How to make better mixes in your bedroom studioOne of the biggest challenges of producing and mixing music is not knowing how your mix will translate in real-life environments. Will the bass cut through? Are the vocals too harsh? While you’re looking for answers to these questions, you may find yourself daydreaming about building your perfect studio one day…

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But, even if you’re a seasoned mixing engineer working out of an acoustically treated room, you’ll still need to familiarise your ears with the speakers and headphones you use daily.
The trick to getting any mix right is to work around the limitations of your tools and environment. Here are a few tips on how to spot issues unique to your setup and improve your mixes in spite of them.
Monitoring in an untreated room
You don’t have to study acoustics to understand how sound travels in a room. Just hit play and take a walk around. Notice how the bass sounds quieter or more amplified depending on where you position yourself? Maybe some frequencies in the midrange are getting lost, too. Add the natural reverberations of your room into that chaos, and you’ll soon yearn for your headphones.
Despite all these pitfalls, hearing your mix through a pair of accurate studio monitors is still invaluable. Even the highest-quality headphones are designed to compensate for the lack of distance between the sound source and your ears.
You can’t expect your headphones to sound identical to your monitors. But you can create a balanced mix that sounds great on both.
To set yourself up for success, consider:
How dead the room sounds. The more furniture there is, the fewer echoes you’ll encounter. Adding a carpet and thick curtains may also help dampen reflections.
Where you place the monitors — and yourself. Your monitors should be placed on stands, ideally at ear level. Create space between your desk and monitors to minimise reflections. Imagine an equilateral triangle between the monitors and your position in the room for best results.
Mixing with open-back headphones
As soon as you trap sound in a confined space, you risk frequency build-up. Your mix may sound great on a pair of noise-cancelling headphones, but there’s no guarantee it’ll translate through laptop or phone speakers if they’re your primary reference point.
With a pair of open-back headphones, you’ll get one step closer to a neutral listening experience. Sennheiser HD 490s and Neumann NDH30 are strong choices that provide transparent sonic detail for efficient mixing.
All that being said, it’s tricky to achieve a good balance between the bass and treble with headphones. This is where visual frequency spectrum analysers can help.
Trusting visual guides with caution
Spectrum analysers, loudness meters, and correlation meters are especially useful when ear fatigue sets in after a long session.
Add a parametric EQ with an analyser on your master bus to observe how your mix behaves across the frequency spectrum. This way, you can see which bands are overcrowded or lacking impact. And, if you want your mix to sound like a particular reference track, it’ll be easier to compare and contrast using a visual tool.
Universal Audio’s Apollo interfaces come with a Mono button, but not every producer is one knob away from checking their mixes in mono on the fly. With a correlation meter on your master bus, you’ll be able to gauge how well your stereo mix will translate through mono playback systems.
Likewise, it doesn’t hurt to understand concepts such as true peak, perceived loudness, and dynamic range, all of which may influence how you approach volume levels across the track.
These tools exist to guide you through your mixing process. But, be sure to trust your ears first and foremost. When you feel stuck, revisiting your mix after a day or two is often the best remedy.
When to turn the monitors on
Relying on your monitors in an untreated room during the early stages of mixing can mislead you. That said, it’s important to give your ears a break from headphones and switch things up as you near the finish line.
If you’re still on the market for monitors, consider a pair that matches the size of your room, like Focal Solo6 or HEDD Audio’s Type 05 A-Core. Larger monitors provide a fuller-sounding low-end, but even top-tier monitors won’t eliminate bass build-up in a small space.
In fact, even in professional studios, engineers often calibrate their monitors to fine-tune the sound. For a neutral listening experience, some room correction is necessary even in acoustically-treated spaces.
To get the most out of your monitors, listen to your mix at three different volume levels:

Loud — to detect muddiness, which is often exaggerated in untreated spaces.
Quiet — to ensure all key elements remain present when the mix is barely audible.
Comfortable — to guide your overall decision-making process.

Cross-referencing your mix
Once the bulk of the mix is complete, check it on multiple playback systems. Laptop speakers, phone speakers, commercial headphones, and car stereos are all valid options, as they reflect the mediums your audience will likely use.
If you’re in an experimental mood, take your cross-referencing one step further by testing your mix in virtual environments. From Sony’s 360 VME to Lewitt’s Space Replicator, several digital tools emulate professional studios.
Remember — you can create great mixes, even in a bad room. What matters most is consistent awareness, efficient workflow, and making the most of the tools you have.
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