Making a Scene Presents – The Power of Reference Tracks: Learning to Mix by Listening

Listen To the Podcast Discussion to gain More Insight into Using Reference Tracks

If you want your mixes to sound more “pro” without buying more gear or plugins, this is the shortcut nobody talks about enough. Reference tracks. Not copying. Not stealing ideas. Just listening smarter.

Most indie artists think mixing is about twisting knobs until things sound good. That’s half true. The real skill is knowing what “good” even sounds like in the first place. That’s where reference tracks come in. They train your ears faster than any tutorial ever will.

This article is written for artists who are new to mixing, working at home, and trying to make sense of why their mixes don’t hit like the songs they love. We’ll walk through what reference tracks are, how to use them inside Studio One’s mastering page, how to compare balance, EQ, and loudness without copying, and how modern AI tools can help without turning your brain off. You’ll also learn when not to trust AI, because that part matters just as much.

No fluff. No gatekeeping. Just real-world mixing advice you can use today.

What a Reference Track Really Is (And What It Isn’t)

A reference track is a professionally mixed and mastered song that you keep nearby while you work on your own mix so you have something real to listen against. That’s the whole idea. It’s not a preset. It’s not a blueprint. It’s not something you’re supposed to chase note for note or sound for sound. It’s a reality check.

The easiest way to understand it is to think about driving somewhere you’ve never been. You can still steer the car, choose your speed, and decide when to stop. But without a GPS, you’re guessing the whole way. A reference track is that GPS for your ears. It doesn’t tell you what turns to make inside your mix. It just keeps you from drifting way off course without realizing it.

This is where a lot of beginners get tripped up. They pick a reference track because they love the song, not because it makes sense for their mix. Liking a song is great, but it doesn’t automatically make it a good reference. A useful reference track needs to live in the same musical neighborhood as what you’re working on. The genre should be close. The energy level should feel similar. The overall mood should line up. Tempo matters. Arrangement density matters. Production style matters. If you’re mixing a stripped-down indie folk song with acoustic guitar and vocal, referencing a glossy EDM festival track will just mess with your head. The low end, the brightness, the loudness, and the space are built for totally different reasons.

When you use a reference track the right way, you’re not asking, “How do I make my song sound exactly like this?” That question leads to frustration and bad decisions. The better questions are simpler and way more useful. How loud is the vocal compared to everything else? Does the vocal sit on top of the mix or blend into it? How bright is the high end without sounding harsh? How much low end is actually there, and where does it sit? How wide does the mix feel? How punchy are the drums compared to the music around them?

Those kinds of questions train your ears to hear balance instead of chasing perfection. They help you understand what a finished mix feels like in the real world, not just in your room on your speakers. Over time, this changes how you mix. You stop guessing. You stop overworking things. You start making choices with confidence because you’ve got something solid to compare against. That’s why reference tracks are so powerful. They don’t replace your taste or your creativity. They just keep you honest while you learn.

Why Your Ears Lie to You When You Mix

Here’s the hard truth most people don’t want to hear. Your ears are unreliable when they work in isolation. It’s not a skill issue. It’s how the human brain works. When you loop the same chorus for ten minutes, your brain starts filling in what it thinks should be there instead of what actually is. After an hour, you’ve heard the song so many times that you get emotionally attached to choices that might not be helping the mix at all. After a few hours, even obvious problems start sounding normal. Not good. Just normal.

This is how mixes slowly drift off course. Vocals creep louder because you’ve gotten used to them. Low end keeps building because your ears adapt and want more impact. High end gets softer because your brain gets tired of brightness. None of this happens because you’re bad at mixing. It happens because your ears adapt to whatever you feed them long enough. Left alone, they lose their sense of scale and perspective.

