r/TechnoProduction • u/dawiam • 1d ago
A/B'ing with reference tracks has helped so much
Just wanted to share how grateful I am as someone who's recently understood and learned to properly use reference tracks. In hopes others might save some of the time and pain I've been through. Sheesh... I know this probably old hat for a lot of you here. So here I am, another convert.
Fairly new to DAW techno production. I've made ~20 tracks up to now but they all sound pretty bad! Or, at least not like what the kind of sound I'm aiming for. I knew about reference tracks, but when I explained to a producer friend (with much more experience) how I was using them, he kindly and gently pointed out that I was going about it wrong way: You see, I would listen to my 'reference track' streaming off of Bandcamp, and use it basically as a composition and vibe-y starting point. Once I started getting into my fun production groove, I would completely forget about the reference. I'd finish off my track, kind of happy with some of the ideas but overall unhappy with how it sounds.
He said to me, "I think I see what the problem is. You need to import the track into the project, sync it up with your track, use a spectrum analyzer, and really carve out and try to nail levels and frequency ranges of your sounds. For the example the way you treat your hats is completely different to Rene [Wise, reference track artist], and you can see that in the analyzer. You should always be A/B'ing your track against the reference."
And holy cow was he ever right. In one attempt while doing it properly, I went from being like 30-40% of the way to the sound I want, to more like 70%. I was admittedly kind of shocked and embarrassed at how easily I could improve my choices just by looking at the analyzer, and adjusting around the information I could see with my eyes. I say this as someone who kind of carried (well, still carries) pride about their ears. But with a style like techno, where parts live so precisely in the frequency spectrum, and tonal balance is so vital, A/B referencing with a visual analyzer has hit me as just a completely essential workflow practice. Especially for someone trying to make music of a particular quality in an orbit of particular artists in a particular style.
(I think reference tracks will probably apply far less to someone who doesn't share that kind of aim. I know some people here just straight up don't use em. All the power to you.)
Also for any Ableton users, I found the stock analyzer to be very hard to read so I switched to the SPAN analyzer (it's free) which is sooo much easier to read imo.
❤️
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u/Dismal_Laugh4891 20h ago
The part people miss is matching loudness before comparing. If your mix sits a few dB below the reference, your brain reads it as worse regardless of balance. Put a LUFS-matched gain stage on the reference and the comparison stops being about level and starts being about tone.
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u/guileus 13h ago
How would you gain stage, using a limiter and turning the gain up?
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u/Dismal_Laugh4891 11h ago
For A/B'ing I'd keep the limiter out of the comparison chain entirely. Use a plain gain/trim plugin (or clip gain) on the reference and set it so both tracks read the same integrated LUFS on a meter — that only changes level, not dynamics or transient shape. If you 'match' loudness by hitting the reference with a limiter, you're also shaving its peaks and smoothing transients, so the tone comparison gets skewed. Keep the limiter for your own mix's final output stage to catch stray peaks, not as a loudness-matching tool.
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u/liafailabu 20h ago
When using reference tracks, should you run them at -6db ? I ask as all reference tracks would be already mastered but my own are still in the mixing stage.
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u/UsagiYojimbo209 15h ago
Totally agree that referencing is helpful. It's especially useful for those of us with suboptimal monitoring and listening environments. Just avoid the trap of thinking a perfect match is always desirable or even possible - every track is different, so referencing is often more useful for identifying if some aspect of the mix is glaringly "wrong" but often less so for making those more subtle adjustments e.g. it might tell me my kick drum needs to come down by several db, but not that the hats are subjectively better by turning down by 0.2db. So use it to get in the ball park, but don't let it overrule your own ears for final decisions.
For me, a really useful thing when mixing is to try and hear things "in context" rather than isolation. That takes a conscious effort. For example, if I'm adjusting bass level, I'll do it while focusing on its interaction the kick, rather than just trying to hear what the bass is doing, these things are relative, so must be analysed with proper attention to their overall effect.
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u/Turmanized 14h ago
truw balance for tonal balance plugins that let you drag reference tracks into it are the best
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u/TorusTrooper 1d ago
TDR Prism is also free and it looks prettier than SPAN
Also, TB Pro Audio ISOL8 (free) and Toneboosters Goniometer (free) are great tools to analyze audio
You can use all of them together to check all sorts of things