  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.

Human-Computer Interaction;Artificial Intelligence;Audio and Speech Processing