Why Your Ears Trick You When Mixing (and How to Outsmart Them)

If your mixes sound great in the studio but fall apart on other systems, the problem might not be your plugins, monitors, or even your DAW. The real culprit could be your ears.

Unlike microphones, which reproduce sound faithfully, our ears interpret sound and that interpretation changes with loudness, frequency balance, exposure time, and even your expectations. This “ear trickery” can sabotage your mixes without you even realising it.

In this video, I’ll show you the four biggest ways your ears deceive you when mixing, and the simple habits you can use to outsmart them.

Once you understand how your ears trick you, you can build habits that protect your mixes: fixed monitoring levels, small-speaker checks, regular breaks, and bypass testing.

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