#179: Mix or Master First? Secrets to Better Audio Production with Shane Slack

In this episode of Inside The Mix, I sit down with Shane Slack, an acclaimed audio professional celebrated for his innovative approach to music production. Shane dives deep into the philosophy behind audio production, emphasising the importance of understanding the source material before processing and mastering the techniques that truly elevate your mixes. 

This conversation is packed with actionable insights for producers and engineers aiming to achieve high-quality results in their music.

What You'll Learn:
• Should I mix or master first? Shane explains the benefits of a "mastering-first" mindset for identifying and solving issues in your mix.
• Why understanding your source material is crucial to avoid unnecessary processing.
• How the "Hippocratic Oath" of audio production—doing no harm—can transform your approach.
• The pitfalls of shortcut-seeking behaviour in music production and how to avoid them.
• Breaking out of the plugin chain trap: when less is more in your signal chain.
• Techniques for creating depth and movement in your mixes without overcomplication.
• Why critical engagement with tools and techniques is essential for achieving professional results.

If you want to refine your audio production workflow, elevate your sound, and embrace a deeper understanding of your craft, this episode is for you!

Got feedback? I’d love to hear from you! Click here to leave a review, share your social media handles or website, and get featured in a future episode.

Plus, one lucky reviewer will win a Starbucks voucher each month!

Chapters

• 0:00 Mastering the Thought Process in Audio
• 14:07 Mastering Audio Fundamentals With Experts
• 20:39 Creating Depth and Clarity in Mixing
• 25:47 Analysing Audio Processing Techniques for Improvement
• 34:21 Problem Solving Philosophy in Audio
• 43:29 Share Favourite Inside the Mix Episode

Transcript

Shane Slack: 0:19

over processing. That's a big deal right now in the mix community that I'm just kind of abashed by, because it's just like the further along I got in audio and the better I got at it, the less processing I was doing and I was making a lot better decisions and it was not always like, oh, I need to use always Pro-Q3 or Kershoff or Equilibrium or oh, I need to use X, y and Z all the time, like there's not this, like this binary thinking that's happening. You're listening to the Inside the Mix podcast with your host, mark Matthews.

Marc Matthews: 0:54

Welcome to Inside the Mix, your go-to podcast for music creation and production. Whether you're crafting your first track or refining your mixing skills, join me each week for expert interviews, practical tutorials and insights to help you level up your music and smash it in the music industry. Let's dive in. Hey folks, welcome back to the Inside the Mix podcast. In this episode, I'm thrilled to introduce my guest today, shane Slack, founder and lead engineer of Mono Theory. So a little bit about Shane here. So I've got his bio here, so I'm going to read from this.

Marc Matthews: 1:33

He's got an extraordinary background, having established a minority-operated audio facility in 2021 and honed his craft through mentorship with industry legends like Matt Davis and Bob Katz. I love Bob Katz, love Bob Katz, and I've actually got his mastering audio book. It's always on my desk, sat right there. That was one of my Bibles when I was doing my master's degree Love it. His unconventional career path mastering before mixing which we're going to touch on in this episode has given him unparalleled skills in listening, analysis and precision in audio production, and you've likely heard his work on productions for Apple TV, disney, marvel Studios and shows like Ted Lasso Love Ted Lasso. I recently got into that at the end of last year and, as a football fan, I don't know how I didn't get into it sooner. Absolutely love it, shane, thank you for joining me today. How are you? I'm doing good. Thank you for having me Been a long time coming.

Marc Matthews: 2:22

It has hasn't it I always find that when I do these interviews and I talk to the individual, the interviewee and I put them together months in advance. So, looking forward to this one, we're kicking off 2025 with this interview today, so in this episode, folks, we're going to be mastering the thought process. So this is all about problem solving and audio production. So Shane's got some top tips that he's going to go through with us today. So first question is about understanding the source. So in the lead up to this, your approach emphasizes understanding the problem before applying any solutions. Can you talk about your philosophy and why this is so important and how you teach producers and engineers to think more critically about their source material?

Shane Slack: 3:04

Well, yeah, so, as I already kind of established to you beforehand, I learned how to master before I learned how to mix. Back here, I was going to school in Valencia, which is here in central Florida, orlando and I was picked up by Bob and Matt and really was under their tutelage immediately afterwards and one of the things they always had was this Hippocratic Oath when it came to audio, which is always do no harm. Now, the way that they developed the Hippocratic Oath was that they are very delineating and very particular about the source material and any sort of nonlinear processing or linear processing that we're doing in order to make that source sound a lot better. And you know, one of the biggest challenges I've noticed with many engineers, like both those that are starting out and like those that have been like a little bit further on in their careers but maybe not at the level that they want to be, is a tendency to kind of prioritize shortcuts and presets and quick fixes rather than kind of like developing, like a deeper understanding of, like the fundamental approaches and techniques. You know, something as simple as, like loudness optimization.