Reference tracks snap you out of that bubble. They reset your ears by reminding you what a finished, professional mix actually sounds like in the real world. The moment you switch back and forth between your mix and a solid reference, problems become obvious fast. Too much bass suddenly feels bloated. Vocals that felt loud enough now sound buried. Cymbals that seemed fine feel sharp and brittle. Reverb that felt lush starts washing everything away.

At that point, you’re no longer guessing or chasing your own fatigue. You’re comparing. And comparison is where real learning happens. Reference tracks give you an external reality check so you can make clear decisions instead of slowly mixing yourself into a corner.

How Reference Tracks Were Used Before AI

Long before AI plugins and fancy analyzers showed up, engineers used reference tracks in the most straightforward way possible. They brought in CDs, vinyl records, and even cassette tapes and played them through the exact same speakers they were using to mix. Same room. Same monitors. Same volume. That part mattered, because changing volume changes how things feel. They wanted a fair comparison, not a louder illusion.

They weren’t staring at screens or chasing numbers. There were no spectral graphs or loudness readouts to lean on. They listened. They paid attention to how the kick drum felt in the body, not just how loud it looked. They listened to where the vocal sat in the mix, whether it felt locked in or floating on top. They noticed how wide the song felt between the speakers and how deep it sounded front to back. All of that came from listening, not measuring.

The rule back then was brutally simple. If your mix sounds smaller, weaker, or less exciting than a finished record when both are played at the same volume, something is wrong. It didn’t matter how good the song was or how long you worked on it. That comparison didn’t lie. And that rule still holds up today.

What’s changed is that now we have tools that let us see what our ears are hearing. Spectrum analyzers, loudness meters, and AI-assisted plugins can show us balance, energy, and trends across a mix. That kind of insight is powerful and incredibly helpful, especially when you’re learning. But it can also become dangerous the moment you stop trusting your ears and start mixing to graphs instead of sound. The tools should support your listening, not replace it. When the ears and the tools work together, that’s where real progress happens.

Setting Up Reference Tracks in Studio One

Studio One makes working with reference tracks almost stupidly easy, especially on the mastering page, and that’s a big reason so many engineers stick with it. Instead of building complicated routing or loading extra plugins, you can simply bring your finished mix into the mastering page and drop reference tracks straight into the built-in reference player. It’s clean, fast, and designed for listening instead of fiddling.

One of the most important things Studio One does here is automatic level matching. This might sound like a small feature, but it’s massive. Louder always sounds better. No exceptions. If a reference track is even slightly louder than your mix, your brain will tell you it sounds better, even if it isn’t. Without level matching, you end up chasing volume instead of fixing real problems. Studio One takes that trap off the table so you can actually judge quality instead of loudness.

Switching between your mix and the reference is instant. One click and you’re hearing the other track through the same speakers, at the same level, in the same room. There’s no complex routing to set up, no third-party plugins you have to learn, and no technical friction pulling your attention away from listening. You just listen and react.

That simplicity is what makes this workflow powerful. You’re no longer buried in the details of EQ moves or compression tweaks. You’re focused on the big picture. Does the balance feel right? Is the tone in the same ballpark? Does the low end translate? Does the mix hold together as a finished piece of music? At this stage, you’re not mixing anymore. You’re checking. And that shift in mindset is what separates guesswork from real confidence.

Comparing Balance Without Copying

Balance is simply how all the parts of a song sit together. It’s the relationship between the vocal and the music, the kick and the bass, the drums and the guitars. Nothing in a mix exists on its own, even if it sounds great when soloed. What matters is how everything works together at the same time.

That’s why comparing balance with reference tracks only works when you listen to the full mix. Soloing tracks at this stage just lies to you. A soloed vocal can sound perfect and still be completely wrong in context. Keep everything playing, flip over to your reference, and ask straightforward questions. Is the vocal sitting louder or quieter than mine? Does the kick hit with authority or does it feel soft and swallowed? Is the bass tight and controlled or does it feel thick and bloated? Are the guitars upfront and present, or are they tucked back to make room for something else?

