Serban Ghenea: Biography, Credits and Grammy Record of the Mixer Behind Taylor Swift and The Weeknd

Engineer biography · Serban Ghenea

Serban Ghenea mixed "Shake It Off," "Blinding Lights," "Uptown Funk," "Since U Been Gone" and "Abracadabra," and every song on Taylor Swift's 1989, reputation and Lover. The Recording Academy credits him with 25 Grammys, including a record five Album of the Year wins, yet he almost never gives interviews.

Ghenea has never released a course, a preset pack or a vocal chain, and most claims about his "secret" mix bus are guesswork. What can be checked comes from album credits, his own discography, a 1996 Billboard production chart, the few interviews he has given and a 2025 conversation with his business partner, John Hanes.

Bucharest to Montreal: a guitarist first

Ghenea was born in Bucharest, Romania, and his family moved to Montreal in 1976, when he was six, according to his Concordia University citation and a 2018 Montreal Gazette profile. Reference sites disagree on his birth date, so none is given here.

At Concordia he studied jazz guitar, graduating with a BFA in 1992, and he taught guitar on the side. He told Waves in 2021 that he only got serious about engineering after graduating, during a year in McGill University's graduate sound recording program (a year of study, not a finished degree). Nobody mixes at the top level without being a musician, he has argued, because playing is what teaches you which choices to make. In 2025 Concordia gave him an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts.

1993–1998: Teddy Riley, Future Studios and No Diggity

A chance meeting with Teddy Riley in 1993 led to a job as in-house recording and mix engineer at Riley's studio in Virginia Beach, Virginia, where he stayed until 1998. John Hanes, later his business partner, was hired at about the same time. In a 2025 interview Hanes described the setup: three staff engineers (himself, Ghenea and George Meyers) working 12-hour shifts, often with Riley engineering beside them, on an SSL 4000-series console and two Studer A827 tape machines with Dolby SR.

Billboard's production-credits chart for the No. 1 singles of November 30, 1996, shows that setup behind Blackstreet's "No Diggity": recorded and mixed at Future Studios in Virginia Beach on an SSL 4072 by engineers John Hanes, George Meyers and Serban Ghenea. He has called it his first No. 1; the credit was shared three ways.

He has said the Riley years included work with Michael Jackson, though public credits don't tie that to a specific record. His later Jackson credits are documented: three songs on the posthumous Michael (2010) and new mixes from the Thriller multitracks in 2022.

1998–2003: going freelance and leaving the console

He went freelance in early 1998, and R&B and neo-soul came first. His discography credits him with Jill Scott's debut, Who Is Jill Scott? (2000). Hanes recalls that Ghenea was swamped with Musiq Soulchild and Jill Scott projects for Philadelphia's Touch of Jazz producers when he asked Hanes to join him. Hanes moved from Los Angeles in 2001, and the two worked out of a local studio, Windmark, until 2003.

Those Philadelphia projects also took him off the console. By Hanes's account, the producers wanted to approve mixes in the room, so the pair drove their Pro Tools rigs north in flight cases and used the studio's SSL as little more than a volume knob. When some producers asked for console mixes, Ghenea printed them back into Pro Tools as stems, and the round trip proved pointless. They never mixed on a console again.

Ghenea explained the switch in a mid-2000s Metric Halo user story: he used the company's ChannelStrip plugin on every session, it worked like the SSL channels he was used to, and he thought of it as his console.

2002–2009: Justified, Breakaway and Max Martin

He mixed seven tracks on Justin Timberlake's Justified (2002), including "Like I Love You," "Señorita" and "Rock Your Body"; Jimmy Douglass and Timbaland mixed four, including "Cry Me a River," and Dave Pensado mixed "Never Again." Justified won Best Pop Vocal Album in 2004, his first Grammy. He also mixed five songs on Usher's Confessions (2004) and Ozomatli's Street Signs, which won at both the Grammys and the Latin Grammys in 2005. On Shakira's Fijación Oral Vol. 1, the 2006 Latin Grammy Album of the Year, he is credited among the engineers.

Max Martin productions soon became a constant. He mixed most of Kelly Clarkson's Breakaway (2004), including the Martin and Dr. Luke production "Since U Been Gone," and it won Best Pop Vocal Album in 2006. His discography then adds Britney Spears's "Womanizer" and four more songs from Circus (2008), 14 tracks of Mark Ronson's Version (2007), including "Valerie," and Miley Cyrus's "Party in the U.S.A." (2009).

