[Dana Nielsen]

Dylan!

What an excellent and thoughtful question.

I get files of all kinds – some great, some not so great haha. Here are a few things that come to mind.

I love it when:

– Files and tracks have been named thoughtfully and thoroughly (no “Audio_01” please! 😂)

– Tracks are laid out top-to-bottom in some kind of organized fashion

– Same goes for track and clip colors – they don’t need to be MY preferred colors, but seeing some type of system helps me to understand the production more quickly and easily.

– Limited options, or no options — just the finished product please 🙂 You aptly mentioned this concept in our Member Meet-up Zoom the other day!

– Waveforms that are nice and loud! But, obv, not clipping. I can’t tell you how many kick and snare and lead vocal tracks I’ve applied +20db of clip gain to. “Bro, your snare track looks like an egg shaker” haha

– If you’re sending a folder of multi-track audio files – as opposed to a Pro Tools session – I love it when people are mindful of their folder names and file names. Such as … Instrument_SongName_mix#_24bit48k_STEM (or MULTI if multitrack file)

– Bonus points if multi-track exports have a 2-digit number upfront to maintain their top-down track layout:

01_Kick_SongName_…

02_Snare-Top_SongName_…

03_Snare-Btm_SongName_…

– And lastly, since you mentioned “uh-the-playing” … I do love excellent playing (and/or editing) that doesn’t require further editing on my part.

Re: Phase … I’m always appreciative and surprised when drums and other things are in phase, tho I don’t expect them to be, and I don’t get riled up if they’re not. After all, phase is a pretty advanced thing to understand and be able to hear and/or adjust properly. And that’s part of MY job to fix that stuff! Plus … if they think their song sounds good with everything out of phase, well that’s an easy “win” for me, as their mixer, haha.

Further resources and fun:

Here’s a brand new blog post and video I made that’s very relevant to this great topic: https://mixprotege.com/2025/02/15/batch-rename-audio-files-with-a-better-finder/

Here’s my Stems Checklist I send to clients who are getting ready to export multitrack audio files: https://dananielsen.com/stems-checklist/

Thanks again, @dylanmandel, for the great topic! ⚡️ I hope to hear additional responses from others here – and your own as well – that I can learn from! 🤘

mixprotege.com

Batch Rename Audio Files with 'A Better Finder'

'A Better Finder Rename' is a powerful MacOS batch renaming tool that has revolutionized my audio file workflow.

[Dylan Mandel]

Great response! Thanks for the advice and will definitely check out those resources.

[Dana Nielsen]

😍

Oh just remembered another “I love it when….”. This one’s on my stems checklist on the link above:

I love it when mono sources come as mono files (i.e. bass DI), and stereo sources come as stereo interleaved files (i.e. Poly Synth DI).

Using my ears and meters and mono button and phase flip to determine that this “stereo” kick track is actually mono, then splitting the stereo track into dual-mono so that I can delete the original stereo track plus the left side of the newly-created multi-mono tracks … welll … it’s a giant waste of time. Heck, it’s a waste of time to even write about that tedious, mundane, and unnecessary task, lolol.

Ok. Rant: over!