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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
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