A quick tip that I wanted to share with all of you is about taking breaks and coming back to a project with fresh ears and a fresh perspective. I know this sounds cliche and fairly simple but believe it or not I have made the mistake of not taking breaks and I have learned that not giving your ears a break can cause you to make critical errors/mistakes.
Sometimes when I am working on a project (for example separating multiple voices), and I continously begin working on it constantly nonstop without taking a break, I find myself making critical errors without realizing it (at first) until the damage is done. For example, when I am listening to individual overtones over long periods of time (trying to decipher which bits and pieces belongs where) I start getting used to artifacts/oddities and what ends up happening is that what sounds wrong starts sounding okay and those artifacts/oddities start sounding normal to me. When I take a break and come back to a project with fresh ears and a fresh perspective, I find myself to be much more efficient at solving problems and I hear problems better on first playback.
The reason why I am sharing this top now is because I am re-listening to old projects I have done and didnt realize some of the errors that were in there because I constantly replayed the audio over-and-over again without giving my ears a break and what ended up happening is that I started getting used to hearing artifacts/oddities (things that sounded out of place) without realizing it. I find that when I take breaks and come back to a project, I can spot and observe artifacts/oddities much more efficiently (especially on first playback) and I am able to react to oddities and things that sound out of place much more effectively. Before when I didn’t take breaks and went non-stop, I became tone-deaf to oddities and artifacts and what sounded wrong started sounding normal and it was almost as if I became blind (in the ears sort-of-speak) to major errors.
Hope this helps.