A moment of sheer genius

[cominginsecond]

I've recently moved, and in the process of moving, I had to disconnect my stereo speakers. A few days later, after I made very sure to wire my studio monitors to my amp correctly, I burned a disc of a mix so that I could test it on my home stereo. It sounded awful. There was no low end whatsoever. I went for days wondering what happened to the beautiful mixes I was hearing in my studio, and why they were so drastically different from what I was hearing from my stereo when it dawned on me: maybe I had the speakers wired up with the polarities reversed, and their signals were out of phase with each other. So I checked, and it was worse than I thought. I had wired the negative for both the left and the right into the left speaker, and the positive for both the left and the right wired into right speaker. I don't know whether it was a phase problem that I had encountered or what, but as soon as I wired everything up, my mixes sounded like I thought they would. I did spend a week wondering what in the hell was the matter with my ears though.

So, to sum it up, when you're listening to your test mixes, make sure your stereo speakers are wired up right. I spent a week thinking my ears were on strike.

 

[Chris Fallen]

Here are a few more tips for the newbies, too:

1. Remember to turn on your monitors, the power button is your friend
2. Make sure you've recorded something to listen to first
3. Just because it's music and it's on your computer, doesn't mean you made it.



Christopher

 

[dachay2tnr]

2. Make sure you've recorded something to listen to first

Actually I've heard some bands that might be better off skipping this step. In some cases, silence IS golden

 

[Creepy]

I remember once going into a little location setup a guy who worked at a music store setup in their back room so his band could record a demo. He worked his butt off on his mixes, but he just couldn't seem to place the bass very well. I came in a listened and noticed right away the all too familiar jumbled, swirling sound of an out of phase monitor. Checked the wiring, and sure enough, one was out of phase. He tracked and mixed his whole demo CD that way!

In spite of all that, his mixes sounded almost pretty good on in phase monitors! He compensated pretty well really.

I am a Creep!