Just a few decades ago, putting the words “remote mixing” together would have sounded like advertising “cotton sandpaper.” For most of audio production history, mixers lived in the studio, collaborating with musicians and producers in real time. 

However, as technology has advanced and our world has gone more digital, audio mixing no longer has to be confined to the studio. 

Digital audio workstations were the first to lead the way in this revolution, and now remote collaboration tools are joining the party to make it possible to record, mix, and produce audio from anywhere in the world and with anyone in the world. 

What is remote mixing?

Remote mixing is any audio mixing process that happens when the audio mixer is not physically present with the rest of the creative team during the production process. This has become increasingly common since early 2020 when social distancing measures shut down production studios and forced creative teams to adapt to collaborating from a distance. 

Tools making remote mixing possible

Since demand for remote collaboration tools has skyrocketed, so has innovation in this space. There are more platforms and plugins geared towards making remote audio production a seamless process. We’ve highlighted some of our favorite remote mixing tools that are enabling teams to collaborate across the city or across the world. 

Time to move beyond manually sending Dropbox and WeTransfer files and attempting to listen to the same clip at the same time over Skype. Here are some collaboration tools that will get you closer to feeling like you’re in the same room.

AVID Cloud Collaboration

Initially resistant to the remote collaboration movement, AVID has since embraced the shifting nature of creative work and began arming its creatives with the tools they need to collaborate from a distance. 

If you mix your audio in Pro Tools, AVID Cloud Collaboration is a fantastic native solution to work with your co-collaborators anywhere in the world. It allows for multiple editors to work on the same Pro Tools project remotely, and all changes are automatically saved to the cloud. 

Price: Free (with Pro Tools subscription)