Mixing Music | Music Production, Audio Engineering, & Music Business

This episode starts with a confession: Dee Kei wants a new compressor. Specifically, he's been eyeing the Heritage Audio Grandchild 670N — a $3,000 stereo Fairchild-style compressor in a 5U rack unit that launched in late 2025. From there, the episode opens up into something much more interesting than a gear review.
Dee and Lu walk through exactly what makes the original Fairchild 670 so mythologized — the tube count, the time constants, the maintenance costs that make owning one feel like buying a second car you're afraid to drive — and why Heritage Audio's approach of distilling the circuit down to four tubes in an affordable, modern form factor is either brilliant or sacrilegious, depending on who you ask. They break down what the Grandchild 670N actually has on the front panel — DC threshold, AC threshold, sidechain filters, mid-side and stereo linking, true bypass — and why $3,000 for two channels of Fairchild-esque compression is a genuinely different proposition than it was even three years ago.
But the most interesting part of the episode isn't the gear. It's what happens when Dee reads from two actual peer-reviewed studies on whether listeners can hear the difference between analog and digital processing at all. The first study tested analog modeling plugins against free non-modeling alternatives across 540 participants — and found that not only did listeners show no preference for the analog mix, the majority who thought they could identify it were wrong. The second covered DAX differences using a loopback method with over 1,300 respondents. The conclusion: people largely can't tell the difference, and the majority who claimed they could were misidentifying what they heard.
So why does any of this matter — and why does Dee still want the compressor? The episode lands on something more philosophical than a gear recommendation: the difference between buying hardware because you believe it's objectively better, and buying it as an act of devotion to the craft. Dee draws a sharp distinction between using gear purchases to fill a hole in your love for music versus buying from a place of already loving it deeply — and how Tony Mazzarati still sharpening techniques at his level is proof that the rabbit hole never ends for people who genuinely want to go deeper.
Gear talk, research, psychology, and the irrational passion that keeps working engineers working. A lot going on in this one.
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The Mixing Music Podcast is sponsored by ⁠Izotope⁠, ⁠Antares (Auto Tune)⁠, Sweetwater, ⁠Plugin Boutique⁠, ⁠Lauten Audio⁠, ⁠Filepass⁠, & ⁠Canva⁠
The Mixing Music Podcast is a video and audio series on the art of music production and post-production. Dee Kei, Lu, and James are professionals in the Los Angeles music industry having worked with names like Odetari, 6arelyhuman, Trey Songz, Keyshia Cole, Benny the Butcher, carolesdaughter, Crying City, Daphne Loves Derby, Natalie Jane, charlieonnafriday, bludnymph, Lay Bankz, Rico Nasty, Ayesha Erotica, ATEEZ, Dizzy Wright, Kanye West, Blackway, The Game, Dylan Espeseth, Tara Yummy, Asteria, Kets4eki, Shaquille O'Neal, Republic Records, Interscope Records, Arista Records, Position Music, Capital Records, Mercury Records, Universal Music Group, apg, Hive Music, Sony Music, and many others.
This podcast is meant to be used for educational purposes only. This show is filmed and recorded at Dee Kei's private studio in North Hollywood, California. If you would like to sponsor the show, please email us at ⁠deekeimixes@gmail.com⁠.