Shane Slack: 4:14

We see a lot of people still under this colloquial, like modality of just thinking like, oh yeah, let me make something loud. I'll throw like a compressor or limiter on it and that, will you know, generate like the RMS that will generate the LUFS that I'm really looking for. Not really understanding, like, why am I reaching for that? Why am I reaching for this process? Why is this process kind of the standardization of it, like what is developing loudness? You know what is the science of that? And again, working from Matt and you know a little bit with Bob, like they really have a breakdown of this and trying to really get to understand why this is happening. You know what is loudness? Well, loudness is, you know, it's over a period of time of time. We can have a signal that's like 125 dB, but if it's accounting for like one millisecond versus, like you know, like a 90 dB signal, that's happening for three seconds, just the way of our threshold of hearing and the way that our ears works and our fawns and the cochlea and all that stuff, the way that these are all reacting, that's how you develop loudness. It's over a period of time. It's not an instantaneous thing, it's an over period of time way of thinking.

Shane Slack: 5:25

Now, granted, this is not, you know, the most immediate knowledge that you would get out there on like platforms such as YouTube, instagram, tiktok or anything else like that, and, frankly, you know, for a lot of people it might be just way too above level. But the reason why I really enjoy that is that I can bring it back down to a more simplified level and just think like, ok, you know, maybe I don't need to reach for a compressor or limiter, maybe there needs to be something just happening over time, maybe a wave shaper, maybe a clipper, which can also, you know, change the whole RMS and even the crest factor over a period of time. And that may be even a better way to do it. It may be a less detrimental way, but like, the scenario I always talk to my students about, this is like imagine you have to fix a piece of drywall or you have to hang up a painting. How are you gonna get that nail on the wall?

Shane Slack: 6:18

Some people are like, oh, just grab a hammer and just do it. Well. It's like well, okay, but what other factors are we on you? You know a low bearing beam, are we on this? Where is that? But like, developing that modality and developing that level of thinking is so tantamount to then becoming a lot more successful in your audio career and also removing a lot of these like immediate questions that you kind of just start developing, you know yeah, it's uh, I I really like what you said there about understanding what it is you're trying to achieve and I think that's paramount and important.

Marc Matthews: 6:50

And, um, going back to what you said about the hippocratic oath, that it's kind of weird that you mentioned that, because just off air, we were talking about my trip to coz and I went to um the tree of hippocrates while I was there, um, so it's kind of odd that you mentioned that, um, but I love that, the idea, idea that you shall do no harm. So you mentioned that about shortcuts and presets, and it's almost like with our. It might be a sweeping statement, not necessarily even generations, but everybody wants something really fast, they want it done now, they want it quickly. It's our attention span is what I think I was getting at. It's like when something doesn't load a website doesn't load I immediately just go to another one If it doesn't load straight away. My attention span and my ability to wait has decreased throughout time.

Marc Matthews: 7:35

Why do you think there is this idea you mentioned about shortcuts and presets? Why do you think people are reaching for that first rather than actually thinking? You know what I really need to understand? You mentioned there about the nail in the drywall first, rather than actually thinking you know what I really need to understand you mentioned there about the nail in the drywall rather than understanding the almost like the physics behind what it is they're trying to achieve, why are they were searching for these presets and these cutting, cookie cutter approaches first?

Shane Slack: 7:56

well, you see these presets and cookie cutters. They do offer semi a guideline, and once people start getting used to kind of seeing these presets or like kind of seeing, like okay, this is what I'm kind of noticing in common they think like, oh, that's just the answer to everything. The problem is is that like even something that's like a vocal chain and I had to go over my secondary engineer with this too, like multiple times you know your voice and my voice sound completely different. Now, the processing that works on your voice is not gonna work on my voice and you know just another analogy, because I also cook. You know it's almost like people get really mad at vegetarian or vegan food and say like, oh, this is nothing like a burger or anything else like that, because they're not letting the vegetable be a vegetable. They're trying to make it into a meat. Conversely, with audio and with vocals, you're trying to make my vocal fit into a cookie cutter mold or somebody else's or your client's vocal, and you're not really being discerning and you're not being really qualitative in really developing a personalized chain for each section. So it's like even my own audio sessions when I do my own productions and a little bit of the mixing before I handed them off. It was just like the preset wasn't necessarily. Oh yeah, my Pro Tools session. I have all my drums going for waves, nos, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, or all my vocals. I'm running for an 1176, everything else like that.

Shane Slack: 9:27

My presets are more organizational but very blank. There is no X, y and Z. I'm going in there each time with one refreshed and like brand new canvas and I'm painting with audio, completely different each time, and I'm being like all right, where do you want to take me? Where does this want to go? What am I missing in this? And again, it's easy for presets and we live in a fast-paced culture nowadays. Like everybody just wants to immediately grab a preset because they don't have time, but like you can't develop speed without accuracy and you can't develop accuracy without being slow and you have to slow down.

