A new audio mixing paradigm: evaluation from professional practitioners' perspectives

Commercial implications of the COVID-19 pandemic have challenged the creative industries to transform service delivery from inter-personal to online operations. Existing online music and audio production collaboration platforms and cloud storage cannot replicate intrinsic in-studio interactions between an audio engineer and clients in a professional post-production audio mixing environment. We developed the DAW Collaboration Framework that transitions audio practitioners to a real-time, internet-linked mixing environment. This paper documents our evaluation of the framework's performance through real-world practitioners' perspectives, having participated in professional audio mixing scenarios. Our evaluation attests to the facilitation of a new audio mixing paradigm, where remote participants work synchronously in a collaborative, professional, DAW-based mixing environment, similar to traditional in-studio settings. Every participant monitors high-resolution audio files while accessing complete synchronised mixing control of the shared DAW project. Identified benefits include time savings, increased productivity, and engaging, collaborative audio mixing. This paradigm empowers remote participants to contribute to audio mixing projects, promoting new global reach and business opportunities for audio engineers. We identify impediments to widespread adoption of this new paradigm, thereby posing future research directions. Ultimately, in a pandemic-impacted era of disruptions and travel restrictions, our framework presents a viable alternative to in-person, studio-based mixing.