I unbury this because I think it’s important.
There’s my music before I began to use reference tracks, and my music after.
Basically it means that you bypass a lot of mistakes, you have information on how a balanced set of frequencies with sound like and look like, in your spectrum analyzer.
Plus, it gives you essential information on the fact that your production, your mix and your mastering absolutely sucks, then you improve
I use a reference track, and sometimes two or three on the late stage of my production time, then on all my mixing process, and obviously for my “mastering” stage, which is just leveling, and boosting/cutting slightly at +/-1db.