Conor Dalton, a mastering engineer known for working with Daft Punk and Jeff Mills, has shared a 7000-word document on social media containing mixing and mastering advice drawn from his 15-year career.
In a Twitter post shared yesterday, Dalton shared a link (opens in new tab) to a website featuring advice that covers recurring mixdown issues, gain staging, stereo placement and multiband compression.
The engineer also answers useful questions, giving his take on how to make a mix translate across varied environments, how to achieve powerful mixes, how to recognize and control dominant resonances, and how to export mixdowns before sending to mastering engineers.
Elsewhere in the document, Dalton offers more general advice on mixing and mastering. "Your mixdown should sound 'like a record' as much as you can," he writes. "Mastering should improve it further while respecting your intentions, but the mixdown is key to good results, so don’t cut corners: if you can fix something during the mix, do so. All of these little 1% improvements add up to a big result."
Dalton's mixing advice has also been shared in a PDF that's available to download for free (opens in new tab).
