Effective music mixing requires technical and creative finesse, but clear communication with the client is crucial. The mixing engineer must grasp the client's expectations, and preferences, and collaborate to achieve the desired sound. The tacit agreement for the desired sound of the mix is often established using guides like reference songs and demo mixes exchanged between the artist and the engineer and sometimes verbalised using semantic terms. This paper presents the findings of a two-phased exploratory study aimed at understanding how professional mixing engineers interact with clients and use their feedback to guide the mixing process. For phase one, semi-structured interviews were conducted with five mixing engineers with the aim of gathering insights about their communication strategies, creative processes, and decision-making criteria. Based on the inferences from these interviews, an online questionnaire was designed and administered to a larger group of 22 mixing engineers during the second phase. The results of this study shed light on the importance of collaboration, empathy, and intention in the mixing process, and can inform the development of smart multi-track mixing systems that better support these practices. By highlighting the significance of these findings, this paper contributes to the growing body of research on the collaborative nature of music production and provides actionable recommendations for the design and implementation of innovative mixing tools.

翻译：有效的音乐混音需要技术与创意技巧，但与客户的清晰沟通至关重要。混音工程师必须理解客户的期望与偏好，并协作达成理想音效。这种关于混音目标音效的默契通常通过参考歌曲以及艺术家与工程师之间交换的演示混音等指南建立，有时也借助语义术语进行口头表达。本文呈现了一项两阶段探索性研究的结果，旨在理解专业混音工程师如何与客户互动，并利用其反馈指导混音过程。第一阶段对五位混音工程师进行了半结构化访谈，旨在收集关于其沟通策略、创作流程及决策标准的洞见。基于这些访谈的推论，第二阶段设计并实施了一份面向22位混音工程师的在线问卷。研究结果揭示了混音过程中协作、共情与意图的重要性，并为开发能更好支持这些实践的智能多轨混音系统提供了参考。通过强调这些发现的深远意义，本文为关于音乐制作协作本质的不断增长的研究成果做出了贡献，并为创新混音工具的设计与实施提供了具有可操作性的建议。