His agency's archived discography lists "SexyBack," but the credits for FutureSex/LoveSounds (2006) give that mix to Jimmy Douglass and Timbaland; Ghenea's mix on the standard album is "Damn Girl."

2010–2016: Teenage Dream, 1989 and Uptown Funk

From 2010 he became the last stop for many of the biggest pop records. He mixed nine songs on Katy Perry's Teenage Dream (2010), including the title track, "California Gurls" and "E.T.," as well as La Roux's debut, which won Best Electronic/Dance Album in 2011. With Hanes he mixed the hit version of Jessie J's "Price Tag" (Jean-Marie Horvat mixed the acoustic version). Then came Kelly Clarkson's Stronger, Best Pop Vocal Album in 2013, and six songs on Taylor Swift's Red, including "I Knew You Were Trouble" and "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together."

He mixed every song on Swift's 1989 (2014), which won Album of the Year and Best Pop Vocal Album in 2016. That night Record of the Year went to Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars's "Uptown Funk" over two more of his mixes, "Blank Space" and The Weeknd's "Can't Feel My Face." He had mixed "Uptown Funk" at MixStar with Hanes. He also mixed most of Ariana Grande's My Everything (2014), three songs on The Weeknd's Beauty Behind the Madness and two on Adele's 25, which won Album of the Year in 2017. (For the vocal side of those records, see how to sound like The Weeknd and how to sound like Ariana Grande.)

The Max Martin thread

Grammy credits list Martin as a producer on "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together," "Shake It Off," "Blank Space," "Can't Feel My Face" and, much later, Ariana Grande's "yes, and?". When Variety asked Ghenea about "Blinding Lights" in 2020, he credited Martin, its co-producer and co-writer, with the song's magic.

MixStar: the house studio in Virginia Beach

Most of those records were mixed in a house. MixStar Studios, which Ghenea co-owns with Hanes (Mix, 2020), opened in 2003 by Hanes's account. They never record there, so it needed no serious isolation, and clients barely noticed the move beyond invoices arriving under a new name.

The rooms are small. Hanes says he can nearly touch every speaker of his Atmos setup, and that the team has worked on the same ProAc monitors for close to 30 years, keeping spare woofers and tweeters because they push them hard. He sees that consistency as their real advantage: the same room, speakers and plugins year after year.

The division of labor hasn't changed since 2001. Ghenea told Waves it is basically him and Hanes, who preps everything and prints the mix passes and stems after the mix is done. Hanes describes his half as getting each session to sound like the rough mix and leaving every artistic decision to Ghenea. (Sending sessions to a mixer yourself? Use our vocal stem prep checklist.) A typical stereo mix, Hanes told Mix, takes a day to a day and a half, client review included. Recent credits also show Bryce Bordone, and Ghenea's son Alex, a mixer with his own clients, works there too. Billboard reported in 2024 that father and son work independently and weigh in on each other's mixes only informally.

2017–2022: 24K Magic, folklore and the Atmos turn

The 2018 Grammys were his biggest night. Bruno Mars's 24K Magic, which he mixed in full, won Album of the Year, Best R&B Album and Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical, and its title track won Record of the Year. The Weeknd's Starboy, mostly his mixes, took Best Urban Contemporary Album, which made five Grammys in one evening. He told the Gazette the engineering award felt special because it goes to the technical people. The brief for 24K Magic, he said, was a 90s R&B and hip-hop feel with a modern sound, and it sent him back to his roots.

He mixed all of Swift's reputation (2017) and Lover (2019), six songs on Lorde's Melodrama, most of Beck's Colors (Best Alternative Music Album and Best Engineered Album, 2019) and all of Ariana Grande's thank u, next and Positions. Beck's Hyperspace, on which he is among the credited engineers, brought a third Best Engineered Album win in 2021.

On The Weeknd's After Hours (2020) he mixed five songs in stereo, including "Blinding Lights," "In Your Eyes" and "Save Your Tears," while Hanes mixed the Dolby Atmos version at MixStar. Mix reported that Hanes added compact Genelec 8320 speakers (Genelec 8320A at Sweetwater) to his room for a 7.1.4 layout. Ghenea told Mix he keeps tweaking until a mix starts getting worse, then goes back; with Atmos, his main worry is losing the glue of the stereo mix. Variety put him on its 2020 Hitmakers list for "Blinding Lights," a song he described as a bridge between an 80s sound and something new.

