There are two distinct ways in which we as humans perceive sound or mixes; one is in physical sound waves, sound waves are always present even though we don’t think about sound this technical way all the time necessarily, it is just how we normally perceive sound around us. The other is through imaging, this is more spatial, being when we imagine sounds placed in different places between headphones or speakers. These are very different outlooks on sound but ones which we unconsciously listen for and which are very important to consider when mixing. Mixing engineers must use and consider both these modes of perception, and using visual imaging can be especially helpful to view the dynamics present within a track. One way in which we view dynamics of a mix is on a 3D graph which will contain three axes. Within this graph panning, meaning which direction in which the sound lies between left and right speakers is represented by running horizontally along the graph; frequency is represented vertically, this is as we perceive sound of a higher pitch to be higher up and sounds of a lower pitch to be further down within a mix naturally. Lastly, volume will lie along the axis from the back of the graph to the front, which will indicate if the sound is in the forefront or background of the mix. This simply means that a lower volume will have more distance in the mix and a high volume less. Something else that makes visual imaging undeniably useful when mixing is that it can help you to avoid the issue of masking, this is when two or more sounds are lying in the same place between the speakers, masking each other. Being able to have a visual representation of the mix helps to avoid this issue and makes the issue of overcrowding certain areas of your mix much easier to avoid.

Gibson, D (2018) ‘Chapter 2’, in The Art of Mixing. CRC Press Inc.