Mixdown Matters - Even In Lofi!

So I've been just casually checking out my Twitter feed today, when this happened:

The discussion below this tweet was also interesting - people stating that making the plate pretty won't make the food taste better, that a really good song will make listeners forgive shitty mixdown etc. While the second thing is actually kinda true, the first is just really bad metaphor.

Good mixdown allows you to go louder

I bet you all hate when you're listening to your favorite lofi playlist and suddenly there's a track that's so quiet you have to reach for the volume controls and turn it up a bit. Usually, there are just two reasons why they are so quiet - either the producer just didn't even realize it (or care¨about it) or he did in fact care, but failed to make the track loud enough to match the levels the rest of competition is sitting at. Maybe you know it yourself, too - no matter how hard you limit that beat, it's still not anywhere near those big cats' big, full and punchy sound. 

To be honest, I could dedicate a whole other blog post to this very topic (and I probably will, eventually), but the general secret is, in fact, a clean mixdown! By getting rid of all the unwanted or unimportant frequencies cluttering your mix (and ESPECIALLY the low frequencies) you'll get yourself more headroom, allowing you to push the loudness of your track way higher without getting it sounding distorted, muddy and lifeless.