best place to listen to a mix, after it leaves the studio.

[audio_leak]

hey all,

i was wondering, where are some good places people use, to test their mix out straight after it leaves the studio.?

youve got to know your songs gonna sound good everywhere right?

i use these...

-of course my comp speakers, good quality logitech, i bought them cause literally all of my friends that play my songs, have logitech speakers.
so it seems natural to play them there first. if its sounds good on here, im good for the next test

-old computer, if i mess with the plug on my speakers i can make only the left or right speaker play, sometimes i do this, just incase they play my track through a busted stereo.

- next stop is my old dads kenwood sound system he gave me. its probably 15 or 20 years old, but was top of the line back in its day.
its the kinds with the CD player, tape deck, amp, graphic EQ all in different units. has an old turntable on top too.
really this is the place where i will mostly judge the mix from, along with the next test

-the car. always a good test, the only place my songs get played more then on the internet, or on someones computer is in a car. so this is a really important one. im fond of massivly heavy basslines, so really this is an essential test, with a good car sound system and subwoofer.

-2 smaller portable CD players. i usually just give these a check through, because if its sounded good on everything else. its most likely going to sound good on this unit.

-last test for me is my iPod touch, and my cheap mp3 player, on a few different sets of headphones, including the ipod headphones, some cheapies and all my studio sets.

i like to pace the room like a mad man hearing the sound from different angles each time i hear it back, you get the effect of maybe what it would be like at a party by doing this.

its not like these are in a set order or anything but generally over a few days of making a song ill have heard it multiple times in all these places.

what would you all say gives you the best idea of how its going to sound for everyone??

 

[gt2008]

I was told to check "at least" three sources. My mixing headphones and my studio monitors I only count as "1" source. Second, because my music is mainly for me, is my car. It's not an upgraded sound-system.....it's an Accord's factory system, but if mainstream can sound crisp on it than so should I be able to.

Third is either: IPod, Computer Stream through "regular" (not mixing) headphones, or home stereo.

Three has indeed usually been enough, but I do make tweaks after each one it seems. A 4th or 5th probably wouldn't hurt.

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

I'm of the school that if you need to check your mix on multiple sources, there's either something seriously wrong with your mixing system and/or your ears, and that should be an indication that it at those sources where you need work and not on testing for every listening condition on the planet.

At the same time, I understand that your ear may not yet be there because you're just starting out; that's cool. Use what you need to now as your classroom, but what you need to do is pay attention to just what changes and why you need to make to your mixes to get them to translate to the real world, and adjust your listening conditions and ear expectations in the studio so that you learn to translate properly - or better yet, reduce the need for any translation at all, after which checking on nine million different systems is a waste of time.

If you can get things so that they sound good on your Dad's Kenwood system, you should be just fine to go. If after that, they still sound bad on other sources, then the reality is they did NOT sound good on the Kenwood, and your ears just couldn't pick that up yet because you haven't trained then yet.

G.

 

[Waltz Mastering]

I think it's always good to get a reality check.

What really matters is how things sound in the real world and the only way to test for that is to have a listen in the real world.

For people starting out it's more important to get a gauge of this as it will usually reveal short comings in your room and listening habit's.

 

[RAMI]

I'm trying to understand what good checking on 3,000 different sytems is supposed to accomplish. If you have it sounding as good as you can in your studio monitoring system, then what happens when you hear it too boomy in your car stereo??? Do you decrease the boom??/ But now it doesn't sound as good on the ghetto blaster, so you put the boom back in???

Sounds like you'd be just chasing your own tail. This makes a good case for getting a great studio monitoring system and then trusting it and your ears.

 

[audio_leak]

its not really that i would change the mix based on listening to all of these, just i like to get an idea of what it sounds like on a variety of sound systems, because in reality your song could be played on anything.

if something sticks out more then usual, or the bass nearly blows a sub up somewhere, obviously i make changes.

but all the actual mixing goes on through monitors and my head phones.

and yes the kenwood is a excellent test system, when i finish mixing for someone we usually go into my lounge room and have a listen on the kenwood, their always happy.

would you actually go as far saying i SHOULDNT do it like that though?
& just stick to listening on the kenwood?
if its not going to help me "train my ear" its probably not a good habit to be getting into right?

its an interesting perspective for me to have a think about in the future.