Shane Slack: 10:08

And don't get me wrong, even when I started out, I was grabbing and downloading all presets imaginable, some of them great, some of them not so great after the fact. But I remember, right when I started working with Matt Davis and right after I graduated from Valencia, and really taking some time to really slow down and really understand. Okay, why do? I constantly see this band at 3.2K, what's going on there? And then slowly reading Bob's book understanding okay, that's where the presence is. So instead of me just grabbing a preset of, oh, I need to increase the presence of that. I'm like, okay, I know it's around 3.2K, now I can go for a softer cue, I can go for a wider cue, I can go for a little bit of a dynamic, everything else like that, and you start just developing this vocabulary for understanding it. And I really encourage all my students and everybody else to just presets are fine, but really dive deep into it and really try to understand what is it it's doing at this point.

Marc Matthews: 11:15

Most definitely Excellent advice there, and I think that's paramount. And it's kind of like it almost echoes, in a way, the idea that I've said this on the podcast before with other interviews, the idea that maybe, rather than reaching for another plugin and another preset to try and solve a problem, maybe you need to think about actually do I really understand what compression is, bands and what I'm trying to achieve here, before you then go online and you see an advert that says this is the silver bullet plug-in that is going to you're going to put it on your mix bus and it's just going to mix it for you, rather than immediately fall into that trap, you know, to just really hone in and understand what it is you're trying to do. And this kind of leads on nicely to my next question. So you mentioned mastering before mixing as part of your career journey. So my question is how has this shaped your perspective on problem solving in audio production, and what can mix engineers learn from mastering techniques when analyzing a track?

Shane Slack: 12:16

you know it's very funny. So right towards the tail end of 2024 my colleague and good friend, ian shepherd, on his mastering podcast, was actually talking to an engineer who worked at Abbey Road. And at Abbey Road I found out they kind of do the exact same journey that I was in and I didn't even realize it, where they don't touch a mix, they don't touch a recording. They start with mastering, then they go to mixing, then they go to tracking and recording and what I think this does is it gives. Instead of starting from a small picture and going big again, you're starting from the macro and going back down to the micro. So it's almost like you start from like a bird's eye view. And because I learned and worked under a mastering engineer before I even really had a good grasp on mixing, I was starting to see what the common imbalances and problems and things that were happening and maybe even occurrences that the mix engineer is not even accounting for, like detrimental monitoring environments and how, room resonance and modal activities, having them overcompensate and compensate and under compensate certain things, or even like over distorting. You know there's a tendency of mixing to just believe that all saturation, all distortion, it's just gonna create like this amazing tonality. But then you take it into a like a laboratory environment, like a mastering studio, a properly calibrated mastering studio. You really start understanding the issues of reproduction. You know the reason why we don't always just fuzz and distort everything is that, like, playback systems are not standardized. You know you can go to a club, you can go to a different studio and just the monitoring playback. How can you tell that that distortion is meant for the song? How can you tell if that's because your woofer or your driver is distorting? And again, getting this bird's eye view of all these kind of common issues and tonal imbalances and everything else like that, it starts getting you more aware.

Shane Slack: 14:18

So that way, when I started to learn how to mix, I was a lot more cognizant of these issues. Like, okay, don't make sure we're not causing over presence. Okay, even the very common thing of checking things in mono. Master engineers check things in mono and especially for their low end, because they need to make sure that this is reproducible, especially if you're coming onto a beats pod or in a club environment in the genre that you work in, like even like you do dance music, I do dance music like it doesn't matter, like if the low end and the infrasonics are not linear and standardized coming out of all speakers, that whole track is just going to fall apart. Or if it's overly distorted.

Shane Slack: 14:59

You know, woofers are very subwoofers, are very keen on distorting that down there. Like how do we again, how do we make sure and how do we delineate from that? But that's again, you start macro and you start working your way back down to micro. But because you had the overarching image and you had developed just all these observational theories of oh yeah, make sure that we're not overdoing this, make sure that this is giving enough room to breathe all that stuff it can. Just to me I feel like more people should go down that route, which I was fortunate enough to live in an area and work with a mastering engineers in my area and it's much harder nowadays but like that's kind of my goal with my students is trying to get them to think like a mastering engineer, so that way when they mix and produce there's just they're way above the threshold of excellence that's usually coming out nowadays yeah, that makes a hundred, that makes total sense.

Marc Matthews: 15:55

And I like what you said about the macro to the micro.

Marc Matthews: 15:57

And in my head I'm thinking this is going back to my teaching days when I'd put a presentation together and I'd start with the conclusion and then work backwards.

