VK Icons: Bob Clearmountain

Bob Clearmountain is a mixing engineer’s mixing engineer. Starting out as a staff engineer at Mediasound and Power Station studios in 1970s New York, Clearmountain cut his teeth working with acts like Kool & the Gang, Chic, and Bruce Springsteen. By the 1980s, he was being hired exclusively for his mixing talents by the likes of David Bowie, Roxy Music, and The Rolling Stones, and eventually became the first mixer to receive a percentage of royalties. He was also an early adopter of 5.1 surround sound, mixing countless records in the format before switching to Dolby Atmos—all on his trusty SSL 4072 G+ console. 

After tragically losing his home and Mix This! studio in the 2025 Southern California Wildfires, Clearmountain managed to rebuild with the help of friends and peers in the community, later returning that goodwill by mixing the FireAid benefit concert for disaster relief. Before the grand opening party for his new studio, we spoke to the iconic mixer about the arc of his career, his stream-of-consciousness mixing philosophy, the pros and cons of hardware and software, and the future of Mix This!

When you started out, it was not common for an engineer to specialize exclusively in mixing. How did that eventually become the focus of your career?

There's a few different parts to that answer. First of all, it sort of just happened. It's not something that I tried to do. Once the automation on the SSL got good, I started to really enjoy the mixing part. I was on staff at the Power Station in New York, and people started requesting me to mix things. There was this one guy, in 1980 or ‘81, who actually flew from California. I said, “You must have other business here,” and he goes, “Oh no, I just came here just to mix with you.” I was kind of surprised.

My manager at the time was a guy named Dan Crew, and at some point, he realized that I was getting a lot of people coming in just asking me to mix records. He said, “Look, I could get you a point for mixing.” I said, “No, you can't. No engineer's gotten a point for just mixing a record. That's crazy.” And sure enough, I was the first one to get points. Then, of course, everybody else followed along, which is great. I have a lot of friends who were really happy about that.

The other thing was that I was starting to realize that I didn't really love producing that much. The part of the session that I liked was doing the rough mix at the end of the day. I'd go, “Okay, how about if I do a nice rough mix of what we've done?” And people would say, “Oh no, that's all right. You don't have to do that.” But that was my favorite thing!

What exactly did you like about mixing more than recording or producing?

Well, first of all, producing is just a pain in the ass. I think I wasn't very good at it. I've worked with people like Don Was and Tony Berg, who are really good at it and know how to talk to people and get them to do a really great performance just by knowing the right things to say. I could sort of do that a little bit, but I'm uncomfortable with telling anybody what to do. Tell me what to do. So that was one thing. 

Mixing, on the other hand, is like doing a puzzle—especially if it's something I haven't heard before. I’ll get a multitrack and push the faders up and think, “Okay, what am I going to do with this? How am I going to make this work?” It’s like opening a jigsaw puzzle and trying to figure out where all these pieces go.

How did you learn to mix? Did you have any mentors, or were there any particular records that inspired you?

I just sort of picked it up from various people. In the early days, I worked at a studio called Mediasound, starting in ‘72. There was a guy there named Jeffrey Lesser who was very good, and I used to watch what he did. And then there was Tony Bongiovi, who eventually opened Power Station. I used to just watch his hands when he'd mix and watch the things that he would reach for and listen for. Tony was a really good mixer, and he just knew what the ingredients of a hit record were. He would ride the little drum fills, and whenever there was a melodic hook or something like that, he would feature it.

I'd listen to a lot of music, too. I grew up listening to Hendrix, The Beatles, The Stones, and The Who. Hendrix's records were a big influence on me. I would sit there with a pair of speakers at the head of my bed and think, “Okay, what's going on? Jimi's an amazing guitar player and songwriter and singer, but I bet he's not doing all the stuff that's going on in these records.” There are things being panned, and there's tape flanging and all these interesting effects. So I look at the liner notes and here's this guy's name, Eddie Kramer. “Who's that guy? I want to be that guy.”

You mentioned watching Tony's hands, and ever since then, the console has been central to your process. What do you prefer about that hands-on workflow, compared to mixing in the box?

Well, first of all, it's more immediate. You have an equalizer for the vocal and an equalizer for the guitar, so you just reach for stuff and you're not having to open a plug-in for everything. I lay out the console in a particular fashion so I can work really quickly because I know where everything is. And the SSL—I've been working on basically the same console since 1980—I just know it so well. I know what it sounds like, and I don't have to look at the EQ; I just turn the knob, and I know what it's going to do. And it’s fun. 

Mixing should be fun!

It should be, and I feel bad for people who think of it as a burden and a pain. Although I'm glad they do, because then they come to me!

You’re also known for mixing many records and reissues in 5.1 surround. How did you get into that, and what was the learning curve like?

I blame my wife, Betty. Being the head of a technology company, she always wants me to be on the cutting edge. She said, “You should be mixing 5.1,” and I'm like, “Really? You’ve got to be kidding me. A lot of people don't even get the two stereo speakers in phase, much less six of 'em.” But then, I woke up in the middle of the night one night and figured out how I could do it on the SSL. I'm pretty married to the SSL bus compressor, and I figured out a way to expand it to 5.1. 