The goal here isn’t to match numbers or copy fader positions. You’re not trying to make your mix identical. You’re trying to understand proportions. How much space each element is allowed to take in a finished mix. Once you hear those relationships clearly, your own decisions start making more sense.

One of the best tricks for judging balance is turning your monitors way down. At very low volume, balance problems jump out fast. If the vocal disappears, it’s probably too quiet. If the mix turns into a low-end rumble, there’s too much bass. If you can still hear the vocal clearly at a whisper level, you’re in the right zone. Low-volume listening strips away the hype and tells you the truth about your balance.

Using Reference Tracks to Learn EQ by Ear

EQ is where most beginners get stuck in their own heads. Too many plugins get stacked. Too many curves get drawn. Too much time gets spent trying to fix problems that aren’t clearly understood yet. It turns into a cycle of boosting, cutting, and second-guessing instead of actually improving the mix.

This is where reference tracks quietly teach you restraint. When you really listen to a professional mix, one of the first surprises is how not extreme it is. Most finished records aren’t overly bright or hyped. They feel clear and open because the frequencies are balanced, not because the high end is cranked. The top end sounds smooth because the midrange isn’t crowded and fighting for space.

When you flip back and forth between your mix and a reference, focus on broad areas instead of tiny details. Listen to the weight of the low end. Is it solid or does it feel thin? Listen to the midrange. Can you hear the core of the song clearly, or does it feel cloudy? Listen to the air on top. Is there openness without harshness?

If your mix feels dull compared to the reference, resist the urge to grab a high-shelf EQ right away. That’s usually a symptom, not the problem. Ask yourself why it feels dull. Maybe there’s too much low-mid buildup masking clarity. Maybe the vocal is muddy and pulling energy out of the mix. Maybe the guitars are crowding the same space. Reference tracks help you ask the right questions before making moves. Instead of guessing and over-EQ’ing, you start diagnosing. And that shift alone can dramatically clean up your mixes.

Loudness: The Trap Everyone Falls Into

This is the point where things can go sideways very quickly. Loudness is the trap almost everyone falls into, especially early on. It feels like the finish line, like the one thing standing between your mix and a “pro” sound. But loudness is not the goal. It’s the byproduct of a mix that’s already balanced, clear, and controlled, followed by smart mastering choices.

Reference tracks help you understand loudness the right way. When your mix and a professional track are level-matched, something interesting happens. The pro track still feels louder, even though it isn’t. That’s because loudness isn’t just volume. It’s clarity. It’s punch. It’s balance across the entire frequency range. Everything is working together, so the song hits harder without needing to be turned up.

This is where Studio One’s mastering page really shines. By letting you compare perceived loudness instead of raw volume, it removes the temptation to just push things louder and louder. You’re forced to listen to how your mix feels, not how big the meters look. That alone can save your mix from being smashed by limiters and clipped into exhaustion.

When you stop chasing loudness and start chasing clarity, the volume takes care of itself. Reference tracks make that obvious in a way no tutorial ever could.

Using AI Tools to Assist Reference Listening

AI tools can be incredibly helpful when it comes to using reference tracks, but only if you treat them like assistants, not authority figures. They’re there to support your listening, not replace it. The moment you let an AI tool tell you what your song should feel like, you’ve handed over creative control. Used the right way, though, these tools can speed up learning and make problems easier to spot.

iZotope Ozone is one of the most common places people start.
https://www.izotope.com/en/products/ozone.html

Ozone includes features like Master Assistant and Tonal Balance Control, which analyze your mix and compare it to a range of professionally finished tracks. When you use Ozone alongside a reference track, it can quickly show you broad trends in your mix. Maybe there’s too much low end overall. Maybe the upper mids are thin. Maybe the presence range isn’t strong enough. That kind of feedback is useful because it gives you context.