Marc Matthews: 16:06

So I know what the end goal is, I know what my learning objectives are Tenuous link but I'm working backwards to meet that success criteria. And I think it also helps with conversations as well. So if you're an engineer producer and you're interacting with a mastering engineer, when they're having that conversation with you, you're able to think, okay, yes, I know what LUFS, I know what RMS is, I know what LRA is, I know what they're talking about and I know how to then go into my mixing session and make those tweaks and changes if I do need to. So my question to you with regards to that is, if you are starting out and you're thinking the listeners are thinking, okay, well, I'm going to start with mastering now, I'm going to move into that and just get my teeth into it and just understand it a bit more, what should they start with? What part of mastering should they start with first, do you think?

Shane Slack: 16:55

One of the things that I very much believe in and I've even told some of my mixing clients before we moved them on to different studios is I would almost rather you do a mix on your own, try to mix it yourself, but then go to a mastering engineer, and the reason I do that is because, again, these are laboratory calibrated environments. Every mastering engineer that I have had the distinct honor of either working for, calling a colleague or even now, good friends, they really do care about the craft and a lot of mixed engineers. There's just a plethora of information, a sea of information online and unfortunately, some of it's good. Most of it is various levels of what I would consider inaccurate or just flat out wrong, but a mastering engineer, they are so dedicated to the fidelity and the quality of the craft that they're not going to hold any secrets. They're not going to give you bad notes, or at least any of the ones that I know. They will tell you like hey, look, you have an overemphasis on your mid-bass range. Or hey, you have a lot of I'm guessing you have a lot of modal activity, maybe because your monitors may not be aligned and all that stuff. But they will give you qualitative notes on where your deficiencies are.

Shane Slack: 18:16

Mix engineers at least for the ones that I've had partnered with for times and periods of times. They're very much about like oh yeah, it's my proprietary secret plug-in chain. They're very almost a little too braggadocious. Some of it warranted, some of it not, but you need to educate your client. If you can't educate your client on the problem, how can you give them the solution? And mastering engineers just do that. Now, if you're trying to get started in mastering engineers or starting to be a mastering engineer, better grammar. One of the best resources that we had is this forum on Facebook that I was briefly a moderator for. It called Mastering Engineers Worldwide.

Shane Slack: 18:57

Every single mastering engineer of importance is in that group For various degrees of wanting to be or not, depending on where it's at that day.

Shane Slack: 19:09

They're all in there, but there's a plethora of knowledge in there and there's just so much.

Shane Slack: 19:16

And they're so open to talk to you about it and they're willing open to talk to you about it and they're willing to educate you.

Shane Slack: 19:20

We have this like viewpoint that mastering is this dark art, which is kind of true, which is kind of a little bit of the mastering engineer's fault for like being a little too secretive, but like that whole nomenclature and that whole modality is changing now they know the importance of this and they again, they care, care about audio. They care about it, it's not even just the music side of it, they care about the fidelity and they have all this knowledge that they're willing to spread to the next generation. And for me I just tell them hey, either go pay a mastering engineer, whether a big one or a small one, a legitimate one, not a mix engineer that masters, a dedicated mastering engineer to give your track a listen through and ask for notes back, let them give you feedback back. Or, if you're looking to be one, go join Mastering Engineers Worldwide, or go pick up Bob's book, you know, and start developing the modality to think like one.

Marc Matthews: 20:14

Indeed, I'm an advocate of all that. Mastering Engineers Worldwide is a fantastic group. I remember when I joined, and then you see the names pop up that we've mentioned today on the podcast and they're just randomly in conversations and other mastering engineers that I've had on the podcast as well, like Ian Stewart, for example. I see his name regularly crop up in that particular forum. And the book as well. The podcast Mastering Audio book is is fantastic, but all fantastic stuff. There is a question that I had off the. This is a slightly tenuous one. I might be putting you on the spot here a bit, but you mentioned about it's kind of that iceberg idea that all this information on the internet and that top tip of the iceberg above the water is what's good, and then you've got all this other, these other bits and pieces underneath that maybe less so. Is there a common misconception that you see in terms of information that is out there on the internet at the moment with regards to maybe mixing and or mastering?

Shane Slack: 21:07

again, I am putting you on the spot here, so I appreciate if you don't have an answer so at least for mixing at least, what I'm a lot more cognitive of going back a little bit to the shortcuts and going back to like, oh, this is what jason, jason Joshua does, or this is what Josh Goodwin does, or this is what you know X, y and Z does. I feel like there's a misconception, that kind of happens there. It's again they fall into like that preset, like, oh, we do this at every single stage. Having like briefly interacted with some of these people, that is not always the case. Sometimes they have those things on, sometimes they turn things off, but again we're kind of developing a very fast, almost McDonald's fast food mentality towards our processing and there's not enough time being like, hey, let's turn down the processing or even like over processing. That's a big deal right now in the mix community that I'm just kind of abashed by, because it's just like the further along I got in audio and the better I got at it, the less processing I was doing and I was making a lot better decisions and it was not always like oh, I need to use always Pro-Q3 or Kershaw for equilibrium, or oh, I need to use X, pro q3 or kershoff or equilibrium, or oh, I need to use x, y and z all the time, like there's not this, like this binary thinking that's happening. It's more like this is the problem. This is the solution I'm looking for.

