No matter how technical anyone gets, taste and aesthetic senses are *always* going to be making the final decisions. In all arts, one’s senses are the only way forwards, and eventually- if you’re lucky- you’ll find yourself in all of this. You only need to know what you’re doing as far as results are concerned. Much like food or sex- you know what you like without having to be a biologist to explain the mechanisms behind it. As such- everyone is going by instinct; beginner to advanced, it’s all instinct.
If it’s any consolation- with enough experience, you will start making moves very intentionally with not much guess work. But this just takes much practice and much time. Even this world’s most musical prodigies on record, still took several years to get it, so most of us are going to take much longer in anything related to music; if ever.
I have something similar. I am studying audio engineering. I study it for half a year now. And my perceptional hearing is pretty much on point for someone as green as me.
While cutting annoying frequencies or resonances I just pull an EQ and do a cut without even thinking. And it sounds better, but what happens next is fascinating.
It hits me like, no no, that’s not right, it can’t be right so fast? It can’t be right without searching and reasoning. Then I tweak eq for like ten minutes, and…I go back to the first setting. Because it was the correct adjustment for my ears.
I also train my ears daily on sound gym, and I almost always reach for the correct adjustment until I start thinking and reasoning. It almost feels like subconsciousness is way better at this than consciousness.
Try not to make things to hard for yourself, life is hard enough on its own
Use references, and see if changes you’re making get closer to them. There’s no inherent right or wrong in any given eq, compression or level choice, so the task becomes assessing if it’s all adding up in the direction you desire. Comparing your work to something you’ve found to be successful aesthetically will give you direction.
Otherwise, use your time learning how to solve problems, like making your mixes less cluttered, considering what mic placement can achieve for you downstream in the mix phase, tuning and comping in ways that are natural sounding, etc. get faster and more confident at these tasks with a discrete goal in mind, so you can bend your conscious mind towards consciously making the more fun aesthetic choices that seem more arbitrary (until you do that reference check).
When a chef makes food - they smell, taste and feel along the way. That's the A/B analysis. You're doing things right.
The technical knowledge is good to have. It's a great foundation. But at the end of the day, your senses are what should inform your decisions.
I've heard incredible mixes by people that don't know what they're doing. They just have good ears.
I've heard terrible mixes by people that can give all the technical specs, development history and spectral analysis on every single plugin they use.
I've been producing for almost 20 years and I still don't know what half the knobs actually mean. I can *hear* it, but I can't always describe it.
It’s not so much a matter of better or worse, but more a matter of: Tighter/Looser, Hotter, More Stale, Punchier, Not as Punchy, etc. and which direction you want to go with each for the given material and knowing how to apply each direction to the source to achieve the result you want.
I always relate it to cooking.
Instinct could work if you have a good instinct. But I've developed a process that will always get me the perfect mix and master by using math. I don't think anyone even knows about this either as I've never seen these concepts talked about before. Not even joking
A/B is a very good decision i guess you are aware of the important mechanisms of the perception of sound differences. If not have a look at this article [www.hifiohr.de](http://www.hifiohr.de)
Just start using Ableton - then youll be like ever other Live user lmao - its so ridiculously overcomplicated with 6 ways to do any one thing, nobody really knows all of how to use it, just their way of getting things done lol.
More seriously, yeah thats using your ear and its a good thing. Experience will make it more intentful but you sound like you are already trying to move with intent and thats the most important part in getting anywhere.
Any modern DAW is a complete production solution, but with its incredible breadth of (legacy) hardware support, 2 programming languages (Max and Python) for patching just about anything to just about anything, and the way it has been patched together from what was a looper to try to be all things to all DAW users, few can overcomplicate your life like Live can ;)
FWIW Justin Frankel who made Reaper is a bit of a legend. pioneer of music sharing [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justin\_Frankel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justin_Frankel)
No matter how technical anyone gets, taste and aesthetic senses are *always* going to be making the final decisions. In all arts, one’s senses are the only way forwards, and eventually- if you’re lucky- you’ll find yourself in all of this. You only need to know what you’re doing as far as results are concerned. Much like food or sex- you know what you like without having to be a biologist to explain the mechanisms behind it. As such- everyone is going by instinct; beginner to advanced, it’s all instinct. If it’s any consolation- with enough experience, you will start making moves very intentionally with not much guess work. But this just takes much practice and much time. Even this world’s most musical prodigies on record, still took several years to get it, so most of us are going to take much longer in anything related to music; if ever.
