← Music Tech Studio1.13 BalanceBalance Desk
hover anything for the why
Paper Kites · 100 bpmThe plan above; below it, every part's live spectrum on one axis. Where two curves ride together, the shaded region is masking.
Presets
As supplied: every fader at unity and the balance wrong, because the files were trimmed first. Bass and synth over the release, vocal and drums under: the bass is on top, not the vocal.AO3The one-mark line: one track barely audible or too dominant. Lift the vocal until it is clear, bring the drums up to meet it, pull the rest back: listen, not look.AO4Write it in that order: the fault and its region are AO3; what it does, the line it sits on and the change are AO4, as is the practical mark.
Level
Play runs the four bars round. Hold: reference swaps every fader, pan and send to the reference while you hold it, so you hear how far your balance is from it without losing your place. The space bar plays and stops.
Vocal0 dB
Pan
C
Send
dry
The lead. The first line of the marking is always that the vocals sit on top, and a buried vocal costs the most. Centre, and dry enough to stay at the front.
Drums0 dB
Pan
C
Send
dry
The drive. Too quiet is the most common mix fault; the marking wants them equal to the vocal or louder. They share every band with everything, which is why they never count as masking here.
Bass0 dB
Pan
C
Send
dry
The foundation. Sometimes supplied loud, sometimes left too quiet: the bass is the part most often misjudged both ways. Centre, for a mono-compatible low end.
BVs0 dB
Pan
C
Send
dry
The support. Often left loud as it came, and living in the same region as the lead: the first choice for a pan apart or a send back.
Synth0 dB
Pan
C
Send
dry
The pad. A synth over the vocals at the start of the chorus is a common fault: a sustained part in the lead's region, left loud. Ease it, pan it, or set it back.
What you should hear
Bassloudest, for the ear
novocal on top
noneshare a region
one part offthe mark line
all from the files and the faders, weighted for the ear
Privacy
Every word here comes from the song's measured levels and the five strips: which part is loudest for the ear, whether the vocal is on top the way the marking means it, which two parts share a region beyond what the release shared, and which of the mark lines the balance sits on.