Shane Slack: 22:31

Or, you know, even in mixing right now I have a big thing about like envelope, which what I mean by that is why I feel like a lot of people's mixes are so two-dimensional and so flat sounding is they're not really accentuating and adding back like movement into that mix. And I'm not just talking about like just volume automation on its own, like even like what is groove. I have a theory like groove theory is envelope. You know, I'll throw like LFO tool or like you know Devious machines, duck on something and even if it's like it's only doing a one to two percent, like you know, attenuation or anything else like that, that's going on. It starts creating like the sense of like feeling over time, and that's where's where people kind of get a little bit more locked in. I've done it with vocals, I've done it with pads, I've done it with my drums themselves. I've dragged in drum samples, kick drum samples, and even if the envelope is pretty good as it is, I'll still grab, duck and have it be triggered every time. And it's like all of a sudden and even my secondary engineer and everybody I've shown it to has seen it it's like, wow, that feels a lot more locked in.

Shane Slack: 23:41

Or you know, even the other way I've been creating depth, like I've showed another colleague of mine. It's like how do you create depth in the mix? And they immediately reach for saturation. And I'm like, well, that's, you know, that's an easy way to do it. Let's talk about a different way. What about bit depth? And he was like what do you mean? And I grabbed like an ableton redux because we were in ableton at the time. Usually I use d16's decimal, but I'm like your audience has no idea what the bit depth of your sample of the source is. So like what?

Shane Slack: 24:12

if I put my drums in 12 bit, and what if I put my my pads in 14 bit and all that stuff? And I'm doing it in mono and he's like, wow, why is it even in mono? It just sounds like there's like a three-dimensionality to it and it's like, well, because again it's biasing against each other, but now you're creating depth that works both in mono and in stereo, and also because things that are a lot going to be of higher bit depth are going to feel a lot more defined and you're going to draw your audience's attention cycle acoustically to that element. So it's like I leave my basses at like 32 or 24 bit and they're like why does your bass just sound so much more in focus? And maybe this is a little bit of my visual background and videography as well, but it's just that same thing of a camera lens. It's like I want something to be in focus. Everything else in the background may be a little bit out of focus, but this thing I want you to pay attention and listen to or look at.

Shane Slack: 25:06

That's going to be in focus and that's how I create depth. And they're like, wow, this is genius, no one's ever thought about that. And I'm like's you know experimentation and also just thinking about like, okay, what else could I do to create that sense of depth?

Marc Matthews: 25:22

Yeah, I love the idea of bit depth. I'm going to magpie that, as we say in a production I'm working on at the moment, as soon as you mentioned it and described it, and I love the analogy of the camera as well, what you did there. When you're focusing because it makes perfect sense, right, you're focusing on something and everything in the background starts to blur. And, yeah, the bit depth one, I'm totally going to steal an audience listening. If you do that as well, let me know how you get on, because I I really do like that idea. When you mentioned the envelope there, just for the audience listening, you're talking about attack, decay, sustain, release yes, or even like things over time.

Shane Slack: 25:56

like yeah, just something happening over time, like even, like, allow me to go even crazier with it.

Marc Matthews: 26:02

Yeah, yeah, multi-band.

Shane Slack: 26:03

Like multi-band compression. Everyone's just going to still think about multi-band compression as, like you know, something that's going to change, like the time and frequency response of the source. Why can't you use that as a groove accentuator? You can. What if you have it like again, you could sidechain it to your clap, you could sidechain it or whatever. But what if you just have this thing that's just ever so slightly just adding you could do the most minute of gain reductions. I've done it on Pro-MB back when I used it down to half a dB or dB and you feel it and it's like again, why does this feel more locked in? But it's just a different way of thinking about these things.

Shane Slack: 26:42

It's things happening over time. That's what makes like a lot of songs or a lot of music or even audio exciting, and it's just like even in real life, things are happening over time. Nothing's at the stagnant, like same level. There's something always happening and it's also part of the reason why people like analog gear. Analog gear is imperfect, but it's never constant. Every picosecond, microsecond, all the stuff, there's always something fluctuating and that's how you create that feeling in the box.

Marc Matthews: 27:11

You know, just start creating that that makes perfect sense and it the way you describe it. You can almost visualize how it suddenly is no longer two-dimensional and it makes perfect sense what you mentioned there, with the multi-band compression as well.

