5 PDF Guides for a Faster, More Consistent Mixing Workflow
What's Included in the HRME Workflow Guide Bundle?
The HRME Workflow Guide Bundle is five PDF guides built to shortcut the parts of mixing and mastering most producers learn the hard way, through trial, error, and re-dos. Each guide targets one stage of the process: mixing fundamentals, session prep, EQ, compression, and mastering, and each one comes from the same checklists and reference points David Vignola actually uses on his own sessions.
The bundle also includes two sets of real multi-track audio files, "I'm Alright" and "Name," so the concepts below aren't just theory, they're something you can load straight into your own DAW and apply. You don't need an SSL bus compressor, a Pultec EQ, or a Teletronix LA2A to get value from any of this. The same subtractive-EQ-first, gain-stage-before-plugins thinking works whether you're on stock plugins or high end outboard gear.
David has been mixing professionally for 19 years and teaching it since 2014 through his Home Recording Made Easy YouTube channel, where these same principles show up in real mixing sessions. If you want to work through the guides yourself, the bundle is available on the HRME Workflow Guide Bundle product page.
Table of Contents
- What's Included in the HRME Workflow Guide Bundle?
- 1. 5 Tips to a Pro-Sounding Mix: Mixing Fundamentals Before You Touch a Plugin
- 2. The Mix Prep & Setup Checklist: Organizing Your Session Before You Mix
- 3. The EQ Frequency Guide: A Subtractive Approach and Real Frequency Ranges
- 4. The Basic Compression Guide: Compressor Controls and Compression Types Explained
- 5. The 8-Step Mastering Process Checklist: What to Do Before You Export
- What Worked, and What to Watch For
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Quick Recap
- Final Thoughts
- Ready to Mix Like This Yourself?
- Useful Links
1. 5 Tips to a Pro-Sounding Mix: Mixing Fundamentals Before You Touch a Plugin
The first guide in the bundle tackles a question a lot of home studio producers type into Google at 1 a.m.: how do you actually get a professional sounding mix at home without a treated room or a rack of outboard gear? David's five tips start with the boring stuff most producers skip, and that's exactly the point.
Tip one is acoustic treatment or, failing that, good mixing headphones, because you can't make good decisions on a room you can't trust. Tip two is always using reference tracks instead of mixing blind against your own memory of what a "good" mix sounds like. The guide also pushes something easy to skip: balancing levels and panning before touching a single plugin, so the mix already sounds decent on fader position and stereo placement alone before EQ or compression gets involved.
"Don't 'fly blind' when mixing your music. Instead, use commercially release tracks to help guide you." [from the 5 Tips to a Pro-Sounding Mix guide]
The guide's bonus tip is the one that quietly fixes the most mixes: a low cut filter on every track except kick and bass, set around 50 to 60 Hz and dialed to taste. Most amateur mixes carry low end rumble nobody notices until it's gone, and this single move does more for mix clarity than most plugin purchases ever will. It's the same kind of thinking behind the real mixing decisions David breaks down in this session, where establishing hierarchy and cleaning things up early made everything downstream easier.
Try This In Your Own Mix
Before you add a single plugin to your next session, spend ten minutes with just faders and pan pots and get the balance as good as you can. Then add a low cut filter around 50 to 60 Hz to everything except your kick and bass, and listen for how much cleaner the low end gets.
If you're not sure where your own mixing fundamentals are weakest, HRME's Free Mixing Course walks through this exact level-and-pan-first approach step by step, so you can hear the difference before you ever reach for an EQ.
2. The Mix Prep & Setup Checklist: Organizing Your Session Before You Mix
The second guide is a straight mixing session prep checklist, and it exists because David got tired of forgetting a step and having to undo work later. It covers session layout, bus routing, and gain staging in an order meant to be followed top to bottom, not cherry picked.
The checklist starts with importing audio, labeling tracks, and arranging them in a consistent order (drums, bass, guitars, keys, vocals, FX), then color coding by instrument group. From there it moves into routing buses for each instrument group, including a parallel drum bus for compression and separate lead and background vocal buses, all feeding a master bus.
"Set all faders to 0 dB. Use clip gain or input trim to ensure individual tracks peak around -12 dB to -18 dB." [from the Mix Prep & Setup Checklist]
That gain staging step matters more than it sounds. Keeping individual tracks around -12 dB to -18 dB and the overall mix around -10 to -12 dB on the master bus leaves headroom for every plugin that comes after it, and it's the reason a mix built this way doesn't need a limiter fighting clipped tracks by the second verse. The checklist even maps out a full master bus chain order, bus compressor, EQ, saturation, tape emulation, limiter last, for anyone building one from scratch.
Try This In Your Own Mix
Open your current session and color code every track by instrument group, then check that your loudest track is peaking around -12 dB to -18 dB before you add a single plugin. It takes five minutes and it changes how much room you have to work with later.
