Review | SoundBites Magazine

Every now and then an indispensable book comes along that can profoundly influence you in the development of your audio skills – this might be one of them. Mixing with Impact: Learning to Make Musical Choices is an essential resource for anyone who is serious about honing their mixing skills. But I would not recommend this book for the beginner. It dives down into some seriously nuanced territory and the neophyte mixing student will do well to start their studies elsewhere.

When I was first attempting to educate myself about how things work in the realm of mixing, it was just excellent luck that the first book I acquired on the subject was Mixing Audio by Roey Izhaki. This indispensable resource remains my number one choice – my “desert island” selection – on the subject. A better first book, had it been published at that time, would have been Mixing Secrets for the Small Studio by Mike Senior. While totally authoritative, this is a gentler and not so detailed an introduction to the craft of home studio audio production, and it remains my recommendation as the best choice of a first mixing tutorial.

Mixing with Impact adds a third book to my list of essentials – it’s that good. But as stated earlier, it gets into some deeply nuanced territory that is probably best appreciated only by those already comfortable with the fundamentals. If I were to construct a three-year college curriculum, I would select Mixing Secrets as the textbook for Mixing 101, Mixing Audio for Mixing 201 (and maybe Mixing 202 – there’s a lot there in Mixing Audio). For Mixing 301, my choice would be undoubtedly be Mixing with Impact.

Excerpt from the extensive review by David Baer. Read his full text at SoundBitesMagazine.