track so they work together as one.

Think of it as turning a raw recipe of sounds into a finished meal.

🧰 Common Tools in a Mix​

Here are the essential ingredients of any mix — all of which can be activated through your natural language prompts in AudioNova:

🎚 EQ (Equalization)​

Changes the frequency balance. You can:

  • Boost brightness → Add air to the vocals
  • Cut muddiness → Clean up low mids
  • Sculpt tone → Tighten the low end

🧵 Compression​

Controls dynamic range — makes loud parts quieter and quiet parts louder:

  • Make the drums punchier
  • Smooth the vocal performance
  • Glue the mix together

🌫 Reverb​

Simulates space and depth:

  • Put the vocal in a big hall
  • Add subtle room reverb
  • Make the snare feel distant

⏱ Delay​

Repeats sounds over time. You can specify:

  • Slap delay on the vocal
  • 1/8 note echo with feedback
  • Stereo ping-pong delay

📐 Stereo Width​

Controls left/right spread:

  • Widen the synths
  • Narrow the bass
  • Spread the background vocals

🔊 Saturation & Distortion​

Adds character, edge, or warmth:

  • Add analog tape saturation
  • Make the guitars gritty
  • Warm up the master bus

🧠 Why Prompts Matter​

When you say:

Make the drums tighter with a punchy low end

You're implicitly asking for:

  • Compression with fast attack
  • EQ boost around 60–100Hz
  • Possibly transient shaping

You’re not tweaking parameters — you're expressing outcomes, and AudioNova handles the rest.

💡 Mixing vs Mastering​

  • Mixing: balancing and designing individual tracks
  • Mastering: polishing the entire mix for final release (loudness, stereo balance, final EQ)

AudioNova focuses on mixing, but some mastering-like effects can be simulated too.

Want to go deeper? Try these: