Mixing Music | Music Production, Audio Engineering, & Music Business

Dee borrowed some preamps this week. Not to review them — to test them. And what he found was equal parts technical and philosophical, which is exactly the kind of episode this one turned into.He walks through his methodology in detail: running mixes through an AML ez1073, a CAPI VP28, and a Kahan Solid 4000 analog hardware unit, volume matching by perceived loudness down to 0.1 dB increments, and doing his A/B comparisons with a friend named Colin before sharing the results. The findings are candid — some of the differences were more subtle than expected, some gear behaved differently at line level than anticipated, and the process of trying to volume-match accurately enough to do a fair comparison revealed something important in itself: 0.1 dB is audible, and the louder signal will almost always win a casual A/B test, which means most people's preamp opinions are built on flawed methodology.But the episode isn't really a gear review. It's a meditation on why engineers get so emotionally attached to their equipment in the first place — and what that attachment actually costs them. Dee revisits the Jim Lil preamp video not to relitigate it, but to make a more specific critique: not of Jim Lil's conclusion, but of the people who responded to it poorly, including one well-known engineer whose defensive response said more about his ego than about the gear. Dee introduces the concept of "killing the old God to create a new one" — the way engineers who break from one belief system often just build another with equal rigidity — and connects it to Nietzsche's idea of the last man: someone so committed to safety and comfort that they've stopped being able to grow.The Buddhist thread runs parallel: the suffering that comes from clinging to beliefs, whether about analog gear, plugin choices, or anything else, isn't just philosophically costly. It closes you off to actually learning. Dee closes with the Aldous Huxley quote he's returned to before — about righteous indignation as the most delicious of moral treats — and applies it to the gear debate directly: the engineers who attacked Jim Lil most viciously weren't defending the truth. They were enjoying the fight.Don't mistake the finger for the moon. The gear is the finger.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

This one started with a DM. A listener named Solomon wrote in describing something almost every engineer has felt but rarely admits to: he'd worked intensely with an artist for a year, and the day they released a new song mixed by someone else, he felt cheated on. He knew it was childish. He said so himself. He asked how Dee and Lu deal with it.What followed was one of the longer, more wide-ranging conversations the show has had — and it never really left the topic, it just kept going deeper.Dee and Lu start with the uncomfortable truth: the music industry is transactional by nature, and that's not entirely a bad thing. At higher levels especially, a degree of professional distance makes feedback easier to give and receive, keeps emotions from overriding the goals of the project, and protects both parties from the kind of over-familiarity that stifles creativity. The artists who rotate through engineers constantly — Dee floats the theory that some of them do it precisely because they know how hard they are to work with, and keeping the relationship professional gives them a way to keep going without the emotional weight.From there the episode turns into a genuine masterclass on how to actually build relationships in this industry — without networking. Dee's core position is that the number one mistake people make when trying to build a network is trying to build a network. The best relationships he's built in LA didn't start with a pitch, a session offer, or a business card. They started with two people who genuinely liked each other and found something to talk about that had nothing to do with work. He shares a story about watching a producer invite a rapper he'd never heard to make a song together — purely because they got along. No music heard. Just vibes.Lu adds the practical layer: how to check in on clients and collaborators in a way that feels genuine rather than transactional, how to use shared interests as an entry point, and why showing up as a full human being with hobbies and passions outside of audio makes you more interesting — and more memorable — than someone whose whole identity is their craft. He also closes with a point about woodworking and acoustic panel building that connects back to the episode on making things: your outside interests are not a distraction from your career. They are part of what makes people want to be around you.The episode wraps on desperation — the one energy that kills every professional relationship faster than anything else, and the one that becomes hardest to avoid when things get hard. Dee and Lu are direct about it: don't come off desperate. Not in your texts, not in your compliments, not in how often you reach out. Genuine relationships don't need to be performed. The person you're trying to keep will feel the difference.