I agree performance is essential. Still, maybe I should rephrase my question.

There’s the old idea that getting good at anything requires 10 000 hours of practice. The new take on that is that what is really required is 10 000 hours of deliberate practice with feedback.

Making tracks for 10 000 hours without guidance might lead to some interesting places for sure. But I think there really are some key things to figure out to get to the next level, some do’s and don’ts, some important concepts to grasp, some things to focus on, practice on, learn to get right every time.

That’s what I was hoping for here. The problem with just googling away is that there’s a lot of misinformation and contrarian stuff posted for attention, or quick fix ”tricks”, or quick fix plugins that might in theory ”fix” mixes, but I prefer to learn why audio behaves the way it does.

By ”hidden” I just meant the things that are harder to discover, the stuff that don’t have dedicated knobs etc.

Panning for example is not hidden in that sense, it’s very prominent in a DAW or on mixers, and one of the first things someone might start to experiment with (not always with the best results).