Questions for working pros
You have paying clients. The questions get harder, not easier.
For producers, mixing engineers and small-studio owners who get paid for it.
What to ask before you start. How to stop the revisions. The client who wants it louder. The number everyone quotes and few can explain. These are the questions working producers, mixing engineers and small-studio owners ask each other on public forums, counted, and answered with what we have ruled.
The answers here are rules this studio works by and can show you, not advice. Each one ends with how we know, and the rulebook is one button away.
What should I ask the client before I start?
Everything that decides what “done” means, before a note is recorded: what the record needs, how it will be heard, who plays, and what each task costs. The engineers in the threads who complained about endless revisions mostly traced them to one thing: nobody had defined done at the start.
ABA makes that first conversation a milestone of its own, Milestone 0, with its own close: each task and its hours at the rate card, in front of the client, signed before Milestone 1 opens.
How we know: the ABA page; the whole process, gate by gate, in Produce the Record. Asked 6 times directly, and 13 more times from the other side, as vague notes, rejected roughs and clients who could not picture the result (sources below).
How many free revisions, and how do I stop the mix loop?
The loop is not caused by revisions. It is caused by a finish line nobody drew. When the targets are agreed before the work starts and each stage is signed at its close, a revision is a measured distance from a known target, not an argument.
That is what the milestone gates are: a signature and a reconciled number at the close of each stage, and the next stage does not open until the last one is signed.
How we know: Produce the Record and the rulebook. Asked 7 times (sources below).
The client wants it as loud as the commercial reference. How do I settle it?
Take the level out of the argument. Play the two versions at the same loudness, blind, and let the client pick. The louder mix usually wins a comparison; at matched loudness it has to win on the mix.
ABA Compare does exactly that, in a browser, with the audio staying on the computer.
How we know: the Compare page, and rulebook statement S17. Asked 6 times as “the client wants it louder” and twice as “how do I prove louder isn’t better” (sources below).
What loudness should I master to for streaming?
We do not publish a target number, and we would rather say why than pick one. The services adjust playback loudness, the practice keeps changing, and a number printed here would be quoted back long after it stopped being true.
What we do publish: AudioVibes measures integrated loudness and true peak to the published standards, and shows them next to a genre range that is a declared rule of thumb, not a measurement. Know your number, then decide.
How we know: What the score is, and what it isn’t separates the measurement from the opinion. Asked 6 times by pros, 4 by home producers and 7 by beginners (sources below).
How do I protect the work until I’m paid?
Get paid by the stage, not at the end. A production that closes each milestone with a signature and a reconciled bill does not leave a large unpaid balance sitting on the last delivery, and does not bill the client for work that was not agreed.
How we know: the milestone gates in Produce the Record and on the ABA page. Asked 7 times as deposits and holding files, and 3 as the band that stopped paying (sources below).
Mastering?
What is each plugin on your master actually doing?
Three versions of the same mix, measured the same way and picked blind: the ABA Master Test, ten steps with the four free tools.
Not you?
The other three sets of questions.
Where the questions came from
Gathered from public forums, not written by us.
On 9 October 2026, four AI scout agents read public recording and parenting forums and collected the questions people had actually typed, grouped them by meaning and counted them. No usernames and no quotes were kept. Reddit and two other large sites refused the scouts, so the count leans on older forums and is a guide, not a measure.
A question that is not here yet has not been answered with something we can back up. It is added when it can be.