Marc Matthews: 27:27

So lots to take away audience listening and to improve and add groove, as it were, and just movement and stop your mixes becoming static. So moving on to my next question. So excellent advice there, shane. So this is we've already kind of touched on this a bit. So this is avoiding the plug-in chain trap. What's your advice for breaking out of this habit and approaching audio problems with a more analytical mindset?

Shane Slack: 27:53

So what I did for myself was I only limited myself. I put like a little hard limit of three to four processes on one vocal or one little source. And one of the best things that Matt did for me, especially when I was interning for him, is I was going in there, you know, all bright eyed, like wow, I'm in an amazing studio working on PMCs, all this gear, and I'm doing one of my first ever masters, and he comes in and he's like, oh yeah, what are you doing there? And I'm like, oh, I think at the time I was just like EQing around like the middle 400, 500 range and all that stuff. But one of the things he kept asking was okay, why are you doing that?

Shane Slack: 28:34

Now at first when you're a kid, when I younger, I'm like like am I not supposed to do that, all that stuff. But like, the more experience I got with him, the more I was like, oh no, he's asking that to make sure that. Like I'm asking myself that, why am I grabbing for that? Why am I doing it? Can I explain what exactly I'm doing? If you can explain it, you can rationalize it. And who, who knows? You just have that phenomenon too. Where you're explain it, you can rationalize it. And who knows? You just have that phenomenon too. Where you're now explaining it, you're like, all of a sudden, like a new neuron in your brain just decides to turn back on for some reason. You're like, oh wait, I could have also done this.

Shane Slack: 29:09

But the plug-in chain trap is so antithetical to that way of thinking because it's just like do this, don't think about it Now. Granted, there's times where you don't want to think about things and over-analysis and the paralysis that can come from that can be quite debilitating. But really slow down, really think. Why am I reaching for this? Why am I doing this sort of EQ move? Why am I doing a high pass versus a low shelf attenuation? Am I doing a high pass versus a low shelf attenuation. What happens if I change that out for that? Okay, maybe the low pass sounds a lot more natural and maybe that's what we're going for, something that's a little bit more transparent. When we put back in like a 18 dB high pass, okay, it doesn't feel as transparent, but there's just something going on in the hypersonics that feels like a lot better to me. How do I start choosing between the two?

Shane Slack: 30:05

Again, it all goes back to slowing your process down. You develop your speed. You're not going to hit the treadmill and you're not going to hit a 3K by sitting on the couch and just immediately getting up and like, yeah, I'm going to run a 3K straight with no training. This is training. You have to train yourself and it's the hard work. But all the engineers, all the producers, who are really doing incredible work in our industry, they've done that time. They've done that work. Don't let the videos online publicly with a company or whatever fool you. These people know what they're doing and they put in that time to slow down.

Shane Slack: 30:42

And again, you're not going to think about many years from now, months from now, even weeks from now for some of you, when you're at the level of way better level of success than you wanted. You're not thinking about, damn, I spent three days just figuring out eq movements or damn, I really just spent three days like using my stock compressor or like an 1176 style compressor. No, you're not thinking about that, because this is all it just becomes, not even just have it. It's just you enter like a flow state with it. Someone can throw something in front of me now and it's like I don't have to think about it. And if you would have told me in like 2018, 2019, that I would reach that level, I would have been like I don't know, did I hit like a hyperbolic time chamber? Am I like on some goku stuff now? But like no, it's just you put in the effort and all of a sudden, things just slowly, slowly build up.

Shane Slack: 31:33

So, and again, for anybody that's listening, i'm'm not against presets, I'm not against like some guidelines. All I ask of you, the bare minimum, is, at some point whenever in your day, before you use this and before you apply this to a client's mix, really sit there and break it down. Okay, why is he going two compressors? Why is he doing this? Why is he doing that? Why is this doing that? What happens if I take this out? Just start experimenting and start understanding all the key ingredients of that component and slowly but surely. It's not going to happen overnight. You're not going to be at Mensa level like I think Matt and Bob are, but you'll start developing it and you'll just, it will be so conducive.

Marc Matthews: 32:20

I stress and beg of you, all of you yeah, yes, 100 and um, and I've got of all of that and there's a there's a bit, a fair bit, to unpack there. So I've made some notes, as you, as you were talking there, and you mentioned there about time, and it's that compound effect, isn't it? It's like when you I'm a guitarist when I first picked up the guitar, I was shocking and it took time for me to learn how to play Probably still quite shocking now, to be fair. I picked it up in a while and it took time for me to learn that instrument and get better at it. And that it's the same with. It's the same with.