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Lu's on vacation. Dee Kei is alone with a page of talking points and one of the most contested topics in audio engineering right now — and the result is one of the most thoughtful solo episodes the show has produced.
This is not an episode about which AI tools Dee uses or recommends. It's about something harder to talk about: how engineers think about delegation, what happens when a probabilistic recommendation gets presented with the confidence of certainty, and why the pro-AI vs. anti-AI binary is the least useful frame anyone could bring to this conversation.
Dee opens with a distinction that reframes the entire debate: there's a difference between assistance tools, delegation tools, and full replacement — and most of the discourse collapses all three into one. He argues that engineers have been using automated decision-making for decades (dynamic EQ, auto release, delay compensation, drum replacement, LUFS metering), so the real question was never whether machines should make decisions. The real question is how much of the contextual, consequential decision-making we're comfortable handing over — and whether we understand what's being lost in that handoff.
From there he gets into the value engineers actually bring that no AI is accounting for: accountability, history with an artist, taste, creative confidence, the ability to hear the same note as a client and understand what they actually mean. He's direct about the economic effects coming — fewer junior engineer jobs, faster turnaround expectations, clients arriving with better rough mixes — but equally direct about what those changes don't mean: that the ceiling of professional audio work is getting any lower.
The episode closes on a question Dee leaves deliberately open: if an AI assistant could eventually make every technical decision as well as a human engineer, what do we actually believe the mixer is there to do?
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Find Dee Kei and Lu on Social Media:
Instagram: @DeeKeiMixes @MasteredbyLu @JamesParrishMixes
Twitter: @DeeKeiMixes @MasteredbyLu
The Mixing Music Podcast is sponsored by ⁠Izotope⁠, ⁠Antares (Auto Tune)⁠, Sweetwater, ⁠Plugin Boutique⁠, ⁠Lauten Audio⁠, ⁠Filepass⁠, & ⁠Canva⁠
The Mixing Music Podcast is a video and audio series on the art of music production and post-production. Dee Kei, Lu, and James are professionals in the Los Angeles music industry having worked with names like Odetari, 6arelyhuman, Trey Songz, Keyshia Cole, Benny the Butcher, carolesdaughter, Crying City, Daphne Loves Derby, Natalie Jane, charlieonnafriday, bludnymph, Lay Bankz, Rico Nasty, Ayesha Erotica, ATEEZ, Dizzy Wright, Kanye West, Blackway, The Game, Dylan Espeseth, Tara Yummy, Asteria, Kets4eki, Shaquille O'Neal, Republic Records, Interscope Records, Arista Records, Position Music, Capital Records, Mercury Records, Universal Music Group, apg, Hive Music, Sony Music, and many others.
This podcast is meant to be used for educational purposes only. This show is filmed and recorded at Dee Kei's private studio in North Hollywood, California. If you would like to sponsor the show, please email us at ⁠deekeimixes@gmail.com⁠.

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

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Before you do anything else, pause this episode and go take the Big Five personality test at https://bigfive-test.com/ — it's free, open source, and it's the entire point. Dee Kei and Lu share their results live on the show, and if you don't know your own numbers, this episode won't hit the same.
The Big Five — also called the OCEAN model — is the only personality framework that psychologists actually take seriously. Unlike Myers-Briggs and 16 Personalities, which studies have found are closer to horoscopes in predictive power, the Big Five is clinically validated, cross-cultural, and remarkably consistent over time. Dee breaks down exactly why — the difference in test-retest reliability, the Barnum Effect, and what it actually means to score on a continuous spectrum instead of being dropped into a binary personality type.
From there, the episode gets into the part that's most relevant to anyone building a career in audio: what each trait actually predicts in a professional creative context. High neuroticism and how it maps to taking client feedback personally, spiraling on revisions, and undercharging to avoid confrontation. High conscientiousness and how it shows up differently in recording versus mixing workflows. The relationship between openness and musical taste — and why, despite what you might assume, personality and music preference are barely correlated at all.
Then Dee and Lu read their actual results out loud — and it gets surprisingly candid. Lu's strengths and blind spots, including the gap between his external warmth and his internal sensitivity to criticism. Dee's near-perfect openness scores, his low cautiousness, and why his directness can sometimes outrun his warmth in ways people misread. The moment where the AI-generated analysis of Dee's personality is so accurate that he and Lu both go silent.
It's equal parts psychology, self-awareness, and career development — wrapped in one of the more honest conversations the show has had.

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What would Dee Kei and Lu actually do if they had to start their music careers completely over today — same age, same responsibilities, but zero industry knowledge, zero connections, and zero credits? That's the question at the center of this episode, and the answers get surprisingly deep.
The conversation starts practical: Lu makes the case for going straight to the top and finding the most credible working professional you can — shadowing, interning, and learning how the industry actually moves before spending a dime on gear. Dee adds his own counterpoint, arguing that hands-on reps with real people, even local ones, build something an internship can't always give you early on. The two go back and forth on the internship vs. DIY debate in a way that's genuinely useful for anyone trying to figure out where to start.
But the episode goes further than tactics. Dee pulls from Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman to break down how self-control, delayed gratification, and the ability to focus attention are more predictive of long-term success than raw intelligence — and what that means for how you show up in the early days of your career. They also get into the fatherhood premium, what motivation looks like when the stakes are real, and why community college might be one of the most underrated networking moves for someone starting over in their 30s.
The episode closes on something more philosophical: the difference between genuinely wanting a career in music and just thinking you should have one — and why knowing that distinction early could save you years of wasted energy or redirect you toward something even more sustainable.
Whether you're 19 with a laptop and a dream or 35 reconsidering your path, this episode will challenge how you think about starting.
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Find Dee Kei and Lu on Social Media:
Instagram: @DeeKeiMixes @MasteredbyLu @JamesParrishMixes
Twitter: @DeeKeiMixes @MasteredbyLu
The Mixing Music Podcast is sponsored by ⁠Izotope⁠, ⁠Antares (Auto Tune)⁠, Sweetwater, ⁠Plugin Boutique⁠, ⁠Lauten Audio⁠, ⁠Filepass⁠, & ⁠Canva⁠
The Mixing Music Podcast is a video and audio series on the art of music production and post-production. Dee Kei, Lu, and James are professionals in the Los Angeles music industry having worked with names like Odetari, 6arelyhuman, Trey Songz, Keyshia Cole, Benny the Butcher, carolesdaughter, Crying City, Daphne Loves Derby, Natalie Jane, charlieonnafriday, bludnymph, Lay Bankz, Rico Nasty, Ayesha Erotica, ATEEZ, Dizzy Wright, Kanye West, Blackway, The Game, Dylan Espeseth, Tara Yummy, Asteria, Kets4eki, Shaquille O'Neal, Republic Records, Interscope Records, Arista Records, Position Music, Capital Records, Mercury Records, Universal Music Group, apg, Hive Music, Sony Music, and many others.
This podcast is meant to be used for educational purposes only. This show is filmed and recorded at Dee Kei's private studio in North Hollywood, California. If you would like to sponsor the show, please email us at ⁠deekeimixes@gmail.com⁠.

