We recently invited the community to take part in a listening test. It was the same track, mixed once with over $2500 worth of plugins and then with the stock plugins that come with Pro Tools.

It wasn’t as clear cut as one would expect to identify which mix was which. Some were convinced Mix A was using the premium plugins, while others equally convinced it was Mix B.

We wanted to let you know the results and also give you the back story to the entire idea.

First the song and artist deserves credit, it is Sail On by Gavin Backhouse.

Second, the person mixing it was Grammy winning mixer Mike Exeter, a regular contributor to the blog and with credits that include Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Jeff Beck and more.

Mike did a great job with both mixes. We sat down with him and asked him to talk more about this exercise and his advice for this wanting to improve their mixes.

Mixing With Stock versus Premium Plugins

PE: So tell me what it was like mixing one track with stock and then with premium plugins?

ME: Because I approached it as if I was mixing on two separate analogue consoles, it was quite liberating. I used my Avid S1 and Dock set up. So I just called up the plugins on the Dock and controlled them, and reacted to what I was hearing. I just had them set up in the premium plugins so that I had full band five-band EQs with filters and compressors on the same types of knobs as I would have my standard plugins.

So it was just a case of reacting to what was coming out of speakers and making tweaks accordingly. And for the most part, it was quite a simple experience. I didn't get too much into digging out resonant frequencies using some of the advanced features; I just went in and crafted what I needed to. So it was an interesting and quite positive experience.

PE: You're saying that because you used the control surface, you were using your ears, not your eyes, to mix both times.

ME: Yes, which I do anyway. I'll rarely go to the screen unless I've got a particular problem, and I need to go to a plugin to dig out resonances or use a specific thing. I'm very much about what the track feels like it needs and how I can accomplish it without looking at anything.

PE: And did you feel that using a control surface had a bearing on the result? Do you think the result would have been different had you been looking at the plugins?

ME: Yes, it would have been a different result. I might've dug in a bit further into certain things, but to be honest, when I listened back to the two mixes, I'm happy with both of them. I found it interesting in people's reactions to them are the positive adjectives they use to describe both mixes. You get someone saying one sounds smooth, and the other one is this one sounds clear. Which are two positive ways of saying they sound different. What's is one person's 'clear' is another person's 'harsh.'

PE: So I suppose the other thing we can take away from this is that mixes are a taste-based thing. There are no absolutes in a good mix.

ME: Exactly. And that's what I liked about the way you posed the questions. Which one do you think is the stock plugins, and which one do you prefer?

PE: There's a great cartoon I downloaded a few days ago, which shows two queues of people. The long queue goes to 'More Gear' and the other to 'Learning to use existing gear.' I think there's a lesson here, isn't there?.

ME: Very much. I'll go back to George Massenburg, who I cite all the time. If you're going to listen to someone, you need to use references. And if you're going to listen to someone else's reference, you need to listen to it with humility and intelligence. Then realize that if you've put this mix up on a pedestal and your mix doesn't sound as good, you need to be honest with yourself, and you need to find a way of getting to that point.

PE: So it's far more essential to work with the tools to get the result you're looking for than it is to go out and buy more gear thinking it's going to help you?

ME: Yeah, because ultimately I look back at albums released back in the nineties that I did, and I had a console, a couple of reverbs, a couple of delays and a couple of compressors. It's the same mentality. The stuff that comes with all the DAWs is great; learn how to use it to its full potential.

PE: I'm guessing that tracking played a considerable part in the result as well?

ME: I tracked the drums, the bass, and the guitars; the keyboards and vocals are all done by the artist. So I did have control over the tracking for a large part. This means when I mixed it, I wasn't fixing it; I was enhancing it. So it was a case of if I needed more pop on the snare, I knew what I needed to do. I was carving space for the guitars to work with the backing vocals. I notice that I can only tell the difference between the two mixes based on the snare drum reverb and some of the backing vocals. That's the only way I can instantly tell.

PE: So in a blind test, you can tell, but just?

ME: Yeah, I'm a big fan of using non-linear or gated reverb before a room reverb. And I discovered the Air non-linear plugin, which I've never used before. That's on the stock plugin mix, and I loved it. It was what that snare drum needed before going into a room. So it was like, that's really cool. I was like; I'll probably use that more now. I've been scouring gated reverb for the last three or four years, and that one was sitting in the plugin folder all the time!

PE: So, in this exercise, there was some serendipity of discovery?

ME: Totally. I went back to TL Space recently because I wanted to hear what its large wood room sounded like compared to Seventh Heaven's Bricasti. They're all different, but what does the track need?

PE: What would you say to encourage those who can't afford to spend out on plugins? What's the best way they can get the most from their stock plugins.

ME: The controversial person would say stop going into forums and social media and worrying about what other people are using. Listen to what you're doing, work through the problems. Take that approach with everything. Listen to the stuff you don't like in a sound. Take a little bit of that away. Enhance the things you do and then see how that all sits in the mix and constantly reference great-sounding mixes. Interestingly I believe George Massenburg said something about the fact that the EQ7 is pretty much modelled on the code of his Massenburg design works EQ. I used the Massenburg EQ on the premium mix and the EQ7 on the stock mix.

PE: If somebody's struggling, where are they better off spending money?

ME: Education. But, I'll tell you the most crucial thing that can make a difference is your monitoring environment. You gotta be able to hear what you're doing. Even with tracking, it's vital, but you've got to trust your monitors when you're mixing.

It comes down to referencing and your monitors.

If you want to buy a plugin that will help you mix, I tell everybody to keep an eye out for the Plugin Alliance sales. You can purchase adapter ADPTR AUDIO Metric AB for $30; it's the best referencing plugin there is. That's the one that will help you learn what other people's mixes sound like on your system.

The Result

The mix done with premium plugins was Mix B. What is interesting is that in the results 50% identified the premium plugin mix and 57% preferred it. The stock plugins held their own against some of the best premium plugins out there.

Summary

That said, Mike did say that using a control surface helped in the process because he used his ears to mix and not his eyes, perhaps if you’ve not considered a control surface or console then this may be the time to explore that option.

Mike also said that room acoustics play a large part in the process and being able to trust the monitoring system is critical. Investing in speaker calibration can help with troublesome monitoring environments

The final thing Mike recommends is using reference tracks to check your mixes against and also to train yourself to recognise the elements of a mix and how to deal with them.

However, we think the takeaway from this exercise is that it’s not the gear, it’s the ear!

There’s some fantastic plug-ins we all have on our systems but if we don’t educate ourselves and invest the time in honing our skills then we may be wasting our money.