Audio knowledge base
Practical CLAP tutorials, mixing and sound-design explainers, measured plugin research, releases, and notes from the studio. Follow along via RSS or the Discord community.
79 visual guides · 19 creative topics
No guides match that. Try a broader word — EQ, bass,mixing, master.
The Spectral Colors school
Every guide on this site belongs to a route. Follow a path top to bottom and each idea builds on the one before it — no theory lectures, no filler, just the order that makes things click.
17 paths6 levels≈ 8 hours of reading
If you are new, take these three in order. They cover writing a track, understanding the format your plugins use, and the ideas every later path assumes.
Write something
Pick a key, write a loop, turn it into an arrangement, and actually finish it.
5 steps≈ 33 min
Mix with intent
What mixing actually is, the five decisions it consists of, and the habits that prevent most problems.
5 steps≈ 32 min
Set up your tools
Understand the format, install it correctly, and confirm your DAW supports it.
4 steps≈ 20 min
What each processor actually does, so you stop choosing them by name and start choosing them by job.
Control level
Four tools that all reduce level, in four different ways. Learn which one your problem needs.
4 steps≈ 26 min
Shape frequency
When to cut, when to boost, and when a band should only move some of the time.
6 steps≈ 39 min
Structure the session
Session structure that makes a mix faster to build, easier to balance and possible to finish.
6 steps≈ 38 min
Order and restraint
Why plugin order changes the result, and why most chains are longer than they need to be.
3 steps≈ 21 min
The specific situations that come up in every session, and how to deal with each one properly.
Own the low end
Make low end that is loud, defined, and still audible on a phone speaker.
4 steps≈ 27 min
Build depth
Give every element somewhere to be, without turning the mix into fog.
4 steps≈ 27 min
Fix the invisible
The problem that hides in stereo and appears in mono — and how to turn it into an advantage.
3 steps≈ 21 min
Make voices work
From a raw take to a vocal that sits forward, stays clear and does not hiss.
4 steps≈ 26 min
Turning a mix into a record: the mastering stage, what it can and cannot do, and how to know when to stop.
Make the master
What the stage is for, how to do it, what to check, and where the professional difference actually is.
7 steps≈ 47 min
Keep going
How to start badly on purpose, finish more often, and end up sounding like yourself.
3 steps≈ 21 min
Making the sounds instead of choosing them — synthesis, sampling, spectral processing and genre craft.
Make the sound
Decide what a sound has to do, then build it — with samples, saturation and transformation.
5 steps≈ 33 min
Go further
Working with frequency content directly, and putting it to use in a style.
3 steps≈ 21 min
The complete course for the standalone clip launcher — from first launch to rendered stems.
Start here
Every section of the app in the order you will need it, from audio setup to DAW handoff.
3 steps≈ 19 min
Advanced path
Drivers and latency, seamless loops, SPC effect racks, MIDI clock and stem rendering.
4 steps≈ 28 min
You need about twenty minutes of theory to write good chord progressions. The rest is listening and trying things.
Space is not created by turning things up. It is created by deciding who is allowed to be loud at each moment.
One plugin can carry the corrective cut, the level-dependent cut and the tonal shaping — if you set the bands in the right order.
Two identical plugins in a different order do not sound the same. Each one reacts to what the previous one already changed.
Cut to remove a problem. Boost to add something that exists but is too quiet. Neither is morally superior.
Your sound is not something you find. It is what remains after you stop removing the things that make you different.
If the problem has a name — the vocal, the kick, the snare — it belongs in the mix. Mastering has no vocal channel.
A weak mix is rarely missing processing. It is missing a decision about who matters most.
The difference is not the gear. It is the room, the references, the restraint and the number of tracks they have heard.
Interest does not come from adding. It comes from contrast — and contrast requires taking things away.
Route it, balance it, then add one processor at a time — and make each one earn its place.
A good mastering chain is short, ordered, and every stage has a job you can say out loud.
Every element needs somewhere to be. There are four places to put it, and most mixes only use one.
Reverb does not make a mix muddy. Unfiltered, undelayed, undicked reverb does.
Flip it, align it, rotate it, or use one source. In that order, because each one costs more than the last.
The genre lives in a contradiction: warm analogue synths degraded by digital artefacts. Get that tension right and the rest follows.
A key is not a restriction. It is the reason notes played by different instruments sound like they belong to the same piece of music.
Prepare, reference, adjust a little, control the peaks, set the level, check everywhere. In that order.