3. The EQ Frequency Guide: A Subtractive Approach and Real Frequency Ranges
The third guide is an EQ frequency chart for mixing built around a specific philosophy: subtractive before additive. David's own rule is to cut offending frequencies first, because removing what's fighting for space usually lets the frequencies you actually want come through without ever needing a boost.
"There are no magic EQ settings that you can use every time on any source." [from the EQ Frequency Guide]
Even with that disclaimer, the guide hands over real starting points. A kick drum's "thump" sits around 60 to 100 Hz and its beater attack around 2,000 to 4,000 Hz, while a snare's body lives around 200 to 400 Hz with its crack up near 8,000 Hz. For vocals, everything below 100 Hz is usually just handling noise worth cutting, 800 to 1,000 Hz controls word clarity, and 4,000 to 8,000 Hz is where a de-esser earns its keep. There's more on EQ'ing a snare drum specifically in this beginner's guide for anyone who wants to go deeper on that one instrument.
High pass filters get their own callout too. They clean up mud fast, but David's method is to start with too much filtering and roll it back down, rather than sneaking a filter up until it "feels" right, since that second approach almost always leaves more rumble behind than the ear catches in the moment.
Try This In Your Own Mix
Pick one muddy sounding track in your current mix and reach for a cut instead of a boost. Sweep a narrow cut through 200 to 500 Hz until you find the offending frequency, then pull it down instead of boosting the range you wish you could hear more of.
4. The Basic Compression Guide: Compressor Controls and Compression Types Explained
The fourth guide is a full how to use a compressor for beginners walkthrough, starting with the basic definition: compression narrows the gap between a signal's loudest and quietest moments by boosting the quiet parts and pulling down the loud ones.
From there it breaks down every control you'll actually touch: threshold (how loud a signal has to get before compression kicks in), ratio (how hard it compresses once triggered), attack and release (how fast it engages and lets go), and knee (how gently or abruptly it clamps down). The guide also walks through the four major compressor flavors: VCA (precise, low coloration, like the dbx 160), Opto (slower and smoother, like the Teletronix LA2A), FET (fast and aggressive, like the Urei 1176), and Valve (the "creamy" sound that comes from tube circuitry).
"Once you learn how to listen for compression and hear the effect it has on a source, then you will be able to apply compression with purpose and be more effective." [from the Basic Compression Guide]
The guide also gives real starting ratios by source: bass at 4:1, drums and vocals at 2:1, and electric guitars anywhere from 2:1 to 6:1, plus a rule of thumb on knee (hard knee for drums and bass, soft knee for vocals and some guitar parts). It also flags where EQ and compression order matters, a decision covered in more depth in this post on sequencing the two.
Try This In Your Own Mix
On your next vocal or drum bus, start with a 2:1 ratio and pull the threshold down until you're seeing 4 to 6 dB of gain reduction on the loudest hits. Then back off the release time until the compressor stops pumping and starts sitting quietly in the background instead.
Getting the ratio right on paper is the easy part. Hearing when a compressor is doing too much or too little, and fixing it by ear in real time, is the kind of instinct The Mixing Academy actually trains inside real mixing sessions instead of a static chart.
5. The 8-Step Mastering Process Checklist: What to Do Before You Export
The final guide is David's own mastering checklist, the same eight steps he runs through on every project so nothing gets missed before a track ships. It exists for a specific reason: he'd forget a step, catch it late, and have to redo work that should have taken five minutes the first time.
"I know this seems basic, but I can't tell you how many times I would forget a step and have to go back and re-do my project. Don't let this happen to you." [from the 8-Step Mastering Process Checklist]
The eight steps run in order: import audio, set crossfades with a 2 second gap between songs, adjust clip gain to level match tracks, add EQ, compression, and limiting to land around -8 dB to -10 dB RMS, add metadata for each song and for the project, export the files, and finally create a DDP file if the project is heading to an outside mastering house. Most of these steps take seconds, which is exactly why they're easy to skip and expensive to forget.
Paired with the mix prep guide's gain staging targets, this checklist closes the loop on a full session: a mix built with headroom from the start has an easier time hitting that -8 to -10 dB RMS mastering target without the limiter working overtime.
Try This In Your Own Mix
Before your next export, run through all eight steps in order, even the ones that feel obvious, like leaving that 2 second gap between songs or adding metadata before you bounce. Skipping a step here is exactly what forces a second export later.
What Worked, and What to Watch For
What Worked
- Every guide gives a real number or order of operations instead of vague advice, like -12 dB to -18 dB gain staging targets and 2:1 starting ratios, so there's always a concrete place to start.
- The checklists exist because David forgot steps himself, which means they cover the boring, easy-to-skip parts of a workflow that actually cause redo work.
- Two real multi-track sessions are included, so you can apply every guide to actual audio instead of just reading about it.
What to Watch For
- Every frequency range and ratio in these guides is a starting point, not a formula. David says it directly in the EQ guide: use your ears, because genre, source, and mic choice all shift these numbers.
- Some reference gear named in the compression guide, like the LA2A or Urei 1176, is vintage hardware or a plugin emulation of it. If you don't own it, the concept still transfers, but the exact tone won't be identical.