Marc Matthews: 32:50

Any creative process really isn sort of financially invest in that silver bucket, silver bucket, silver bullet to plug in, or more tech. Invest in time to actually understand what it is you're trying to do and trying to achieve and this goes back to your teaching as well, and I often find that you mentioned that like it was Matt, wasn't it who came into the room and said why are you doing that? I think, when you're at the point whereby you can articulate why you are doing something, I think that then shows that you actually understand what it is that you are doing. If you can confidently articulate and have a conversation about something, then that generally does show that you probably have an idea or understanding what it is you're trying to achieve. But I've been there.

Marc Matthews: 33:41

I remember when I was doing my master's degree and I was mixing a big band and I one part of that was I then had my tutor come in and I was to then go through the mixing process of why I've done xyz, and there were questions. He asked he's like why have you done that? And I was thinking, I don't know. I read it in bobby azinski's engineer handbook. So I did it. You know when I when I was starting out. But as time progressed, now I'll be able to say, well, I've done it because of this and this and this. So excellent, lots of good stuff in there. Um, we are actually approaching the end of this here. I'll show you these.

Marc Matthews: 34:13

I know these conversations do go very fast, so, um, I've got one last question for you here, so I'm going to jump ahead a bit, and this is to do with real world applications. So I thought it'd be quite nice to touch on maybe a project or two that you've worked on in the past. So, as I mentioned in the beginning, you've worked on productions like guardians of the galaxy, and ted lasso had to get that in there again. Can you tell our audience about an example of a real world problem you solved through this thought first approach that we've been discussing in this episode, and how it impacted the final result?

Shane Slack: 34:43

Yeah, so I am grateful for the modalities I picked up, both in audio, because even when I went to go do more audio and visual, a little bit more visual stuff with Ted Lasso, with Deadpool versus Wolverine and a bunch of these other productions, just having that mindset helped me problem solve so much I remember. Let me make sure, before I say this, that I won't get in trouble under my NDA.

Shane Slack: 35:07

I'll just say, I was working on a certain IP for Marvel Disney at the time in Burbank, in Studio City, and I remember we had an issue with just Media Composer, aligning not only the audio, but then also we take the EDLs from media composer and bring it into bass light and resolve to do our color grading and all that stuff. Now I remember there was this issue that we had not only with the sound and not getting the atmosphere to feel right, but then also with a little bit of the color, and with the color it was more like how do we bring this thing out and back into focus, like why does this not feel like what? I really want to draw the audience to this, I'll start with the sound and I'll go to the visual. With the sound, we wanted at this certain point for the audience to kind of feel as though they were looking for the character's vision itself and like they were feeling and hearing the sounds exactly like the character was supposed to. Now, again, I came from a mostly audio background so I'm like, okay, let me look into how do I what's like psychoacoustically happening to that? What? What makes sound when it hits our ears? Like feel like that?

Shane Slack: 36:20

And I started going down the rabbit hole relatively quickly of like peanut filters and looking at like chest bounce, like what frequencies those accentuate. So I remember just putting an EQ curve that was a little bit more automated for right then and there on that exact channel, that exact moment where we did like these very sharp, like peaks around six to 8K and all that stuff, and you might be coming from the mixing world and you'll be like whoa, that's the real harsh frequencies right there, what are you doing? But it's like wait, wait a second. Based on how our ears work and how do we echolocate for lack of a better word any localization of sound. There is a chest bounce, Even my voice hitting this room, reverberating off these walls, hitting. It's also hitting my chest and it's hitting my ear because of that. And what do those resonance looks like?

Shane Slack: 37:11

And I remember applying this and my assistant director at the time for that whole department was like who taught you that? And I remember saying no one really taught me that. I just started thinking about it and you know I also was like a little bit more coy about it. I was like, yeah, I'm a little bit of a nerd. So I feel like my free time spent looking up like new properties for audio and then for the visual thing as well. Maybe some craziness for people who may or may not be doing visual stuff, but, like, things that are in the foreground visually tend to be a lot warmer, so the white balance tends to be a little bit more orangey versus things in the background which are going to be a lot cooler.

Shane Slack: 37:54

And just for the principles of light, which I probably should not even get into because I'm nerd out about that, but like it's that, those concepts and again, he was who taught you that and it's like I remember just it was all just me thinking and being curious enough to go look into it.

Shane Slack: 38:09

But I again thank Matt and I thank Bob and I thank all the mastering engineers that were like my tutors or my mentors, both those that I've met in person, those I met only for Mastering Engineers Worldwide hell, even some that were like came up at the same time as me, for like always questioning and always being like okay, so what is actually happening here? And that's just such an amazing question to constantly be asking yourself, regardless of it, like what should be happening or why is this happening, or what, why is this occurring? And again, you don't have to go mad scientist about it. I know I'm a little bit of a nerd and I like looking things up. But even just doing some cursory research or applications and just asking what happens if I do this or what happens, what is this doing? What happens if I turn this on or turn this off, it just explodes your modalities and you just feel like you're like wow.