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Dee Kei is building a compressor. Specifically, a 1176 Rev A blueface/silverface clone from Hairball Audio in Seattle — unsponsored, bought with his own money, and not yet finished at time of recording. That last part is intentional. He wanted to talk about the build process before the result, because the process is the point.He walks through everything: what it was like to approach a kit with no step-by-step guide (just a component list and a schematic), the soldering technique he got wrong early on and had to relearn from scratch, the diode he forgot to solder that intermittently lost power and popped, and the moment Hairball's owner Mike just shipped him a replacement part the next day, no questions asked — one of the better customer service stories the show has heard. Lu chimes in on Hairball's Lola preamp, one of the most respected and affordable DIY transformer preamp kits available, and the two get into what the DIY gear market actually represents for working engineers who want to go deeper than plug-and-play.But the episode's most interesting thread is philosophical. Dee explains exactly why he chose to build the 1176 rather than buy one — and it has nothing to do with cost savings. It's about mysticism. He makes a genuinely compelling case that the magic of vintage gear isn't really in the sound itself, it's in the sacrifice required to have it. The rarity, the maintenance, the story. And for Dee, bragging to a client about how expensive something is feels inauthentic — even Machiavellian. Building it himself gives him a different kind of authority: every part was intentional, every solder joint was his. That's a story worth telling.The episode closes with a broader point about makers: Dee didn't realize until recently that building things — keyboards, tube mics, modified espresso machines, children's books, now a compressor — is simply part of who he is. If that's part of who you are too, this episode will hit differently.SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PATREON FOR EXCLUSIVE CONTENT!⁠SUBSCRIBE TO YOUTUBE⁠Join the ‘Mixing Music Podcast’ Discord!HIRE DEE KEIHIRE LU⁠HIRE JAMES⁠Find Dee Kei and Lu on Social Media:Instagram: @DeeKeiMixes @MasteredbyLu @JamesParrishMixesTwitter: @DeeKeiMixes @MasteredbyLuThe Mixing Music Podcast is sponsored by ⁠Izotope⁠, ⁠Antares (Auto Tune)⁠, Sweetwater, ⁠Plugin Boutique⁠, ⁠Lauten Audio⁠, ⁠Filepass⁠, & ⁠Canva⁠The Mixing Music Podcast is a video and audio series on the art of music production and post-production. Dee Kei, Lu, and James are professionals in the Los Angeles music industry having worked with names like Odetari, 6arelyhuman, Trey Songz, Keyshia Cole, Benny the Butcher, carolesdaughter, Crying City, Daphne Loves Derby, Natalie Jane, charlieonnafriday, bludnymph, Lay Bankz, Rico Nasty, Ayesha Erotica, ATEEZ, Dizzy Wright, Kanye West, Blackway, The Game, Dylan Espeseth, Tara Yummy, Asteria, Kets4eki, Shaquille O'Neal, Republic Records, Interscope Records, Arista Records, Position Music, Capital Records, Mercury Records, Universal Music Group, apg, Hive Music, Sony Music, and many others.This podcast is meant to be used for educational purposes only. This show is filmed and recorded at Dee Kei's private studio in North Hollywood, California. If you would like to sponsor the show, please email us at ⁠[email protected]⁠.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

This episode almost didn't get released. Dee and Lu spent 20 to 30 minutes before recording debating whether to even touch this one. They went ahead — and it's one of the more honest, nuanced conversations the show has had about money, ego, and what engineers actually owe each other.The spark: a Facebook post from a professional musician and audio engineer who attended the same college program as Dee, publicly calling out a local arts center for posting a part-time live sound and lighting tech position at $15 to $18 an hour. The post was passionate, pointed, and signed with his full professional credentials. Dee reads it in full, along with the original job listing — which, among other things, requires Yamaha and Allen & Heath console proficiency, QLab and Dante networking experience, 48-channel show operation, set construction, and lighting design, all from one part-time hire.On its face, it sounds like an easy call. But Dee takes the opposite position — not to be contrarian, but because he thinks the framing of the argument is doing real damage to the underlying point. He walks through the math: 25 hours a week at $18 an hour is a part-time supplemental income while you build your own business on the side. He also breaks down why the moral framing of the original post — treating a low offer as an act of injustice rather than a bad offer you're free to decline — weakens a legitimate case about engineer compensation. A low offer is not an injustice. Nobody is being forced. And presenting it as one, Dee argues, is exactly the kind of righteous indignation that Aldous Huxley described as the most delicious of moral treats.From there the episode gets into the structural reason audio engineer unions are difficult to sustain: the supply of people who want these jobs vastly outpaces the demand for them, and the barrier to entry is low enough that any coordinated refusal just opens the door to the next wave of hungry beginners. Lu adds his own experience — the times he's accepted well below his rate because the artist interested him, or because the gig gave him room to experiment — and the two land on a shared position: the number you get paid is not directly equivalent to the value of the job, and fighting for higher wages without understanding that nuance means missing the point entirely.Dee closes with a message to the person directly: the argument is worth making. Clean it up.SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PATREON FOR EXCLUSIVE CONTENT!