When you work on a track for a long time, it’s virtually impossible to maintain an accurate judgement of your material. Is it loud enough? Too bright? To quiet?

After listening to a track for hours, I am sure it is not easy for you as well to confidently answer such questions.

They say it helps to do a so called A/B comparison with a reference. I.e. have a reference track, yours or someone else’s, that you want your track to sound comparable with. And it’s indeed a very useful method to quickly see how your mix sounds next to some reference one.

I do it in Reaper the following way:

  • let’s assume we are working on a stereo mix - the muster track has, therefore, two channels
  • we make it 4 channels!
  • then we create a “reference” track and drop some mp3/wav file there (this would be our reference)
  • we target this reference track to channels 3/4 of the master.
  • on master, we put an instance of a little stock JS plugin called SwixMitch Image
  • we set it up so that “A” corresponds to channel 1/2 and “B” to channel 3/4. Image
  • now, essentially, we have a crossfader, which in position A gives you your mix, and in B - the reference
  • now by moving the toggle left and right with a mouse, we can smoothly transition across sources, and this is how our deviations from reference become very easy to hear.

Bonus tip: if you put an instance of meter plugin (such as JS Loudness Meter) after SwixMitch, you will be able to compare quantifiable parameters of your mix such as LUFS and RMS.