Bounce Check: How to A/B Test Your Mix Versions in TrackScore

What is A/B Testing Your Mix?

If you've spent any time mixing, you already A/B reference instinctively — toggling a bypass on your EQ to hear the difference, switching between two compressor settings, soloing a bus against your reference track. It's one of the most reliable ways to make decisions in the studio: compare two versions and pick the one that works. (New to track analysis? Start there for the fundamentals.)

TrackScore™ takes that same workflow and applies it to your finished bounce. Upload a new version of your track and Bounce Check shows exactly what changed across every score, metric, and frequency band. What makes this different from any other analysis tool: Klaus™ remembers your last session. He knows what he told you to fix, checks whether you did it, and categorizes every issue as resolved, improved, unchanged, or regressed. No more juggling two browser tabs trying to recall whether v2 actually improved that muddy low end or just shifted the problem somewhere else. You get a quantified before-and-after with an AI engineer who has context on your track's history.

How Bounce Check Works

The workflow is designed to slot into your existing production cycle without adding friction. Here's the step-by-step:

1. Analyze your track (v1) — Upload your current bounce to TrackScore. You'll get a full analysis: Hit Potential score, 6 category scores, mix metrics, frequency breakdown, and Klaus feedback with specific issues and targets.
2. Go back to your DAW — Work through the Klaus feedback. If he flagged mud buildup around 200–400Hz, cut there (see our frequency balance guide for technique). If your integrated loudness landed at -11.2 LUFS and your genre target is -8 to -6 LUFS, address that on your master bus (our LUFS guide covers targets by genre). Focus on the highest-impact issues first.
3. Bounce your new version — Export from your DAW as WAV or MP3, same format as before. This is your v2.
4. Open your v1 analysis — Navigate to your existing analysis in the dashboard and click “Upload Bounce Check.” Select whether your new bounce is a pre-master or master.
5. Review your v2 results — Every score and metric now shows a delta indicator: how much it changed from v1. Green means improvement toward your genre ideal, red means regression, gray means no meaningful change.
6. Check the Feedback tab — Klaus provides a comparative diagnosis referencing your v1 issues, plus a Next Bounce roadmap — 3 to 5 prioritized action items with specific dB targets for your next session.
7. Repeat — Your v2 becomes the new baseline. When you bounce v3, it compares against v2. This creates a linear chain — v1 → v2 → v3 and beyond — so you can track your progress across an entire mix session or even across multiple days.

Each Bounce Check costs 1 credit, the same as a standard analysis. The entire process takes about a minute per version. Most producers see meaningful score improvement after 2–3 iterations.

What You'll See

Bounce Check doesn't just tell you things changed — it shows you exactly how much and in what direction.

Score Deltas

All 6 category scores — Frequency Balance, Dynamics, Stereo Width, Mix Quality, Danceability, and Structure — display +N or -N badges next to the current score. Green badges mean you moved closer to your genre ideal. Red badges indicate regression. Gray means the change was within the noise floor (less than 1 point). Your overall Hit Potential score shows the net effect of all changes combined.

Mix Metric Deltas

Seven individual metrics — integrated LUFS, short-term LUFS, dynamic range, crest factor, stereo width, true peak, and clipping — each show their v1 → v2 shift. The color coding here is genre-aware: if your LUFS went up by +1.5 dB but you're now overshooting your genre target, that delta shows as red even though the number went “up.” It's not about simple direction — it's about proximity to where your mix should be.

Frequency Band Shifts

The 7-band frequency breakdown (sub-bass, bass, low-mids, mids, high-mids, presence, brilliance) shows how each band moved relative to the genre-ideal profile. If you cut 3 dB in the 200–500Hz low-mids to reduce muddiness, you'll see exactly how much closer that band is to the target — and whether the cut created any new imbalances in adjacent bands.

Klaus Remembers Your Last Session

This is where Bounce Check goes beyond raw numbers. Most analysis tools give you a fresh scorecard every time — zero context, zero memory. Klaus is different. He remembers exactly what he told you last time and writes comparative feedback: “In your previous analysis, I flagged mud buildup around 200–400Hz — that's resolved now. Your low-mid energy dropped from +4.2 dB above ideal to +0.8 dB, which is within range.” He then provides a Next Bounce roadmap: 3–5 prioritized action items ordered by expected score impact, with specific dB targets and frequency ranges so you know exactly what to address in your next session.

Best Ways to Use Bounce Check

Bounce Check is flexible enough to fit several production workflows. Here are three patterns that get the most out of it.

1. Iterating on a Pre-Master

This is the most common use case. You're deep in a mix session, working through EQ, compression, and spatial decisions. Bounce your pre-master, run an analysis, read the Klaus feedback, go fix the top-priority items, bounce again, and upload a Bounce Check. Each cycle tightens the mix. You'll often find that fixing one issue (cutting low-mid mud) improves other scores too (dynamics, mix quality) because the problems were masking each other. Two or three iterations usually gets you to a clean pre-master ready for the mastering chain.

2. Pre-Master vs. Mastered Comparison

Upload your pre-master as v1, then upload the mastered version as v2 (selecting “master” as the bounce type). The deltas reveal exactly what the mastering chain did to your track — and whether it helped or hurt. Did the limiter push your LUFS from -12.4 to -7.1 but crush your dynamic range from 9.3 dB to 4.1 dB? The deltas make the tradeoff visible. This is particularly useful if you're using automated mastering services and want to verify they're actually improving your track rather than just making it louder.

3. Multi-Session Progress Tracking

Some tracks develop over multiple sessions — you finish a mix on Tuesday, sleep on it, come back Thursday with fresh ears and make changes. Bounce Check's linear chain (v1 → v2 → v3) gives you a version history of your mix decisions. You can see whether Thursday's changes actually improved the track or whether you were chasing your tail. It also helps you identify patterns in your mixing — if you consistently fix low-end issues but introduce high-mid harshness, that's a monitoring issue worth investigating.

How It's Powered

Behind the scenes, Bounce Check feeds your previous analysis context into Klaus™. Klaus categorizes every issue from your v1 analysis as resolved, improved, unchanged, or regressed — then generates the Next Bounce roadmap ordered by expected score impact. The analysis pipeline is the same zero-storage architecture used for standard analyses: your audio is processed entirely in memory, scored across all dimensions, and the bytes are garbage collected. No audio is ever stored on disk or in the cloud.

Each Bounce Check costs 1 credit. If you signed up with the free credit bonus, your first analysis or Bounce Check is on the house. Credit packs start at $2.99 for a single credit, with volume pricing available through subscriptions.

Frequently Asked Questions