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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In this episode, Dee Kei and Lu sit down with Andrew Rynhard — mastering engineer, developer, and founder of Naturl Audio — for one of the most technical and candid limiter conversations the show has ever had. Naturl Audio's philosophy is "evolution, not emulation," and that mindset runs through every corner of this episode.
They start at the foundation: what's the actual difference between a brick wall limiter and a high-ratio compressor, and does the distinction even matter in practice? Andrew breaks down how the AL-1 takes a fundamentally different approach — abandoning traditional lookahead design in favor of an original zero-latency circuit, and deliberately avoiding the clipping or wave-shaping stage that most limiters rely on to force a hard ceiling. The result, he explains, is a limiter that stays musical and open under pressure rather than mechanical. Dee walks through how he actually uses the AL-1 in his mix sessions — not just as a loudness tool at the end of the chain, but as a creative shaping device — and Andrew digs into the Optimizer section, which uses upward compression and intelligent makeup gain to add loudness without coloration.
The episode also takes some unexpected turns. Andrew opens up about the intense online backlash surrounding the AL-1's launch — including people threatening him over a plugin — and what that toxicity says about tribalism in the audio world. Dee shares a story about being the only engineer in a room full of pros willing to admit he couldn't hear a difference, and why that kind of honest integrity might be the most underrated quality in the business. Andrew echoes it with a lesson he learned from Jiu Jitsu: ego is the single biggest blocker to actually developing your ears, and the engineers who keep growing are the ones who can say "I don't know" out loud.
It wraps with a real conversation about clipping philosophy — when to reach for a clipper vs. lean on the limiter, and what Grammy-winning masters actually look like in terms of true peak and LUFS. The answer might surprise you.
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⁠SUBSCRIBE TO YOUTUBE⁠
Join the ‘Mixing Music Podcast’ Discord!
HIRE DEE KEI
HIRE LU
⁠HIRE JAMES⁠
Find Dee Kei and Lu on Social Media:
Instagram: @DeeKeiMixes @MasteredbyLu @JamesParrishMixes
Twitter: @DeeKeiMixes @MasteredbyLu
The Mixing Music Podcast is sponsored by ⁠Izotope⁠, ⁠Antares (Auto Tune)⁠, Sweetwater, ⁠Plugin Boutique⁠, ⁠Lauten Audio⁠, ⁠Filepass⁠, & ⁠Canva⁠
The Mixing Music Podcast is a video and audio series on the art of music production and post-production. Dee Kei, Lu, and James are professionals in the Los Angeles music industry having worked with names like Odetari, 6arelyhuman, Trey Songz, Keyshia Cole, Benny the Butcher, carolesdaughter, Crying City, Daphne Loves Derby, Natalie Jane, charlieonnafriday, bludnymph, Lay Bankz, Rico Nasty, Ayesha Erotica, ATEEZ, Dizzy Wright, Kanye West, Blackway, The Game, Dylan Espeseth, Tara Yummy, Asteria, Kets4eki, Shaquille O'Neal, Republic Records, Interscope Records, Arista Records, Position Music, Capital Records, Mercury Records, Universal Music Group, apg, Hive Music, Sony Music, and many others.
This podcast is meant to be used for educational purposes only. This show is filmed and recorded at Dee Kei's private studio in North Hollywood, California. If you would like to sponsor the show, please email us at ⁠deekeimixes@gmail.com⁠.

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy