A big part of their formula was competition and central control. When a production was recorded (the multitrack recording done), any engineer could mix the production. The engineers would mix in 4 hour periods, and complete about 3 mixes. These mixes were submitted to the Disc Recording Department. The Disc Recording engineers would cut an acetate of the mix (a hand-cut record), and pass the acetates and tapes onto the Quality Control Department. Quality Control would listen only to the acetates and pick out the best mix or mixes. Quality Control would then have the engineer or engineer who did the best mixes, do another set of mixes. Q.C. would send instructions on the changes to be made to the original mix.

The producer was out of the loop. The producer wasn't present when the mix or re-mix was done. If a producer could also mix, the producer could submit mixes of the production. The producer's mixes were given no preference over other engineer's mix.

This whole process resulted in a tune being mixed 20 times before a final master was chosen. The idea was to get the last ounce of sound out of the production.

Until mid-1964, the master multitrack tapes were 3 track tapes. Track 1 had the rhythm instruments (drums, bass guitar, and piano). Track 2 had the "Sweetening" instruments (strings & horns). Track 3 had the vocals. The multitrack master was mixed down to a mono master tape.

When the engineer wanted to make an instrument louder or fuller, he reached to the equalizer, because the instruments were recorded onto one track. The engineer had equalizers, compressors and reverberation chambers to use to make the mix better (or even different) than the last mix plus only three channel faders for the main tracks!