I have said so many times that mixing is a whole science. There are so many things that contribute so we can have a good mix in our home studio. Nothing is impossible!
One thing that we have to do very often is to check if our mix is good. And how can we do this? We can listen to our mixes on different sound sources ,like a cd player in our house,in our car ,in our cell phone etc. How can we achieve to have a good mix?
In your home studio you keep an average level of volume ,because you want to hear clearly every instrument. There is a technique that you can apply to check easily if your mix is doing well and compare it with the volume level you are used to work. I have told in previous blog posts that the ideal volume level to mix is where you can have a talk with someone siting next to you.
So you need a lower volume to compare your mix and check if everything is heard correctly. If you want to have a switch so you can decrease immediately your master volume ,you can do it if you have a dim button on your sound card’s console or a trim plug in. If you don’t have any of these two then you can apply an EQ on your master output and decrease the input at -15dB.
You can bypass the plug in and whenever you want to compare your mix ,you just turn this EQ on and you have a lower level of volume,so you can check if your mix is exactly like you want it.
I would suggest to listen at lower volumes for bass-drum, snare and bass ,because sometimes are lost in the mix. Besides that you must always think that most of us we listen to music in our cars and in more common sound sources than a home studio.