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Dynamic Grading Demo Session

Explore Practical Mixing With Dynamic Grading

Our Dynamic Grading Demo Session package contains an example mixing session to demonstrate the workflow and capabilities of Dynamic Grading in a hands-on way. You can explore the session and settings, play around with them, and learn the Dynamic Grading Way of mixing. Click the button below to download the package.

The audio recordings in this package are provided for personal and educational use only, to demonstrate and explore the usage of Dynamic Grading. No rights are granted to otherwise use, publish, sell or distribute – commercially or noncommercially – these recordings or any works derived thereof.

The session consists of a set of individual stereo tracks, which have any effects, EQ-ing and panning rendered into them already. Reverb busses are also provided as individual tracks. This way the session files remain simple, clear, and easy to reproduce across different DAWs.

Currently, project files for the following DAWs are provided:

  • Logic Pro
  • Pro Tools
  • Ableton Live
  • Reaper

Note that depending on how your DAW handles file paths, you might have to help it locate the correct audio files. Let us know if you’re experiencing problems opening the project files.

If you’d like to use a DAW not listed above, please refer to the accompanying “Patches” file for instructions on how to reproduce the session and load the correct settings for each Dynamic Grading instance.

The Dynamic Grading Way

When you open the session, you might notice something odd: it doesn’t look like someone mixed it at all! All faders are simply set to 0 dB, and each track has an instance of Dynamic Grading on it.

Because Dynamic Grading’s histogram displays provide an excellent way to visualize and position audio tracks within the dynamic range, it also puts different audio tracks in perspective with each other. However, this works best when all faders are neutral (0 dB), which makes sure that within each Dynamic Grading instance, e.g., -30 dB means the same. Approaching a mix this way offers a whole new way of “conceptual” mixing.

As an example, have a look at the settings for the Kick and Snare drums:

In both cases, you’ll notice that the body ranges are compressed towards the -30 dB mark, while the punch is adjusted to extend up to the -20 to -15 dB range. You will notice a similar pattern in most of the tracks, where the body ranges of instruments are mostly arranged within the -30 to -40 dB range, and the punch range typically doesn’t exceed -20 dB. This “20/30/40” rule turns out to be a nice rule of thumb for a well balanced dense mix with lively transients.

Within these target ranges, the different tracks are placed according to their role in the mix. For example, the body ranges of lead tracks will typically be placed higher in level, while pads and background tracks will be placed lower. Similarly, upfront instruments will typically have an extended punch range compared to instruments further back.

You can explore all the tracks in a similar way. Listen to what happens if you change especially the body and punch relationships between different tracks. There are a million different ways to approach this mix session, even if you adhere to the stylized strategy outlined above. The way we’ve done it is surely not the only one, let alone the best possible one!

Your Turn!

We hope this demo session serves well as a practical example for the power of Dynamic Grading for mixing music. We invite you to play around with the session and explore how different settings and mixing decisions affect the end result.

We’d also love to hear from you! Have you discovered an amazing creative technique that we haven’t thought of yet? Is something missing or needs to be explained more in depth? Don’t hesitate to reach out via our contact form.

Happy Grading!

Download the Trial

If you haven’t yet, download Dynamic Grading for your operating system below. The fully functioning trial version is free for 14 days.

An iLok account is required to activate the trial and/or full version.

macOS

System Requirements

2GHz CPU, 4GB RAM
macOS 10.10 or later
Intel & Apple Silicon Native (incl. AAX)
AU, VST3 or AAX compatible host (64 Bit)

Windows

System Requirements

2GHz CPU, 4GB RAM
Windows 7 or later
VST3 or AAX compatible host (64 Bit)