For Swift's folklore, Sound On Sound reported, he mixed seven songs, including "betty" and "epiphany," while Jonathan Low, who engineered the album, mixed the rest. Low praised how Ghenea keeps the vocal at the front with clarity and space around it. folklore won Album of the Year in 2021, his third. An Evening with Silk Sonic was another full-album mix, and "Leave the Door Open" won Record of the Year in 2022.

In 2022 Sony's Legacy label credited him with new mixes from the original Thriller masters for its immersive release, and Hanes with the immersive mixes themselves. Hanes says Ghenea matched Bruce Swedien's original mixes as closely as possible to give the Atmos versions a faithful base. In 2021 he had named Thriller as the album he would most like to have mixed. (See also how to sound like Michael Jackson.)

2023–2026: a fifth Album of the Year and MAYHEM

Swift's Midnights won Album of the Year and Best Pop Vocal Album in 2024. That fifth Album of the Year made him, according to Guinness World Records, the most decorated individual in the category's history, breaking a tie at four with Tom Coyne and John Hanes. The 2025 and 2026 winners did not change that. Billboard counted seven nominations for him that year, including three of the eight Record of the Year slots. Father and son also competed: Alex Ghenea's mix of Troye Sivan's "Rush" was up against two of his father's David Guetta mixes in 2024, and Alex's "Got Me Started" faced "yes, and?" in 2025.

The recent run includes the Rolling Stones' Hackney Diamonds (Best Rock Album) and six songs on Sabrina Carpenter's Short n' Sweet, including "Please Please Please" but not "Espresso" (Best Pop Vocal Album; see how to sound like Sabrina Carpenter). He mixed every song on Swift's The Tortured Poets Department and Lady Gaga's MAYHEM, plus ROSÉ and Bruno Mars's "APT." In February 2026, "Abracadabra" won Best Dance Pop Recording, an award that names him as mixer, and MAYHEM won Best Pop Vocal Album. His 2025 and 2026 discography adds Swift's The Life of a Showgirl and "Patient Zero," Carpenter's Man's Best Friend, Bruno Mars's The Romantic and the Rolling Stones' Foreign Tongues.

How Serban Ghenea mixes: what is documented

There is no Ghenea masterclass, so everything below comes from his own interviews or from Hanes.

1. The song decides

Asked by Waves whether he uses a set approach across artists, he was blunt:

“I really have no bag of tricks.”Serban Ghenea, Waves interview, 2021

Each record gets its own treatment by genre, artist and song. His one rule is to make sure the song comes across instead of obsessing over drum sounds: find what in it moves you, then make more of it. The tools change song by song, too.

2. Serve the artist's sound, not your own

He told the Gazette that mixers who chase a signature sound are making a mistake. He tries to help artists, new ones included, find their own sound and imposes nothing, which fits credits that run from Blackstreet to Beck, the Rolling Stones and Sabrina Carpenter.

3. Improve the approved record without breaking it

By the time a song reaches him, he told Billboard in 2024, its direction is set, so the job is knowing what to improve and what not to touch. Every song has a signature element, whether a riff, the feel of the beat, a melody or the sound of the vocal. Part of his routine is checking the previous day's mixes in the car. In a 2020 Recording Academy webinar he added that a technically correct recording can still miss, because the magic is in the feel. Unlimited tracks, he said, let people dodge decisions that the mixer then has to make.

4. In the box, on a channel strip

He has mixed in Pro Tools without a console since the early 2000s, and by his own account Metric Halo ChannelStrip handles his basic channel processing. In 2021 he told Waves he uses a lot of Waves and named the Renaissance Compressor (R-Comp), H-Delay, the Waves de-essers (such as the Waves DeEsser) and Waves' convolution reverbs, though he gave no settings and did not say which reverb. To put those tools to work, see our delay and reverb time calculator, de-essing guide and vocal reverb types explained.

5. The mix bus: one named component, no recipe

The only officially documented bus detail comes from the manufacturer. Metric Halo calls MixHead, a 90s-style tape emulation from Make Believe Studios and Metric Halo, a key component of his stereo mix bus. It ships with his preset of the settings he used most on the original, long-discontinued device, which the company does not name. (For the category, see the best free tape emulation plugins.) Hanes adds that the MixStar master bus keeps changing, because producers send material with processing already printed. In his view it is a starting point rather than a secret, and nothing in it is unavailable to anyone else. Videos claiming to reveal his exact chain are third-party guesses.

6. Stereo first, and keep the glue in Atmos

He mixes in stereo, the version most people hear. In the MELD manual, Hanes writes that the two agreed to respect the approved stereo mix in Atmos. Printing a mix out to stems, beds and objects loses some of its glue, he explains, so he asked Metric Halo and Make Believe Studios for a fix, which became MELD. Ghenea has also stressed respecting Atmos delivery specs, levels included; our LUFS loudness targets page lists the common ones.

Serban Ghenea's gear and plugins on the record

Every entry traces back to his own words, the manufacturer or John Hanes, and the middle column says which. Anything marked as an alternative is not a tool he is documented using. Links are affiliate links.

There are no microphones or preamps here because he mixes rather than tracks, so any "Serban Ghenea vocal chain" online describes someone else's recording chain or is a guess. For a wider view, see the studio gear Grammy engineers actually use.

Serban Ghenea's Grammy record: 25 wins in the Academy's database

The Recording Academy's artist database, checked on October 25, 2026, credits him with 25 Grammy wins. Its summary box says 56 nominations, but its itemized table lists 69 entries: 25 wins and 44 other nominations. The two figures don't reconcile (other engineers' pages show the same mismatch), so the tables below follow the itemized list. He appears 24 times in Album of the Year (five wins) and 19 times in Record of the Year (three wins).

Four of the wins, marked with an asterisk, are awards the record won with him among its mixers. For those, the Academy's category listing names only the artist (for 1989, only the producers), but his artist page still counts them. The other 21 name him directly.

* The category listing names only the artist (for 1989, only the producers); his artist page counts the win. For 2026, the Academy's official nominations list names him on six nominations; the MAYHEM line appears on his artist page.

Older articles give lower counts, such as 14 Grammys in 2018, 18 in 2021, 19 in early 2024 and 23 in 2025, which simply reflect when they were written. Guinness counted 20 wins from 45 nominations in 2024 and said that tied Al Schmitt's record for an engineer/mixer; the Academy's database showed 21 wins after that ceremony.

Latin Grammys, JUNOs and an honorary doctorate

The Latin Recording Academy's database lists three Latin Grammy wins: Best Alternative Music Album for Ozomatli's Street Signs (2005), and Album of the Year and Best Engineered Album for Shakira's Fijación Oral Vol. 1 (2006). Canada's JUNO Awards named him Recording Engineer of the Year in 2021 ("Blinding Lights," "positions"), 2023 ("THAT'S WHAT I WANT," "Unholy") and 2025 ("Please Please Please," "Lose Control"), from seven nominations; in 2026 the award went to Shawn Everett. Concordia's honorary Doctor of Fine Arts followed in 2025.

Serban Ghenea selected discography

Credits follow his official discography (more than 1,500 entries) and the album credits; where the two differ, the narrower figure is used. His site says he had mixed more than 240 No. 1 singles and albums as of January 2026, a self-reported figure that covers all of Billboard's charts. For everything else, see Discogs.

Where his story crosses other engineers we've profiled

• Jean-Marie Horvat: another 1990s Teddy Riley alumnus. Both are credited on The Weeknd's Beauty Behind the Madness, an Album of the Year nominee in 2016 (Horvat mixed "Often"). On Jessie J's "Price Tag," Ghenea and Hanes mixed the hit version and Horvat the acoustic one.
• Jimmy Douglass: both mixed parts of Justified and FutureSex/LoveSounds and share the 2004 and 2007 Album of the Year nominations. Douglass and Timbaland mixed "SexyBack."
• Dave Pensado: mixed "Never Again" on Justified and is credited with Ghenea on its 2004 Album of the Year nomination.
• Tony Maserati: both are among the engineers/mixers on Usher's Confessions, an Album of the Year nominee in 2005.