 

[gt2008]

Usually the tweaks that I make as a result of listening in the car or elsewhere are minor sounding on my in-studio equipment (can barely notice the diff) but improve the car's listening experience pretty good. I don't see what it hurts, I guess, because I'm the end user and it makes me like it better.

When listening to "mainstream" stuff in the car, it sounds "right" when I keep the bass and treble at the 0 setting, and so that's where I guage it from in my Accord usually. Until I get immaculate gear, it works

 

[adamvelvetu]

I'm of the school that if you need to check your mix on multiple sources, there's either something seriously wrong with your mixing system and/or your ears, and that should be an indication that it at those sources where you need work and not on testing for every listening condition on the planet.

G.

i fall into the same category...i bought some good monitors and can rely on those to give me a good idea of what frequency ranges my mixes are too verbose in. they've also helped me to get vastly improved masters of the mixes.

 

[philboyd studge]

I suppose the biggest test of a mix I make is in the car at highway speeds and reference it to other recordings and the radio. I'm not mixing as hot these days in order to keep more dynamics but still expect the tracks to come in at about 75% of broadcast levels. I'll also use the tiny computer speakers a bit.

 

[Yonce N Mild]

I'm of the school that if you need to check your mix on multiple sources, there's either something seriously wrong with your mixing system and/or your ears, and that should be an indication that it at those sources where you need work and not on testing for every listening condition on the planet.

At the same time, I understand that your ear may not yet be there because you're just starting out; that's cool. Use what you need to now as your classroom, but what you need to do is pay attention to just what changes and why you need to make to your mixes to get them to translate to the real world, and adjust your listening conditions and ear expectations in the studio so that you learn to translate properly - or better yet, reduce the need for any translation at all, after which checking on nine million different systems is a waste of time.

If you can get things so that they sound good on your Dad's Kenwood system, you should be just fine to go. If after that, they still sound bad on other sources, then the reality is they did NOT sound good on the Kenwood, and your ears just couldn't pick that up yet because you haven't trained then yet.

G.

I think the point of listening on different systems is to learn your room and monitoring chain. Once I got my boxy little room at home set up with decent acoustic treatment it still wasn't perfect. If I put enough treatment in the room to make it right I wouldn't be able to get in the door! So I had to learn how my mixes translate. I learned that what sounded good in my studio sounded bass heavy on other systems and vocals that were nice and clear in the studio seemed buried in the mix on other systems. I also learned that there was a lot of mid-range harshness that I heard on my monitors that didn't show elsewhere so I was wasting a bunch of time trying to fix a problem in the mix that was actually a problem with my room. Once I got this stuff figured out I didn't have to reference other systems as much. I still would put it on a CD and listen in my car as well as on my ipod. Just because I wanted to listen to it away from the studio not because I had to.

Then my bro bought a new house that has a 20 x 30 room in the basement so we moved all my stuff there and started treating that room. Now I gotta learn all over again. I haven't really got a handle on that room yet so I'll be listening to my mixes everywhere until I figure it out. One thing for sure what I'm hearing in that big room definitely translates better than it did in that little boxy room.

Even if you know your room pretty well it never hurts to listen on a pair of crappy speakers or earbuds since that's what a good portion of your audience will be listening on.

 

[Waltz Mastering]

I'm trying to understand what good checking on 3,000 different sytems is supposed to accomplish. If you have it sounding as good as you can in your studio monitoring system, then what happens when you hear it too boomy in your car stereo??? Do you decrease the boom??/ But now it doesn't sound as good on the ghetto blaster, so you put the boom back in???

Sounds like you'd be just chasing your own tail.

I think it's a matter of sometimes just checking on one or two system's that you know and trust.

If your sound is not up to par, you'll know immediately, and then you have work to do.

I would have to say though that if your room ain't right, that's really when your chasing your tail.

I rarely check on outside sources these days, but I am always open to fine tuning things in the room/set-up to get better translation, but on any given day even in a really good room, it can be very easy to fool yourself. Being over confident of ones abilities no matter how tight your room is, is an easy trap to fall into and one that can sometimes come back to bite you.

Anyone who claims they can pull off 100% accuracy may not being completely honest, but the longer you've been at it, the easier it is, and the less need there is to get a reality check.

