Publisher’s note: Team Mixing Light is thrilled to welcome our newest contributor, Sam Lowe! Sam is an accomplished sound engineer with a career spanning over two decades in the film, television, and music industry. His extensive experience includes film score mixing, music editing, dialogue editing, and re-recording mixing.
Please welcome Sam in the comments below. You can read Sam’s full bio and get more links for him on his Author page. As always, the first Insight from our Contributors is never behind the paywall – so feel free to share it!
How audio and video creatives speak the same language – in very different contexts
Sam Lowe releases his first Mixing Light Insight, exploring the parallels between the terminology used in audio and video post-production. Sam draws on his experience working alongside his wife (Mixing Light’s Kali Bateman) in a grading suite to highlight how shared language can enhance collaboration between sound and picture teams.
The parallels between communicating vision and sound
I’m excited to join Mixing Light and start talking about sound! In this Insight, you’ll discover how terms like “bright,” “dark,” “texture,” and “compression” are used in both audio and video post-production, often with strikingly similar meanings. Understanding these shared concepts, you’ll learn to communicate more effectively with your sound team, ensuring your creative vision aligns across disciplines.
For instance, terms like “presence” and “punch” in audio mirror visual descriptors like “contrast” and “pop.” This Insight will help you grasp these connections, making it easier to articulate your needs in a mixed post-production environment.
“When we talk about brightness and darkness with audio, we’re usually referring to how much high-frequency content it has—whether it’s bright with a lot of treble or lacking in that high-frequency content, making it feel muddy or dark. It’s very similar to how you’d approach picture, where you might use references to dial in what looks right.”
— Sam Lowe, Professional Sound Mixer
Unpacking Audio Terminology
In this discussion, I show how “bright” and “dark” in audio relate to high and low-frequency content, respectively. You’ll learn how to assess whether a sound is too harsh or too dull, using techniques like referencing to calibrate your ears.
For example, in an orchestral cue by Ack Kinmonth, we’ll boost high frequencies to make it sound harsh, then cut them to create a dull, blurry effect – manipulating audio to fit the emotional tone of a scene. We can ‘darken’ a music cue to let dialogue stand out.
We also dive deeper into practical applications – how to use EQ to carve out space in a music mix, reducing “masking.” This technique ensures clarity without overpowering the mix, a concept akin to white balancing in video to avoid unwanted color tonality.
Compression and Texture in Sound
Compression in audio, much like in video, evens out dynamics by reducing the loudest parts and boosting the quietest. However, you must be careful against over-compression, which can lead to an unnatural “pumping” effect, often heard in aggressive TV commercial mixes.
You’ll learn how seasoned re-recording mixers prefer volume automation for dialogue leveling, preserving a voice’s natural tone. This approach mirrors video grading, where subtle adjustments maintain authenticity over heavy-handed processing.
Texture in audio, like film grain in video, adds character and coherence. I try to illustrate how subtle background noise under dialogue—whether from a studio or crafted by a sound effects editor—grounds a scene in its world. Tools like saturators and exciters can add harmonic grit to dialogue, giving it a forward presence in the mix, similar to how grain unifies a visual sequence.
Key takeaways from this Insight
By the end of this Insight, you should be able to:
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Questions or comments? Leave a comment!
This is my first dance with Mixing Light! I’m looking for Insight ideas related to audio engineering; what do you want me to tackle? What confuses you about audio post, or what sound problems do you have trouble dealing with? Premium members, let me know in the comments!
– Sam