- The guides assume basic DAW comfort, like knowing how to insert a plugin or automate a fader. If you're brand new to your DAW's interface, start there first.
Frequently Asked Questions
A few questions come up often about the bundle and the concepts inside it. These are worth answering directly rather than leaving buried inside the guides themselves.
1) What's included in the HRME Workflow Guide Bundle?
The bundle includes five PDF guides: 5 Tips to a Pro-Sounding Mix, the Mix Prep & Setup Checklist, the EQ Frequency Guide, the Basic Compression Guide, and the 8-Step Mastering Process Checklist. It also includes two sets of multi-track audio files so you can practice the concepts on real songs.
2) Do I need expensive plugins or hardware to use these workflow guides?
No. The guides reference some well known compressors and EQs by name to explain concepts, but every principle, from subtractive EQ to gain staging to compression ratios, applies just as well with the stock plugins that came with your DAW.
3) What's a good compression ratio to start with for vocals and drums?
David's Basic Compression Guide suggests starting around 2:1 for both drums and vocals, 4:1 for bass, and anywhere from 2:1 to 6:1 for electric guitars depending on how aggressive you want the effect. These are starting points meant to be adjusted by ear.
4) What gain staging targets should I use before mixing?
The Mix Prep & Setup Checklist recommends keeping individual tracks peaking around -12 dB to -18 dB and the overall mix around -10 to -12 dB on the master bus. That headroom gives EQ, compression, and any master bus processing room to work without clipping.
5) Should I cut or boost frequencies first when EQing a mix?
David's EQ Frequency Guide favors a subtractive approach: cut offending or muddy frequencies before reaching for a boost. Removing what's fighting for space usually lets the frequencies you actually want come through without adding anything new.
6) What loudness target should a mix hit before mastering?
The 8-Step Mastering Process Checklist targets EQ, compression, and limiting that lands around -8 dB to -10 dB RMS before export. Getting your mix's headroom right during mix prep makes it much easier to hit that target without over-processing at the mastering stage.
Quick Recap
Five guides, five stages of a mix, covered in order from first fader move to final export. Here's the short version of each one, worth bookmarking so you can jump back to whichever stage you're stuck on without rereading the whole bundle.
- 5 Tips to a Pro-Sounding Mix: treat your room or use good headphones, always reference, balance levels and panning before plugins, manage the midrange, and low cut everything except kick and bass.
- Mix Prep & Setup Checklist: organize your session, route your buses, and gain stage tracks around -12 dB to -18 dB before you touch a plugin.
- EQ Frequency Guide: cut before you boost, and use real Hz ranges per instrument as a starting point, not a formula.
- Basic Compression Guide: learn threshold, ratio, attack, release, and knee, then start around 2:1 for drums and vocals and 4:1 for bass.
- 8-Step Mastering Process Checklist: run all eight steps in order every time, and land around -8 to -10 dB RMS before you export.
Final Thoughts
None of these five guides are complicated on their own. What makes the bundle useful is having all five stages, from fundamentals through mastering, written down in the same checklist format David actually uses, so you're not piecing a workflow together from a dozen different sources with conflicting advice.
If you're a home studio producer who already knows the basics of your DAW but keeps hitting the same snags, forgotten mastering steps, muddy low end, compression that pumps, this is built for exactly that gap. Pair it with the two included multi-track sessions and you have something to actually practice on, not just read.
The fastest way to see which stage of your own workflow needs the most work is to run a mix through all five checklists back to back. Wherever you find yourself skipping a step or guessing at a number, that's the guide worth rereading first, and probably the stage costing you the most redo time right now.
Ready to Mix Like This Yourself?
Use code ME25OFF for 25% off any single-title course (bundles excluded). If these five guides gave you a taste of what a real mixing workflow looks like, The Mixing Academy is where you put it into practice with hands-on training and real feedback, not just checklists, on your own songs instead of a generic example track.
Every guide in this bundle is a snapshot of a much deeper process. The Mixing Academy walks through full sessions from import to final export, applying the same subtractive EQ, gain staging, and compression decisions covered above to real songs in real time, with feedback on your own mixes instead of a static checklist you're applying alone.
That's the gap between reading a Hz range on a chart and actually knowing, by ear, when a mix needs it. The checklists in this bundle get you started, the Mixing Academy is where that instinct actually gets built.
Useful Links
A few places to go deeper on what's covered above, from the bundle itself to related breakdowns already on the blog.
- HRME Workflow Guide Bundle
- The Mixing Academy
- Mastering EQ: The Beginner's Guide to EQ'ing a Snare Drum
- Should I Put EQ Before or After Compression When Mixing Songs?
- 4 Real Mixing Decisions Behind a Professional-Sounding Mix
The frequency ranges, ratios, and checklists above reflect David's own workflow and the starting points he actually uses on real sessions. They're meant as a place to start, not a universal formula, since every source, room, and genre will ask for small adjustments once you're listening with your own ears.