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Just for the record, I never meant to suggest that one should expect to get everything right on the first pass out of the mixing room and that they should never check it in the real world.

What I'm saying is that when one DOES need to check on a smorgasbord of systems - and yes, many folks do need to do that, and therefore *should* do that (you gotta do what you gotta do ) - that that is an indication that something in the process needs to change, not an indication of how things are "supposed to" be done (for lack of a better term offhand.)

The key point I was trying to make is that one should not (IMHO) consider checking on multiple systems as the end process, but rather as a learning stage or learning technique for learning what to change in one's head and in the studio so that they don't have to waste so much time and dump so many CD-Rs into the local landfill checking their mix on every kind of system in the world the next time around.

Specifically addressing leak's question re the Kenwood, the idea, leak, is to eventually get it to the point that when you know that it sounds like XYZ on the Kenwood, that it does indeed sound OK and will translate to the rest of the real world just fine. And then the goal is to work on your mix environment and your ears so that you can with pretty fair consistency get it to sound like XYZ coming out of the studio.

I'm not saying it has to be 100% first-take consistency 24/7. Nor am I saying that one should not regularly double-check themselves and their situation. Hell it's not like I never listen to my mixes after the work is done. it can't be helped; I usually at the very least have to listen to it again when I deliver it to the client (and I sure don't want to be surprised at that time ).

But there comes a point where the idea of over-listening to the mix "in the real world" become just a resource-wasting crutch preventing the ears from learning to not need so much double-, triple-, and quadruple-checking.

That point is usually when one stops actively thinking about what they are hearing and just passively follows it instead.

G.

 

[philboyd studge]

Just for the record, I never meant to suggest that one should expect to get everything right on the first pass out of the mixing room and that they should never check it in the real world.

What I'm saying is that when one DOES need to check on a smorgasbord of systems - and yes, many folks do need to do that, and therefore *should* do that (you gotta do what you gotta do ) - that that is an indication that something in the process needs to change, not an indication of how things are "supposed to" be done (for lack of a better term offhand.)

The key point I was trying to make is that one should not (IMHO) consider checking on multiple systems as the end process, but rather as a learning stage or learning technique for learning what to change in one's head and in the studio so that they don't have to waste so much time and dump so many CD-Rs into the local landfill checking their mix on every kind of system in the world the next time around.

Specifically addressing leak's question re the Kenwood, the idea, leak, is to eventually get it to the point that when you know that it sounds like XYZ on the Kenwood, that it does indeed sound OK and will translate to the rest of the real world just fine. And then the goal is to work on your mix environment and your ears so that you can with pretty fair consistency get it to sound like XYZ coming out of the studio.

I'm not saying it has to be 100% first-take consistency 24/7. Nor am I saying that one should not regularly double-check themselves and their situation. Hell it's not like I never listen to my mixes after the work is done. it can't be helped; I usually at the very least have to listen to it again when I deliver it to the client (and I sure don't want to be surprised at that time ).

But there comes a point where the idea of over-listening to the mix "in the real world" become just a resource-wasting crutch preventing the ears from learning to not need so much double-, triple-, and quadruple-checking.

That point is usually when one stops actively thinking about what they are hearing and just passively follows it instead.

G.

I recall back in the '70's at Brian Ahern's Enactron Truck studio that the final audio check of all mixes was through a single 4" speaker on the console. More often than not, things were remixed. Mixes were also checked using home stero speakers (Advents) in another room. I've sort of followed that mentality ever since for every studio set I've run into has its own sound to some degree.

 

[Joza]

I suppose the biggest test of a mix I make is in the car at highway speeds and reference it to other recordings and the radio. I'm not mixing as hot these days in order to keep more dynamics but still expect the tracks to come in at about 75% of broadcast levels. I'll also use the tiny computer speakers a bit.

Doesn't sound too safe to focus on mix while driving a car with fast speed..!

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

I recall back in the '70's at Brian Ahern's Enactron Truck studio that the final audio check of all mixes was through a single 4" speaker on the console. More often than not, things were remixed. Mixes were also checked using home stero speakers (Advents) in another room. I've sort of followed that mentality ever since for every studio set I've run into has its own sound to some degree.