Where people get into trouble is blindly accepting Ozone’s suggestions. Ozone doesn’t know the emotional goal of your song. It doesn’t know if your track is supposed to feel raw, intimate, aggressive, or loose. It only knows statistical averages pulled from other mixes. That means it’s great for confirmation, not decision-making. If your ears already tell you the mix feels muddy, Ozone can help point out where that’s happening. But if it suggests changes that don’t feel right emotionally, trust your ears over the graph.

iZotope Neutron works earlier in the process, at the mix level.
https://www.izotope.com/en/products/neutron.html

Neutron is especially helpful for understanding masking, which is when multiple instruments fight for the same frequency space. When used with reference tracks, Neutron can help explain why professional mixes feel clearer and more focused. You might see that guitars and vocals in a reference mix don’t overlap as much as they do in yours, or that the low end is more controlled than you realized.

Just like with Ozone, the danger is hitting “accept” without thinking. Neutron’s suggestions should be treated like a lesson, not a command. Look at what it’s doing, listen to the result, and decide if it actually improves the song. Over time, you’ll start recognizing these issues without needing the tool as much.

Sonible smart:EQ takes a different approach.
https://www.sonible.com/smarteq/

smart:EQ analyzes your audio and suggests an EQ curve based on learned profiles from similar material. It’s great for showing beginners what a balanced signal might look like, especially on tracks that feel hard to control. Used carefully, it can help you understand why certain frequency areas are causing problems.

The risk with smart:EQ is overuse. If every track gets an AI-generated curve, your mix can start sounding generic fast. Everything gets smoothed into the same shape, and your personality disappears. The best way to use smart:EQ is as a reference point. Apply it, listen, then back it off or adjust it manually. Let it teach you instead of doing the work for you.

ADPTR MetricAB is one of the most powerful reference tools available because it doesn’t change your sound at all.
https://www.plugin-alliance.com/en/products/adptr_metricab.html

MetricAB lets you load multiple reference tracks, automatically level-match them, and compare your mix against them in real time. You can look at spectrum balance, stereo width, and dynamics, but more importantly, you can switch instantly between tracks and just listen. That makes it a brutal but honest reality check.

MetricAB doesn’t make decisions. It doesn’t suggest fixes. It just shows you the truth. If your low end is heavier than every reference you load, you’ll see it. If your mix is narrower or flatter, it becomes obvious. That kind of clarity is incredibly valuable, especially when learning.

Mastering The Mix Reference is built specifically for this job.
https://www.masteringthemix.com/products/reference

This plugin focuses on fast switching, level-matching, and looping specific sections so you can compare your mix to references without breaking your workflow. For beginners, that simplicity matters. The less time you spend setting things up, the more time you spend actually listening.

All of these tools can make you better faster, but only if you stay in control. They should help you hear problems more clearly, not tell you what kind of music you’re allowed to make. The real skill is still listening. The tools just shine a light on what your ears are already learning to hear.

When Not to Trust AI Reference Tools

Here’s the line in the sand, and it matters. AI tools do not understand art. They don’t know what your song is trying to say. They don’t feel tension, vulnerability, aggression, or space. They have no idea whether your track is supposed to feel raw, lo-fi, polished, messy, intimate, or uncomfortably quiet. They also don’t know when breaking the rules is the entire point.

AI tools are trained on patterns and averages. That means they’re good at telling you what’s typical, not what’s meaningful. If an AI tool flags your mix as “wrong” but the song feels right emotionally, trust yourself. A reference track is meant to guide your ears, not flatten your identity. The moment you start fixing things just because a tool says they’re wrong, you risk sanding off everything that makes the song yours.

This is especially true with unusual arrangements and nonstandard productions. Sparse songs with lots of space, genre-bending tracks that don’t fit neatly into categories, and performances with wide dynamics often confuse AI systems. They look unbalanced on a graph even when they feel powerful in real life. That’s where human judgment wins every time.