Interviews and the one video worth watching

There is no long one-on-one video interview with Ghenea. The closest is a Recording Academy Producers & Engineers Wing webinar from May 8, 2020, a 90-minute Zoom panel with Manny Marroquin, Young Guru and Ann Mincieli that the Academy posted on Facebook. Clips of it circulate on YouTube as unattributed re-uploads. The best first-hand video about how he works is this 2025 conversation with John Hanes, published by Make Believe Studios, the company behind MixHead. Hanes covers the Riley years, how MixStar started, their workflow, Thriller and Atmos:

• Montreal Gazette (2018): Montreal, Riley and why mixers shouldn't impose a sound.
• Waves (2021): his background, the song-first approach and the Waves plugins he uses.
• Mix (2020): After Hours in stereo and Atmos, with Hanes.
• Billboard (2024): a joint interview with his son Alex.
• Metric Halo user story (mid-2000s): why ChannelStrip replaced the console.
• Recording Academy P&E Wing (2020): the official summary of the webinar.

Official channels: serbanghenea.com · Instagram @serbangheneamixes · representation through Advanced Alternative Media.

FAQ

Who is Serban Ghenea?

Serban Ghenea is a Romanian-born mix engineer based in Virginia Beach, Virginia, where he co-owns MixStar Studios with John Hanes. He began as Teddy Riley's in-house engineer in 1993, went freelance in 1998 and has mixed hits such as "No Diggity," "Since U Been Gone," "Shake It Off," "Uptown Funk," "Blinding Lights" and "Abracadabra."

How many Grammys has Serban Ghenea won?

According to the Recording Academy's database, he has 25 wins as of October 25, 2026, including five Album of the Year awards (1989, 25, 24K Magic, folklore and Midnights). Its summary box shows 56 nominations, while its itemized list has 69 entries, 25 of them wins. He also has three Latin Grammys and three JUNO Awards.

Where is Serban Ghenea from?

He was born in Bucharest, Romania, and grew up in Montreal from age six. He earned a BFA in jazz guitar at Concordia University in 1992, spent a year in McGill University's graduate sound recording program and moved to Virginia Beach when Teddy Riley hired him in 1993.

What is MixStar Studios?

MixStar Studios is the private studio in Virginia Beach that Ghenea co-owns with John Hanes. The two partnered in 2001 and, by Hanes's account, opened MixStar in a house in 2003. Nothing is recorded there: Ghenea mixes, and Hanes preps sessions, prints passes and stems and mixes Dolby Atmos versions.

Which Taylor Swift albums did Serban Ghenea mix?

Six songs on Red, every song on 1989, reputation and Lover, seven songs on folklore, and Midnights, The Tortured Poets Department and The Life of a Showgirl, plus the 2026 single "Patient Zero." 1989, folklore and Midnights each won Album of the Year.

What plugins does Serban Ghenea use?

He has named few. In the mid-2000s he said he used Metric Halo ChannelStrip on every session, and in 2021 he named Waves R-Comp, H-Delay, the Waves de-essers and Waves' convolution reverbs. Metric Halo says its MixHead plugin is part of his stereo mix bus. He has never published a vocal chain or mix-bus chain.

Who is John Hanes?

John Hanes is a Grammy-winning engineer and Ghenea's business partner. They met as Teddy Riley's staff engineers around 1993 and have worked together since 2001. Hanes preps and prints Ghenea's sessions, mixes Dolby Atmos versions such as The Weeknd's After Hours, and asked Metric Halo and Make Believe Studios to build the MELD plugin.

Does Serban Ghenea give interviews or teach mixing?

Rarely, and he has no course. The main first-person sources are the Montreal Gazette (2018), Waves (2021), Mix and Variety (2020), Billboard (2024) and a 2020 Recording Academy webinar. Videos claiming to reveal his chain or mix bus are third-party reconstructions.

Is Serban Ghenea's vocal chain in the Vocal Chain eBible?

No. He has never published one, and the book does not claim to have it. It does include Chain 011, the tracking chain reported for Katy Perry's Teenage Dream sessions, a record he mixed, along with paid and free plugin versions for rebuilding that chain.

Sources

Recording Academy: Serban Ghenea · 68th Grammy nominations list · Latin Recording Academy · JUNO Awards · Concordia University citation · Guinness World Records · Montreal Gazette (2018) · Waves (2021) · Variety Hitmakers (2020) · Mix (2020) · Billboard (2024) · Billboard, Dec. 7, 1996 · Metric Halo user story · MixHead · MELD manual · Sound On Sound (2021) · Legacy Recordings: Thriller 40 · Recording Academy P&E Wing (2020) · Make Believe Studios: Rick Talks with John Hanes · Qobuz: Price Tag credits · Justified credits · FutureSex/LoveSounds credits · Beauty Behind the Madness credits · folklore credits · Breakaway credits · Official discography · Discogs