A late friend of mine used to actually mix on Advent home speakers. He had a pair of Advent 5012Ws (12" 2-ways) topped by a pair of Advent 2002s, driven by - of all coincidences - a Kenwood receiver, that was fed from the monitor outs of an old Soundcraft or Tascam mixer or deck (depending on when you walked into his room). His mixes out of the gate were first-class all the way for three reasons: he had great musical and analytical ears (an intricate love for everything from Beethoven to Harrison combined with perfect pitch), he knew his speakers (and room), and he knew what the mix would yield.

This was before the days of home digital DAWs, and long before the InterNet, so the only widely-usable/transportable "test" medium by chrome cassette tape. We'd play his mixes on home stereos, car stereos and boom boxes. Rarely did this guy have to cut two tapes to get it right.

G.

 

[DrewPeterson7]

The first stereo I always listen to a mixdown in is my car. Why? Because probably 70% of my music listening occurs there, listening to my iPod while I drive, so it's the stereo I'm the most familiar with.

 

[philboyd studge]

A late friend of mine used to actually mix on Advent home speakers. He had a pair of Advent 5012Ws (12" 2-ways) topped by a pair of Advent 2002s, driven by - of all coincidences - a Kenwood receiver, that was fed from the monitor outs of an old Soundcraft or Tascam mixer or deck (depending on when you walked into his room). His mixes out of the gate were first-class all the way for three reasons: he had great musical and analytical ears (an intricate love for everything from Beethoven to Harrison combined with perfect pitch), he knew his speakers (and room), and he knew what the mix would yield.

This was before the days of home digital DAWs, and long before the InterNet, so the only widely-usable/transportable "test" medium by chrome cassette tape. We'd play his mixes on home stereos, car stereos and boom boxes. Rarely did this guy have to cut two tapes to get it right.

G.

Those Avents were really flat and were a great reference...I've still got a pair out in the garage and would be using them with the entertainment center if they didn't take up so much space. Back in those days I think the Advents gave a more accurate representation than the 3 way JBL's every small studio was using then.

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Those Avents were really flat and were a great reference...I've still got a pair out in the garage and would be using them with the entertainment center if they didn't take up so much space. Back in those days I think the Advents gave a more accurate representation than the 3 way JBL's every small studio was using then.

Over the few years I've been on this forum I've brought Tony and his Advents up a couple of times, and every time I do I remember just how great it was to mix in the far field with (relatively) large loudspeakers way across the room. I used to use some old Utah 12" 3-ways set up in about a 8-10' triangle with my position when I stared out, and the "feel" of the stereo space was luxurious.

As much as I do love my current nearfields and have gotten used to them over the past decade or so, the "sonic memory" of what it sounded like the "old fashioned" way makes me long to go back to it. It almost makes me want to drop nearfields altogether if/when I can afford to redo my room.

I almost wonder how much the current trend of "in our face" mixes is influenced by the fact that nearfields are literally in our faces to begin with.

G.

 

[philboyd studge]

Over the few years I've been on this forum I've brought Tony and his Advents up a couple of times, and every time I do I remember just how great it was to mix in the far field with (relatively) large loudspeakers way across the room. I used to use some old Utah 12" 3-ways set up in about a 8-10' triangle with my position when I stared out, and the "feel" of the stereo space was luxurious.

As much as I do love my current nearfields and have gotten used to them over the past decade or so, the "sonic memory" of what it sounded like the "old fashioned" way makes me long to go back to it. It almost makes me want to drop nearfields altogether if/when I can afford to redo my room.

I almost wonder how much the current trend of "in our face" mixes is influenced by the fact that nearfields are literally in our faces to begin with.

G.

If nothing else, the old 12" 3 way monitors were more fun to listen to. I don't know if the varied quality of those mixes I did back then were due to the bigger room or the parties the bigger rooms allowed.

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

If nothing else, the old 12" 3 way monitors were more fun to listen to. I don't know if the varied quality of those mixes I did back then were due to the bigger room or the parties the bigger rooms allowed.

LOL, I know that the wax from the candles we always lit at those parties dripping all over the vinyl records and homebrew tapes did nothing to help the sound of the audio .

I wish I still had some of the stuff we did back in those days, just to see what it sounded like now. But any tapes we made back then are long since lost, thrown out or rusted away. I'm sure by my standards today that they were probably pretty primitive, both because of my lack of knowledge of technique and tools back then and because the tracking itself probably was rudimetary. But we sure loved it at the time.

G.