The right mindset is simple. Use AI to reveal possibilities, not dictate outcomes. Let it point out things you might want to listen to more closely, then decide with your ears and your gut. When the tools and your instincts agree, you’re probably on the right path. When they don’t, art gets the final vote.

Building a Reference Track Habit

The real power of reference tracks doesn’t show up in one song or one mixing session. It shows up over time. Repetition is where the learning happens. Every time you load a reference and compare it to your mix, you’re training your ears, whether you realize it or not.

That’s why reference tracks should be part of every mix you do. At least one, and ideally two or three that live in the same musical world as your song. You’re not using them to copy choices or chase someone else’s sound. You’re using them to learn what balance, tone, and impact actually feel like in finished music.

As you repeat this process, patterns start to jump out. You’ll notice that your vocals are usually a little too quiet, or your low end tends to creep up over time, or your mixes get dull when you overwork them. Those realizations are huge, because they stick with you from one project to the next.

Eventually, something clicks. You start mixing faster because you’re not guessing as much. You second-guess less because your ears have context. You trust your decisions because they’re based on real comparisons, not hope. That’s the real win with reference tracks. They don’t just help one mix sound better. They make you a better mixer over time.

Final Thoughts: Listening Is the Skill

Mixing has never really been about plugins. It’s about listening. Plugins are just tools that react to what you hear. Reference tracks train your listening faster and more effectively than almost anything else because they give your ears constant real-world context.

They don’t replace practice, and they don’t do the work for you. They speed the learning curve up. Instead of guessing what “good” sounds like, you’re hearing it in real time and comparing it directly to your own work. That kind of feedback is immediate and honest.

If you want your mixes to translate outside your room, hit with more impact, and actually feel professional, you have to stop mixing in isolation. Put your song next to finished records and listen without ego. Let the comparison show you what’s working and what isn’t. That’s not failure. That’s how growth happens.

This is how engineers learn. It’s how records improve. And it’s how you level up without waiting for permission, approval, or another plugin sale. When you’re ready, we can build a step-by-step reference workflow designed specifically for indie artists working in home studios, from rough mix all the way to final master.

Google	Spotify	Deezer	Breaker
Pocket Cast	Radio Public	Stitcher	TuneIn
IHeart Radio	Mixcloud	PlayerFM	Amazon
Jiosaavn	Gaana	Vurbl	Audius
Reason.Fm

Find our Podcasts on these outlets

Buy Us a Cup of Coffee!

Join the movement in supporting Making a Scene, the premier independent resource for both emerging musicians and the dedicated fans who champion them.

We showcase this vibrant community that celebrates the raw talent and creative spirit driving the music industry forward. From insightful articles and in-depth interviews to exclusive content and insider tips, Making a Scene empowers artists to thrive and fans to discover their next favorite sound.

Together, let’s amplify the voices of independent musicians and forge unforgettable connections through the power of music

You can donate directly through Paypal!

Subscribe to Our Newsletter

Order the New Book From Making a Scene

Breaking Chains – Navigating the Decentralized Music Industry

Breaking Chains is a groundbreaking guide for independent musicians ready to take control of their careers in the rapidly evolving world of decentralized music. From blockchain-powered royalties to NFTs, DAOs, and smart contracts, this book breaks down complex Web3 concepts into practical strategies that help artists earn more, connect directly with fans, and retain creative freedom. With real-world examples, platform recommendations, and step-by-step guidance, it empowers musicians to bypass traditional gatekeepers and build sustainable careers on their own terms.

More than just a tech manual, Breaking Chains explores the bigger picture—how decentralization can rebuild the music industry’s middle class, strengthen local economies, and transform fans into stakeholders in an artist’s journey. Whether you’re an emerging musician, a veteran indie artist, or a curious fan of the next music revolution, this book is your roadmap to the future of fair, transparent, and community-driven music.

Get your Limited Edition Signed and Numbered (Only 50 copies Available)  Free Shipping Included