what ear do you listen through more when you mixing/mastering?

what ear do you listen through more when you mixing/mastering?

  • Total voters
    38
i think its pretty necessary to listen through both ears..

i dont know, the whole stereo image thingy? unless its a mono recording, i'd say it pretty important to listne thru both.
 
both really, but in the instance that i hear something strange happening only in the right, i turn towards it while i work it out. but if something strange is happening in the left, i usually don’t bother to turn towards it.
so i guess i favor my left a little.

but when i eq i often pan things back to center (temporarly), eq'ing something hard panned is just f'in wierd to me.
 
giraffe said:
but when i eq i often pan things back to center (temporarly), eq'ing something hard panned is just f'in wierd to me.
Click to expand...
Likewise. But when I have double tracked guitar I leave both panned and route their outputs to a stereo channel with an EQ on it.

Eck
 
Both I hope!!

This reminds me of something I think about a lot....
I have high frequency loss in my right ear. I do NOT try to compensate by favoring my left ear when mixing, instead trusting the overall hearing of my two ears together - flaws and all. I make mixes that sound good to me and my two ears, and I don't fret.

People seem to like these mixes, and thing I often wonder is; what do they sound like to people with undamaged hearing? It's like wondering if your idea of the color Red is different than mine.
 
Agree. Somehow listening through both ears, even though they're not the exact same response, makes it easier to pick things in the sound, for me anyway. I guess because there's more info coming into the brainbox, and because that's how we hear reality every day.

I have hearing loss simply because of my age. It's sobering to look at the graphs and see how much of the mids to highs one loses over time, although the graphs only refer to threshold hearing and not at moderate or high levels so maybe there's some uncertainty as to their reliability above threshold.

But I think there is more going on too. As my hearing has deteriorated, ever so slowly, maybe I've got used to the world sounding like that and used to say good representative recordings sounding as they do, even though it's different from what they sounded to me 20 years ago. And so I guess I mix and master with that contemporary sound as my point of reference. So there is still a point of comparison.

Tim
 
Voted both but after thinking about it, Left. I have hearing damage and in the Right it crackles if exposed to loud noises. And my desk kind of makes me sit left of center so I face my left monitor (which I use to mix in mono).

But when I'm critically listening to something, I'll use both ears. My right ear seems to be more sensitive to higher frequencies, just a bit. Probably because of the stupid hihats off to my left and my stupidity as a youth not to wear earplugs for so long.
 
If the music really sucks, I use headphones with a cutoff cable. My clients think I am really concentrating, but I really can't hear a thing.
 
MCI2424 said:
If the music really sucks, I use headphones with a cutoff cable. My clients think I am really concentrating, but I really can't hear a thing.
Click to expand...
LOL, that sounds like the studio cousin of the old "ignore the client by pretending to talk to someone on a dead phone line" trick :D.

G.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top