Luckily, the SSL G+ has eight extra patchable VCAs, and they're the same VCAs that the bus compressor uses. So, I just took the detection voltage out of the bus compressor and slaved a group of VCAs to it. Plus, it had this Bluestone mod that gave me eight extra aux sends, so that helped a lot. It just happened that the console was suited for it, almost by accident. 

When I mixed Avalon originally, the Roxy Music album, I remember wishing I had more speakers. The way that record was produced, it was such a wide palette of sound. I imagined things being outside of the stereo, but I couldn't do that at the time. When 5.1 came around, I went to see Roxy Music when they played in town, and I said, “Look, we’ve got to do 5.1.” And then, when Atmos came, we redid it again. Now, I like to play that as an example of how this record should have been mixed in the first place—and I know, because I'm the one who mixed it in the first place.

What was the transition to Dolby Atmos like for you?

Moving to Atmos wasn't that big of a deal because I was used to things being around me, so it was just more places to put things. The first thing I did in Atmos was The Band’s fourth album, Cahoots. They asked if I could do an Atmos mix, and I set my room up for it. But the next thing was an album for Joe Bonamassa called Time Clocks, and they only wanted stereo. Kevin Shirley, the producer, had heard of Atmos but didn't know anything about it. So I did it anyway, and after I played it for him, he immediately set up his studio with an Atmos system. 

It’s incredible how it turns heads. I’ll do a stereo mix, and people are only expecting that, and then I hit the button on my Apogee Symphony controller. All of a sudden, they're hearing it in Atmos, and they go, “Whoa, what the fuck is that?”

How did you set up your SSL for Atmos mixing? It sounds like even 5.1 was a stretch.

Similar to the newer Neves, there's a small fader on each channel that you can use in different modes. You can have them as returns or put them as a send between the big fader and the routing buses. I just put them all at zero, so the fader is feeding a group of buses that are my Atmos Bed, plus four extras that are for objects. There are actually eight, but the height speakers are four stationary objects, then I'll have four more if I want something to move around, which is pretty rare. Once in a while, there'll be one or two things that will move, like a synthesizer or some weird, interesting effect. 

The stereo mix is still coming off the pan pots on the console, so the small fader is a trim that compensates between the two mixes. If you're panning on the routing buses and you want to go between the left front and the center speaker, you have to hit the pan button, which drops the level by 3 dB because of the pan curve, so then you have to sort of compensate for that. The last eight channels are stereo returns, so I have a stereo for the front, the sides, and the rear; a stereo for the front height, and stereo for the rear height, and then that folds down into the stereo mix. It's a little arcane, but it works. 

Do you have any particular philosophy or approach to mixing?

I've got to call it “stream of consciousness.” I'll just push the faders up and start with whatever hits me at the moment. Sometimes I'll start with a vocal, sometimes I'll start with the guitars. A lot of people always start with the drums, and I know that's a pretty common thing to do, but I'll rarely do that. To me, it's all about the song. The most important thing is that the song comes through. 

I usually listen to the lyrics and try to get a good idea of what was in the artist's mind when they wrote or recorded the song, and then bring out the best of that in whatever way I can. Sometimes, I'll ask the artist what was in their mind when they wrote it, and sometimes it's obvious. Sometimes, I just like to come up with my own idea of what the song's about.

How do you approach a new mix? Do you like to start from scratch every time, or do you prefer to build off of a rough mix like Andrew Scheps often does?

Usually, there'll be a rough mix so I can get some idea of what they had in mind as far as the arrangement and what's important. I'll listen to it, but I won't start from their in-the-box mix. I'll just go back to get rid of most of their plug-ins. I usually tell people, “If you have any effects that are really critical to the sound, then just print it,” so I don't have to try to get the right plug-in and the right settings and everything like that. But if not, then I'll just go back to however it was recorded and follow the rough mixes as much as possible, but try to make it better and turn it into something more interesting.

You’re obviously an analog-first kind of guy, but you’ve adapted to a hybrid setup. What is your relationship to software and plug-ins, and how much of your work happens in the box versus out of the box these days?

For the mixing part of it, I use the automation on the console because it’s so much better than anything that exists nowadays. I'm talking about the SSL G Series automation, and that's such a big part of what I do.

However, I was actually one of the first people to use Pro Tools when it was a beta thing. Back in the ‘90s, Peter Gotcher from DigiDesign said to me, “We're working on this thing called ProEdit and ProDeck, and you can have it.” I thought, “Man, now this is the shit.” Sound Designer was a pain in the ass, but this was cool because I could do an edit in a few seconds. I said, “Look, you’ve just got to get it all into one program instead of having to shift between ProEdit and ProDeck,” and that's what they did. I mixed into Pro Tools right away because I could do all the versions—the vocal up, the vocal down—and put it all in with timecode so that if I had to do an edit, it would edit all the versions.

