Record your mix on your iPhone

Why get the mix onto your phone at all

The phone is the one playback device you always have with you. Getting a mix onto it lets you hear the song away from the studio, in the places where most people will actually hear it:

• The car. A classic reference for a reason: road noise, a small cabin, often a bass-heavy system. It shows whether the low end is out of control and whether the vocal survives noise.
• Earbuds on a walk. Close, detailed, and easy to notice harsh sibilance or a lopsided stereo image.
• Fresh ears the next morning. Listening to yesterday's mix before you open the session is one of the most honest checks there is.
• Sending it to the artist. A quick version they can play on their own phone, headphones or car.
• An archive of versions. Keeping a file of each mix pass means you can go back and hear whether a change was actually an improvement.

The usual way: bounce and transfer

Most people bounce from the DAW, then AirDrop, email or sync the file to the phone. That's a real-time or offline bounce, a file name, a transfer and a search through the phone's files. It works, and for the final master it's the right way. For a quick version to hear in the car, it's a lot of steps, so it tends to happen less often than it should. We cover this in stop bouncing references.

Tips for useful reference recordings

1. Name versions by what changed. "Vox up 1 dB, less verb" is more useful in two weeks than "mix 7".
2. Record the whole song. Arrangement and energy problems show up over the full length, not in a loop.
3. Leave the limiter as it will be. If the mix bus will be limited on delivery, record it that way, or you'll be judging a different level.
4. Listen in the same places each time. The same car, the same earbuds. It makes versions comparable.
5. Clear out old passes. Keep the versions that were milestones and delete the rest.

Recording on the iPhone with MixOutpost

MixOutpost streams your master bus from the Mac (the AU or VST3 plugin on the master, or the Mac app for any Mac audio) to your iPhone. While you're listening, tap Record and the app writes what arrives to a WAV file on the phone.

1. 01

   Listen on the phone

   Put the plugin last on your master and press Start Sharing. On the iPhone, pick the source and tap Listen.

2. 02

   Tap Record and play

   Tap Record, then play the song from the top in your DAW. The button shows the running time. Tap it again to stop.

3. 03

   Find it in Recordings

   Open the Recordings tab to see each file with its length and size. Share it (AirDrop, Messages, Mail and so on), or delete it. The same files are in the Files app under On My iPhone › MixOutpost.

What exactly gets recorded

The files are WAV, 48 kHz, 32-bit float, and they're bit-exact copies of what arrived, before Listen as, the diagnostic EQ and volume. So you can record while listening in mono, with an EQ curve on, or at low volume, and the file is still the untouched signal from the Mac.

The stream runs at 48 kHz. A 48 kHz session arrives bit-exact. A 44.1, 88.2 or 96 kHz session is converted to 48 kHz on the Mac with high-quality sample-rate conversion, so that's what the recording holds. 32-bit float files are large compared with a compressed file; if you're sending one to someone on a slow connection, you may want to convert it first.

Good uses

• Record the pass you just finished and play it in the car on the way home.
• Record a rough mix during a session and share it with the artist from the phone before they leave.
• Keep a recording of each version, then compare them later on the same earbuds.

Record to phone is one of the features proposed for MixOutpost Pro, a one-time in-app purchase.