Mix Revision Workflow Question

[ITHertz]

Hi All,

I recently completed a mix for a client and (as expected) there were some revisions requested. When I started doing them I realised that I didn't have a good workflow for this process so I'm interested in finding out how others manage this.

For example, say you have three revisions requested: (1) snare is too soft, (2) don't like the vocal reverb, and (3) the mix is a bit muddy.

What I'm curious about is how people deal with these in terms of DAW workflow. At this stage I'm not looking at hardware as this adds another level of complexity!

First off, it seems that the revisions need to be referenced against the original mix. But I can think of a few different ways of doing this. For example, you could use the stereo version of the original mix (imported as a reference track). Or you could reference within the project itself, that is, set up a duplicate channel, make the changes and then A/B the original channel against the new version in the mix.

Secondly, do people save each revision as a separate mix version? Or are all revisions combined in a single "revised" mix. The reason I ask this is because in light of my example above, what happens if the client likes revisions 1 and 3 but decides that the original vocal reverb was ok after all so they don't want revision 2. In this case, you'd have to either make a new mix that combines revisions 1 and 3 or, using a mix that contains all revisions, undo revision 2.

Anyway, I hope I've explained my question clearly! Any suggestions for how to deal with this?

BTW, in the past I worked in software development so I know about version control (and what a nightmare it can be, lol). Seems that DAWs don't have anything as sophisticated although maybe I haven't dug deep enough.

Cheers,

Chris

[R_A]

First thing I'd do is get your client round and find out what they mean by:

the mix is a bit muddy.

[Arpangel]

I often make alternative mixes, I just make a completely new folder in my DAW media folder and save each one there, also copied onto an external drive for safety.

[Sam Inglis]

Personally, I do a Save As for each revision so that a new DAW file is created, but all referencing the original audio. Then, if I give the client version 8 and they say "Actually, I preferred the snare reverb from version 6," I'll use the Import Session Data feature in Pro Tools to import only the relevant tracks from the older mix.

[The Elf]

I'll add some notes to my DAW's notepad (Cubase) and add a number to the Project file name. If I fel the need I would append the file name with a description of the mix - 'File001 Vocal +2dB'. I name each mix export same as Project.

If I need to recover anything specific from an earlier version I can import tracks from previous versions.

I tend not to save exported mixes within the Project, but sometimes I will, if only to null-check when a client is convinced something has changed that actually hasn't!

[tea for two]

In Logic the Original recording piece I name OG, then same for each track within the piece I name OG.
When I do something to a track in a piece I rename the specific track with shorthand usually 2-4letters in Capitals + any Numbers regarding what I did, also removing OG from the name. I then Save As the whole piece with filename shorthand capital letters + numbers summary of what I did also removing OG from the name.

I also use colours.
In Logic I keep every OG track as green.
Then I have different colours for alterations to tracks this helps me see straightaway something I've done to a track in a piece.
I keep colours consistent for tracks from piece to piece.

[James Perrett]

I keep everything in the same project folder because the audio assets will be the same for all versions. I then just save a new project file for each mix version. I will also save intermediate versions if I want to experiment with something that I'm not sure will work. Project files are tiny compared to audio files so there's no reason to not save every different version.

If I want to reference an old mix I will just open a new project tab and load up the old mix in that tab. I can then switch between mixes almost immediately (actually, I can have them both playing at once if I really want to). This means that I can copy and paste between versions too.

I also use the notes window to specify exactly what changes I've made between different versions - and I also add client comments to the notes window so that I don't have to go back and find old messages/emails. The SWS extensions to Reaper allow you to have multiple notes categories so that you can keep client comments and project revision notes separate.

[adrian_k]

Exactly this ^^^^ plus a file naming system that gives me a clue as to why it’s a new revision.

Edit - except the notes bit, my DAW doesn’t allow multiple note tabs for a project file.

[RichardT]

I don’t use referencing for comparing mix versions myself, but importing a rendered version of an earlier mix is pretty simple as long as you set up the routing so that bus processing is not applied to the rendered version.

Plus referencing works much better if you have a mechanism to swap between the versions pretty much instantaneously. If you can’t set up your DAW to allow swapping with one or two clicks, you could try the Reference plugin from Mastering the Mix, which I’ve used quite successfully.

In terms of versioning, you’ve had some great suggestions above. For me, having a good and consistent naming scheme for project versions and rendered files is vital. It reduces the risk of errors quite a lot.

[ajay_m]

This is a very interesting question.
I work as a software engineer and the way we handle changes is through version control. The standard these days is 'git' and each change to a software package is tracked by committing the changes and then pushing them up to a central repository. Every change is then audited in the commit log and you can move back and forth through that log and retrieve files at any point.
So if you do something and then think 'oops', it doesn't matter, because the previous version of the file is always available.

But there are times when you want to make changes that may not in fact be part of the main product. These might relate to work that could take some time or possibly a feature that may or may not be merged back into the main product.

In this scenario you make a branch and commit changes to that. There can be many branches and you can switch between them. At some point you then choose potentially to merge a branch back into the main code path.
Now in many ways this is kind of similar to mixes. In fact, theoretically there's no reason you couldn't actually use a version control system like git to track changes - it doesn't care what's actually in the files themselves.
In that scenario you might create several speculative mixes and switch between them, then at some point choose to commit tracks back to a 'master' mix which represents your preferred mix, but without ever losing any previous decision. You just create a branch which might be 'lets try more reverb on the vocals' and then fiddle around with that while at the same time still having a master mix that could be quite different.

At some point some enterprising DAW vendor may well implement something like this - you could, if brave, do it directly if you know what files change (and indeed git can tell you this as well), but this is the way we handle the 'I don't know what I want but I don't want to lose anything' problem at least for software development, and, as I said, it's just files, so it could be anything that changes over time. I use a free product called "TortoiseGit" that integrates with the Windows file explorer menu so that you can just directly commit files, see the change log, pick a file from history, see branches etc, from that.

[James Perrett]

I've just done a quick search and I see that quite a few people have used Git for Reaper projects. One example is

https://grechin.org/2023/05/06/git-and-reaper.html

while there is a fancy looking GUI but no download yet at

https://forums.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=262908

I haven't found something that integrates into Reaper yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if one exists.