Now, I have my assistant set up the sessions because it's just sort of boring and tedious to me. Staring at a computer makes me a little crazy, but I just love the console. It's just a lot more fun for me. I try to mix in the box, and it gives me a headache. I just want to take the computer and throw it out the window because I'm really not good at it. I let my assistant do most of the editing, but I’ll tune vocals and stuff like that—that is, if any of my clients ever sang out of tune, which of course they don't. [laughs] 

Most of my reverbs and effects are in the box, but I use them as outboard gear, so I'm sending off aux sends on the desk into my multitrack session. I have a whole template of reverbs in there. I use Altiverb and a few other reverbs, as well as my own plug-ins like Clearmountain’s Domain, where all the delays and things happen.

I also use some of the other Apogee plug-ins, like the Opto Compressor—I use that quite a bit for backing vocals and things like that—and the Pultec EQs, because my studio burned down. I had five Pultec EQP-1A3s, so now I'm depending more on the ones in the box. Luckily, the Apogee ones sound every bit as good as the real ones. I use some other manufacturers’ plug-ins as well. Soundtoys make some really cool things, and I practically depend on some of the iZotope RX stuff for cleaning things up.

Losing your studio and home like that must have been such a tragic loss. You've been able to rebuild and replace some of the gear, but what do you feel was lost with that particular space?

There was a particular kind of vibe about that place; it was somewhat magical. It was in the basement of the house, but it wasn't really a basement because it was in a canyon, so it was open to the pool area with these big glass doors. There was just something about the feel of it that was wonderful. It's funny; so many people have reminded me of that and said, “Man, you lost something so special and unique,” and yeah, I think I did. It sounded good, and it was just really comfortable. 

We had so many parties, and there were always people there. My daughter would bring her friends over and play whatever the latest thing was that I had mixed in Atmos, and people loved it. My wife would bring clients over for dinner all the time, and I’d play stuff for them. Plus, it was right downstairs from where I lived, which made it really convenient.

Not long after the fire, you began rebuilding Mix This! in a building behind the Apogee headquarters, right?

It's across the alley in the back of the building. It's got an apartment on the top, which was actually the engineering department for a while. The bottom floor was used for testing and burning in gear, and then there was another little room that they used for doing videos and stuff. There's another little house behind that that we also bought for guests and rented out.

When the fires happened, we moved into the apartment upstairs. The room downstairs had been set up as an Atmos listening room with a Genelec speaker system by a friend of ours named Jonathan Morrison, but he got sick for a while, so he hadn't been in there long. I needed a place to work right away, so SSL loaned me their System T digital console, and I just stuck it in there and started mixing right away. I mixed John Fogerty's album, the Atmos version of the Let's Dance album, and a bunch of Bryan Ferry stuff on this digital thing, which sounded good, but it wasn't as fun.

Today, you’re back to mixing with your beloved SSL and outboard gear. How did that happen?

It’s amazing what happened, actually. Chris Lord-Alge, who is a good friend and mixer, called me a couple of days after the fires and said, “Look, I heard you lost your home and studio. We’ve got to get you up and running again.” He tells me he has a spare SSL that he bought for parts, and his brother Tom also has one that's pretty much the same footprint as what I had, which is a 72-input with this one factory mod that very few of them had. He said, “Look, we can combine them to get what you had, and it's yours.” Tom just charged me what he paid for it. He didn’t want to make any money off of it, which was great. 

Plus, so many people have gone to mixing in the box, and they have extra outboard gear that they don't use anymore, so people donated all this gear. My friend Rafa Sardina had an 1178, which is a piece of gear that I really like. Chris gave me a couple of [Lexicon] PCM70s, and Keith Urban gave me a couple of Distressors. I barely know Keith Urban—I mixed one thing for him years ago, but he was hanging out with Chris, and Chris said, “What do you got? Let's help him out.” Bill Putnam Jr. from Universal Audio, a competitor of Apogee, came up to me at the NAMM show and said, “Anything you need, I can get you.” He gave me two 1176s, brand new. I was floored.

That’s amazing. It sounds like the community really came together to help you out.

There are little plaques next to the gear thanking the people who donated, plus there's a plaque on the console that has the names of the people who helped with it. A lot of people helped with the compressors. We had to redo the Atmos analog compressors, and that took a fair amount of work. I want to thank Vintage King, too. You guys have been great for me and very helpful in everything. I originally bought the Pultecs from Vintage King, and a few other things, although some of them are gone now. 

Now that you’re up and running again, what does this new chapter mean for you?

It's really business as usual for me. I have a bunch of clients, and luckily, they seem to keep coming back, so I’ll just keep doing what I do. I just really enjoy it, and I'm going to do it until I'm either totally deaf or dead. Someday, somebody's going to find me with my head down on the console with a big smile on my face, and that'll be it. No one should feel bad about it. [laughs]

Watch our Make Your Mark video below to learn more about Bob Clearmountain.

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