Mixing Services

At Woodlands studio, we offer mixing services using the best analogue and digital equipment in an accurate, acoustically treated environment to bring your music to a professional and commercially competitive level.

Stem Mixing

Stem mixing involves working with grouped tracks or “stems” rather than individual tracks. For example, instead of having separate tracks for each guitar, drum, or vocal mic, you have stems like:

Drum stem (all drums combined into one track)
Vocal stem (all vocals combined into one track)
Instrument stem (guitars, keyboards, etc., combined)

Full Mixing

Full mixing (or multitrack mixing) involves working with all the individual tracks of a recording. For example:

Separate tracks for kick drum, snare, hi-hat, bass, lead guitar, rhythm guitar, lead vocals, backing vocals, etc.

What is the difference between a Stem Mix and a Full Mix?

What’s the difference?

In audio production, “stem mixing” and “full mixing” are often confused but serve different purposes. Understanding these distinctions is key to effective communication when working with audio files.

Stem mixes are groups of tracks that have been mixed together into submixes, such as all vocals, drums, or guitars combined into their own stems. These include any effects or processing applied during mixing. When combined at the original levels, stem mixes should recreate the final mix accurately. They’re especially useful for remixing, mastering, or adapting a mix for different purposes, like film or TV.

Full mixes (or multitracks) on the other hand, consist of individual, raw audio tracks, with each track representing a single element of the recording, such as vocals, drums, or guitars. These tracks are unprocessed and are used during the mixing stage, where they are balanced, processed, and combined to create the final mixdown.

Key Differences to help you decide what is right for you:

Stem Mixdowns (Stems)

- Content: Groups of tracks mixed and processed together into submixes.
- Stage of Creation: Created during or after the mixing phase.
- Purpose: Used for remixing, mastering, and delivering adaptable mixes.
- Processing: Includes all applied effects and processing.

Full Mixdowns (Multitracks)

Content: Individual, raw (we prefer them to have your processing on), and unprocessed audio tracks.
Stage of Creation: Recorded during the tracking/recording phase.
Purpose: Used for mixing and editing individual elements.
Processing: Typically free of effects or processing.

How To Submit Your Music / Turnaround Times / Terms and Conditions

Turnaround Times:

Due to high demand the general turnaround time for mixing work is between 3 – 10 days. This time frame can vary. Please ensure you use a file hosting tool where the files can be stored and shared for longer than 7 days. If your files run out, you may get moved to the back of the queue so this is important when sending.

How to Submit your music:

Please send your mixed version as a WAV file separately when sending over the zipped folder as a reference so we can hear what you intended the track to sound.
Put all the audio files into a compressed zip file and upload this to WeTransfer or a similar file hosting website. Must be downloadable for 14 days.
Ensure that all limiters, compressors and clippers are removed from the master output channel
When exporting, make sure to turn off dithering and normalising.
Before you send over your stems, it is best practice to load them into a new project and make sure that it sounds how you expected it to sound in the original project and that there is no clipping.
IMPORTANT INFO – PLEASE MAKE SURE YOU NAME ALL ELEMENTS. We will return the mix and ask for this to be sorted if it is not sent correctly or may charge an additional fee if you are unable to make the changes.
You will have 2 free revisions after we have mixed your record. There will then be a small rendering fee per revision going forward. This fee will be determined by the amount of work you require after each revision.
When sending feedback for revisions, please be specific and give us timestamps of what needs to be changed.

Terms and Conditions:

There are no refunds for mixing work.
We do not offer a try before you buy.
Please note that all mixing work is completed by Iglesias and Iglesias only.
Our turnaround times are stated above but these are rough timings. 48 Hour delivery will always take priority.
You are solely responsible for any audio files, data, text and information submitted by yourself on the website
All mixing work and emails are strictly confidential from both parties. You must not post any of these online.
Please send all work using the provided email address. Do not Instagram or WhatsApp updates or revisions. Please use dedicated email threads linked to your orders (info@woodlands.studio)

CUSTOMISE YOUR MIXDOWN

Mixdown-full Referral Gift Product

Full Mixdown

£0.00

We like to have a clean slate when it comes to mixing your track. Please remove all EQ and any compression unless it is for production purpose only. If an element sounds strange when you have removed the effects/ processing or isn’t how you intended it to sound then you can leave them on. Please also make sure that when you export your channels, turn off dithering and normalizing when exporting/bouncing and all plugins are removed from the master output channel.

If you have sampled a percussion and needed to remove 7khz and above as that is what the track needed production wise, then the EQ can stay on.
If you have added or subtracted EQ for the sake of it, take this off.
Any FX that don’t add to the production can be taken off. This includes reverbs, delays, echoes etc. If you remove them and the track falls apart then leave them on.
If you remove an important effect that has purposely change the sound, pitching, effects racks etc.. these can stay on.
If you are still unsure of how to prepare your track, feel free to contact us.