⁠SUBSCRIBE TO YOUTUBE⁠Join the ‘Mixing Music Podcast’ Discord!HIRE DEE KEIHIRE LU⁠HIRE JAMES⁠Find Dee Kei and Lu on Social Media:Instagram: @DeeKeiMixes @MasteredbyLu @JamesParrishMixesTwitter: @DeeKeiMixes @MasteredbyLuThe Mixing Music Podcast is sponsored by ⁠Izotope⁠, ⁠Antares (Auto Tune)⁠, Sweetwater, ⁠Plugin Boutique⁠, ⁠Lauten Audio⁠, ⁠Filepass⁠, & ⁠Canva⁠The Mixing Music Podcast is a video and audio series on the art of music production and post-production. Dee Kei, Lu, and James are professionals in the Los Angeles music industry having worked with names like Odetari, 6arelyhuman, Trey Songz, Keyshia Cole, Benny the Butcher, carolesdaughter, Crying City, Daphne Loves Derby, Natalie Jane, charlieonnafriday, bludnymph, Lay Bankz, Rico Nasty, Ayesha Erotica, ATEEZ, Dizzy Wright, Kanye West, Blackway, The Game, Dylan Espeseth, Tara Yummy, Asteria, Kets4eki, Shaquille O'Neal, Republic Records, Interscope Records, Arista Records, Position Music, Capital Records, Mercury Records, Universal Music Group, apg, Hive Music, Sony Music, and many others.This podcast is meant to be used for educational purposes only. This show is filmed and recorded at Dee Kei's private studio in North Hollywood, California. If you would like to sponsor the show, please email us at ⁠[email protected]⁠.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

This episode is a recap — and an expansion — of the six-hour Mixing Masterclass that Dee Kei hosted live in his LA studio. Lu was in the room. The audience brought mixes. Things got real. Now Dee and Lu bring the best of it to the podcast, including the things they didn't get to cover in person.The first and most important topic: what is the actual value of a mix engineer, and how should that determine your pricing? Dee lays out a position he holds firmly — you should never discount your rate based on stem count, never negotiate yourself down before the client even asks, and never charge by the hour for mixing. Your rate reflects the lifetime of training behind each decision, not the time it took to make it. Like Picasso sketching on a napkin, the price isn't for the five minutes — it's for everything it took to get there. Lu adds the market reality: what your price communicates before the client even hears your mix, and why charging too little signals something you don't want to signal.From there the episode moves into compression — specifically what happened in the room when Dee deliberately smashed a vocal with an 1176 in "all buttons in" mode and the mix bus with a Vertigo VCA compressor just to prove a point. The reaction in the room said everything: over-compression isn't always wrong. Rules like "don't compress more than 2-3dB" are useful frameworks until the moment the song tells you otherwise.They also get into the subjective vs. objective nature of mixing — why saying "there's no such thing as a good or bad mix" is actually incorrect, and how to think about objectivity in a field where the tools of judgment are mostly invisible. The Shohei Ohtani analogy here is one of the better ones the show has produced.The episode closes with a breakdown of how Spotify's LUFS normalization actually works — including the gating behavior that means raising your quieter sections can paradoxically lower your integrated LUFS, and why album masters and single masters should be approached as two completely separate deliverables if you want your music to hold up in playlists.A lot covered. All of it useful.SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PATREON FOR EXCLUSIVE CONTENT!⁠SUBSCRIBE TO YOUTUBE⁠Join the ‘Mixing Music Podcast’ Discord!HIRE DEE KEIHIRE LU⁠HIRE JAMES⁠Find Dee Kei and Lu on Social Media:Instagram: @DeeKeiMixes @MasteredbyLu @JamesParrishMixesTwitter: @DeeKeiMixes @MasteredbyLuThe Mixing Music Podcast is sponsored by ⁠Izotope⁠, ⁠Antares (Auto Tune)⁠, Sweetwater, ⁠Plugin Boutique⁠, ⁠Lauten Audio⁠, ⁠Filepass⁠, & ⁠Canva⁠The Mixing Music Podcast is a video and audio series on the art of music production and post-production. Dee Kei, Lu, and James are professionals in the Los Angeles music industry having worked with names like Odetari, 6arelyhuman, Trey Songz, Keyshia Cole, Benny the Butcher, carolesdaughter, Crying City, Daphne Loves Derby, Natalie Jane, charlieonnafriday, bludnymph, Lay Bankz, Rico Nasty, Ayesha Erotica, ATEEZ, Dizzy Wright, Kanye West, Blackway, The Game, Dylan Espeseth, Tara Yummy, Asteria, Kets4eki, Shaquille O'Neal, Republic Records, Interscope Records, Arista Records, Position Music, Capital Records, Mercury Records, Universal Music Group, apg, Hive Music, Sony Music, and many others.This podcast is meant to be used for educational purposes only. This show is filmed and recorded at Dee Kei's private studio in North Hollywood, California. If you would like to sponsor the show, please email us at ⁠[email protected]⁠.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy