Mixing when do you decide its done

you never finish, you just stop mixing 8)

Yeah, I listen to something I thought sounded great and want to tweak...but as far as getting paid for it, I've decided to be happy when the client is happy.

I struggle with this too. I look at every project as a learning experience, to make the next one better than the last. Each project gets my best effort in a certain amount of time. It's like a snapshot of my skill set at a particular time. Stuff I'm doing now is better than stuff I was working on last year, and next year will be better than today, etc. That's my rationale, at least.

Yep. I struggle with this as well. My mentor wayyy back in the day also said the same thing as Clearmountain which seems like solid enough advice to me.
Sometimes I gotta walk away for a bit (if I can) which can seriously help. Or work on something else, which using an otb/hybrid set up is kind of a pain. Still if its not gelling its not. I can always find something else to work on.

I used to be that way . I got to a point when I know its done and that any more tweaks could screw things up . Its like building a tower with a deck of cards...it gets higher and higher.....eventually you stand back and say don't touch it !! Or it might fall part .

Theres a video I was watching with chris Lord Alge , he said he mixes (after all the track clean up ) in 3 hours , he believes in mixing fast and don't second guess . 

It's never finished. Never

There are all sorts of things that complicate the process and the finishing of it. When I was a recording artist, other people handled it, other than a suggestion or two from me. I would have offered more of my input, but it wasn't welcomed at that time. I did gain insight though from working in top studios with top engineers, so experience helps a lot when trying to finish mixes.

I began writing radio and TV commercials after my band fell apart, I bought a 4 track, went straight into the Teac for my first demo, no board, and got the job. Those early jobs weren't great art, so basically, they mixed themselves, I made sure nothing was too loud, so it sounded balanced and you could hear the vocal and voice over clearly. As I got into heavier jobs, mixing was done at major studios, much the same as a record. My job was to communicate to the engineer what I wanted, and I saw it as an apprenticeship to eventually becoming a record producer.

At that time I put together my own home studio to do smaller jobs. I had all the usual suspects we call vintage now. U-87's, Lexicon reverbs and delays, DBX 160's, Yamaha soundboard,, NS-10's and much more. Mixing got harder because I was now doing everything, tracking and mixing, but still, it was basically simple. Recording in analogue was straightforward, just don't go in too hot, balance it all, with the vocal clean and clear, add a little reverb, done. Mixing the 2 track master wasn't very hard because the mix was done, and you just recorded at a good level. Tape did much of the work for you.

Those mixes were done when I had to deliver them on a deadline. Something had to be at radio stations or the agency by a certain time and date, and as long as there wasn't something crazy wrong, I felt OK, and never looked back at a mix, not ever.

After a long time away from the music business and recording at home, I only began using a DAW in 2012. I had none of the experience folks had who'd learned over time as the change to digital happened. All of a sudden, mixing seemed much more difficult, plug-ins made effects easy, but some how the recordings just weren't easily balanced anymore. It became much harder to get a vocal to sit right, bass to be full, not boomy. So, if I take a look at this from a distance, I could say honestly mixes are more difficult because it was now digital.

That of course is an oversimplification, but it contains a lot of truth. So, two things make mixing harder now, first, as I try to create true art, I strive to get a vibe that usually could only be gotten by a few musicians playing together in a room, which is nearly impossible. But, I got pretty good vibes recording at home when I was doing commercials, and they were done the same way I work now, building tracks, so you can do it. Still, equaling the vibe of something like a classic Stones album, takes a lot more than building tracks at home.

Second, and bear with me here, this is my recent epiphany, and I reserve the right to be wrong later, but... I think 75% of the issues that have bugged me when mixing are from the digital converters. When Johnken played some tracks recently with his D-box in the mix, that thing sounded right. Every time I hear high end converters on tracks, they sound right. I asked Nathaniel Kunkel about the signal chain on Lyle Lovette's "Road to Ensenada", a benchmark of mine, and he said, he said it was George Massenberg custom converters.

The mix rarely feels finished at home, partly because I think digital converters basically suck, and tracks just don't seem glued properly.

But the answer to the question is, the mix isn't done until you publish it, then you might change it later, but that must stand on its own.