Marc Matthews: 39:07

Yeah, yeah, so excellent stuff there, Shane. And I think, to boil it down, folks, if you could take anything from this, it's to slow down and then question what it is you are doing. And I'm very much like you in that I like to get into the intricacies of why something is doing something, and I do this sort of forensically when I've got a reference track and I start using frequency analyzers and highlighting certain frequency bands and figuring out OK, well, that song's doing that there. I'm not going to match it verbatim, but if that's doing that and I want to mirror that and have that sort of same effect and I can get very analytical and sometimes get lost in the weeds when I'm doing this I can get very analytical and sometimes get lost in the weeds when I'm doing this. And then I come out of a session I'm thinking I'm not entirely sure what I've done there, but somehow it's worked. But folks yes, anything from this episode question what you're doing and slow down as well. Can I add one quick thing? Yeah, go ahead, yeah.

Shane Slack: 39:58

So to anybody listening too, we are working in audio. I would highly recommend that you get proper reference material, and I'm not talking about going on YouTube, not going on Spotify. I would rather tell you go play for a CoBuzz, go pay for a Tidal, go to a Bandcamp, get original Flax and Wave files, because the other thing that's really happening right now is that we're getting a lot of over processing over compression. Another thing that's really happening right now is that we're getting a lot of over processing over compression. It's because a lot of people do not understand what these DSPs or sharing platforms are doing to the original source.

Shane Slack: 40:33

Go to Cold Buds, go to their subscription. Not only do they pay artists a lot more per stream like five cents per stream but you're dealing with original flaks and waveforms at the original studio sample rate that was delivered and the amount of detail you could hear on those. Once you have a great like frame of reference, even more questions start getting disappearing and you're like wow, wait a second, I'm a little doing too much, but that's just my quick tidbit. You just reminded me no no, it's, it's very good.

Marc Matthews: 41:01

I'm glad you mentioned. I'm glad you mentioned it because I don't think it's. I've beaten the drum of reference material on the podcast many a time, but I've never actually mentioned where to get your reference material from. So fantastic stuff. Shane, thank you for spending this time with me today. I appreciate you're a very busy man, so it's been amazing to deep dive into your problem solving philosophy. So, before we wrap up, is there anything you'd like to share with the audience? And, and, or where can they find you online if they want to learn more about what you're doing and and just yeah, basically, where can they find you?

Shane Slack: 41:34

yeah, so they can find me at my secondary engineer, noah drake hartman, over at monotheoryorg. Right now we are fixing up our square space and making it a little bit more intuitive for clients to kind of come in and book. But if there's anything that I really wanted to like share with the audience, especially in our little niche and field, is like I know it's overwhelming right now and I know that, like the industry seems to be in a giant tizzy and modality shift across the world, all I can say to you is the standards have gotten higher. We have to hold ourselves to a higher standard. We have to hold ourselves to a higher echelon.

Shane Slack: 42:09

There's a lot of just fast food out there, for lack of a better word fast food engineering. Fast food production beats whatever the heck else of this and you might just feel like damn, I'm not at the level and I think I should just go. Do that. Trust me, your integrity and your consistency always pays off. I would not have thought I would be where I'm at ever. I had no foresight, no ideas of it, and it's just staying consistent, staying active, stay learning. Always be a student and even more than that, don't be afraid to embarrass yourself or say something wrong and be corrected, and especially be corrected. That's the only way you're going to get better and, who knows, maybe in a very short period of time you're just going to level up and now you're going to be in circles and be whatever it is that you were searching for, even something you couldn't even fathom. So please stay consistent in it. Absorb as much material, make as many mistakes, slow down, eat your vegetables, drink water, I don't know.

Marc Matthews: 43:14

Just yeah, yeah yeah, all of that and everything in between shade. Fantastic advice there. I absolutely love it. It has been a pleasure chatting with you today and, uh, been a long time coming, and I'll leave you now to enjoy the rest of your day and I will catch up with you soon.

Marc Matthews: 43:29

Folks, before you go, I want to hear from you. I want to know your favorite episode of the Inside the Mix podcast. Alternatively, you could just review this episode, click the SpeakPipe link in the episode description and you can record an audio message detailing your favorite episode and why, and also give yourself a shout out. All you need is your mobile phone. You don't need a SpeakPipe account. You don't need to download an app. It's just like sending me an audio message via WhatsApp or whatever messaging platform you use. As soon as I get your audio, you will be entered in that month's draw to win a Starbucks coffee voucher, and if you don't like coffee, just give it to someone else and pretend that you bought it for them. All you need to do is click that speak pipe link and send me an audio message reviewing this episode or a previous episode and give yourself a shout out.