Top 10 Music tips

Leave the master fader on 0dB, but pull all the other faders to the bottom before starting your mix. Bring what will be the loudest track (usually the kick drum in EDM) up so it’s peaking at about -11dB*. By doing this, you are mixing at lower levels, so as you bring the rest of the tracks up in the mix, the master fader should be peaking at around -6dB (important for mastering later on). You’ll probably need to turn up your audio interface to hear properly. *Remember, this number isn’t definitive…it will depend on the project.

This is über-important! Think about where your audience will be hearing your music; it almost certainly won’t be in a perfect studio environment. It’ll more likely be from their headphones, car stereo, or (God forbid) even directly from their smartphone speaker! This is why it’s important to listen to your mix on different systems. Just bounce it down and play it from your smartphone or listen to it in the car and make mental notes of what to tweak.

If you’re worried that you’d run out of storage while hoarding games during the Steam sale, you’d be right. However, Steam lets you download the games across multiple drives. Simply add all the drives location in the Settings and you’re good to go. Navigate to Settings > Downloads > Content Libraries > Steam Library folders > Add Library folder> OK. Now, whenever you install a new game, you can specify the location and steam would download the games to that location.

There is so much about this online, and - as a heavy practitioner of both - I can confirm that mixing WITHOUT mastering effects on the master channel is definitely the way to go! For years, I started by adding compressors and limiters to get my kicks sounding as phat as Deadmau5’s, and - whilst I achieved it - by the time I brought everything else into the mix it was a horrible, squashed, distorted mess with no dynamics. A mastering engineer will want to receive your mix peaking at -6dB (and if you’re doing the mastering, you’ll want the same) so sending them a completely squashed 0dB brick will not allow them to do their job properly.

When it comes to cosmetics, there are plenty of third-party skins developed by the community that allows you to change the Steam interface. You can get different varieties of skins ranging from Anime to solid dark. SteamSkins.org is the most popular and trusted site to get your favorite Steam Skins from. Installing the theme is also really easy. Simply download a skin from the website, extract the files from the archive and paste it in the Steam folder, and then restart Steam Client. You can find detailed steps for every theme on its respective page.

Internet connectivity is one reason why you would want to download all songs on Apple Music. Traveling is another. Wait, aren’t they related? Open the playlist and tap on the menu icon. Tap one Download here to begin downloading all the songs in the playlist. Can’t see the Download button here? Scroll a little more to find Edit actions and then tap on the + icon next to the Download button in green to add it to the menu. You can add and remove any button here. Repeat the process for all playlists and you can find them under the Downloads section.

So, how do you get a phat sound without slapping effects on the master channel? Ah, the million-dollar question. In a nutshell, by using the techniques in this list, as well as advanced techniques such as parallel processing. Parallel processing is basically mixing an affected signal into a dry signal to maintain transients, and compression works really well in this way. You get the in-your-face compressed signal, but the transients of the dry signal cut through and maintain the dynamics.