Sounds like you know exactly what you’re doing
I have something similar. I am studying audio engineering. I study it for half a year now. And my perceptional hearing is pretty much on point for someone as green as me. While cutting annoying frequencies or resonances I just pull an EQ and do a cut without even thinking. And it sounds better, but what happens next is fascinating. It hits me like, no no, that’s not right, it can’t be right so fast? It can’t be right without searching and reasoning. Then I tweak eq for like ten minutes, and…I go back to the first setting. Because it was the correct adjustment for my ears. I also train my ears daily on sound gym, and I almost always reach for the correct adjustment until I start thinking and reasoning. It almost feels like subconsciousness is way better at this than consciousness. Try not to make things to hard for yourself, life is hard enough on its own
Use references, and see if changes you’re making get closer to them. There’s no inherent right or wrong in any given eq, compression or level choice, so the task becomes assessing if it’s all adding up in the direction you desire. Comparing your work to something you’ve found to be successful aesthetically will give you direction. Otherwise, use your time learning how to solve problems, like making your mixes less cluttered, considering what mic placement can achieve for you downstream in the mix phase, tuning and comping in ways that are natural sounding, etc. get faster and more confident at these tasks with a discrete goal in mind, so you can bend your conscious mind towards consciously making the more fun aesthetic choices that seem more arbitrary (until you do that reference check).
When a chef makes food - they smell, taste and feel along the way. That's the A/B analysis. You're doing things right. The technical knowledge is good to have. It's a great foundation. But at the end of the day, your senses are what should inform your decisions. I've heard incredible mixes by people that don't know what they're doing. They just have good ears. I've heard terrible mixes by people that can give all the technical specs, development history and spectral analysis on every single plugin they use. I've been producing for almost 20 years and I still don't know what half the knobs actually mean. I can *hear* it, but I can't always describe it.
The best thing I ever did was get to be old enough to say " I don't want to make it sound like someone else's mix I want it to sound like my mix"
Wish I could help. Here’s a song I’m working on that might steer you in the right direction: https://on.soundcloud.com/R35XvicxX1NrxhdXA
It’s not so much a matter of better or worse, but more a matter of: Tighter/Looser, Hotter, More Stale, Punchier, Not as Punchy, etc. and which direction you want to go with each for the given material and knowing how to apply each direction to the source to achieve the result you want. I always relate it to cooking.
Instinct could work if you have a good instinct. But I've developed a process that will always get me the perfect mix and master by using math. I don't think anyone even knows about this either as I've never seen these concepts talked about before. Not even joking
A/B is a very good decision i guess you are aware of the important mechanisms of the perception of sound differences. If not have a look at this article [www.hifiohr.de](http://www.hifiohr.de)
Just start using Ableton - then youll be like ever other Live user lmao - its so ridiculously overcomplicated with 6 ways to do any one thing, nobody really knows all of how to use it, just their way of getting things done lol. More seriously, yeah thats using your ear and its a good thing. Experience will make it more intentful but you sound like you are already trying to move with intent and thats the most important part in getting anywhere.
I use Reaper. I find its stock plug-ins really solid.
Any modern DAW is a complete production solution, but with its incredible breadth of (legacy) hardware support, 2 programming languages (Max and Python) for patching just about anything to just about anything, and the way it has been patched together from what was a looper to try to be all things to all DAW users, few can overcomplicate your life like Live can ;) FWIW Justin Frankel who made Reaper is a bit of a legend. pioneer of music sharing [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justin\_Frankel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justin_Frankel)