FALKEN said:
Glen,
are you saying that you could trust your ear, such that you could come in every day, and mix at a consistent volume.
No, what I'm saying is that I can trust my ear to mix at a consistant
quality.
I'm not sure which way you mean "mix at a consistant volume", but if you mean mix with my monitors playing at a consistant volume, then no, of course I don't, and neither do most others, we all ride that volume control to some degree while mixing.
If, on the other hand, by that you mean mix so that all my mixes come out the same volume, then I'd have to say that I don't even try. I mix to the song, not to an arbitrary standard of volume. The only time I worry about matching relative volumes of the mixes is if I'm self-mastering my mixes and I want some consistancy in apparent volume from track to track on a CD compliation. But even then that's a job for the ear; different songs of different sonic densities will register entirely different RMS levels when played back at complimentary volumes.
Now, that last point is indeed something that Katz more or less addresses with his K-metering system. He acknowledges the point that differing songs with differing dynamic ranges and sonic densities can - for lack of a better term - play tricks on RMS levels and metering.
But the idea that I'll (or anyone else) is going to over-compress their mix because they are monitoring at too low of a volume is, to me IMHO, both selling the engineer short, and a misrepresenatation of how many engineer actually use differing monitoring volumes to their advantage. Personally, when I'm worried about or working on the dynamics of a track, I'm not doing that at low volume; it just doesn't make sense to do that. If you go back and read those quotes from Owsinski's book that I quoted earlier, for example, you'll see that each of those five engineers use the different monitor volume levels for different purposes or steps in the mixing process. Put another way, they don't make mistakes like setting dynamics at low volume, but rather they use high volume and low volume to be able to properly focus on different parts of the mix and work on them accordingly.
And like I alluded to in the last post, the performance of one's ears changes from day to day. Some interpret that as meaning that the ears cannot be trusted. I interpret that as meaning that the gear has to adjust to the ears. For example, I have a live gig to work tonight. I also have some unrelated audio to work at my desk tomorrow morning. Now I can guarantee you that tomorrow morning my ears will not be as sensitive as they would if I had tonight off. Am I going to just accept that and leave my monitors at some specified volume based only upon some formula or am I going to adjust them until they sound right to my ears? I'm going to adjust them.
On a similar vein, when I work at home I'm working in a less-than-perfectly controlled environment, like everyone else's house is. Simple changes in humidity by just 10% can noticably affect the sound and performance of our monitors. In quality studio control rooms this is not so much an issue, but for many of our houses (including mine), swings in humidity of 10% or more can be common, especially if the central air dehumidifier is not adjusted properly. Too much dehumidification and we have raspy vocalists and static discharges when we touch our consoles; not enough and we get humidity swings with the weather. With those humidity swings we get performace swings from out monitors (the more humid it is, the more mass the drivers have to push.) Shall I trust some static number to tell me where my volume control should be set or should I adjust for the environment? Again, I'm going to throw the numbers out and adjust them.
I didn't intend to "deride" it as eyes versus ears, it's just that's how Benny made it sound when he said to use the meters and the ears, but you can't trust the ears. EDIT: hee hee, OK, Ben, I'll let you slide for being a couple of sheets into the wind on a Friday night
If this numeric method works for someone, than who am I to tell them to stop? I'm nobody, that's who
. I'm just saying that I personally don't *understand* the need for it. It seems like a whole lot of extra work to go through for no real good reason to me.
I see no relation between consistant volume and quality mixing. And the day that I can't trust my ears is the day I gotta find another line of work.
IMHO YMMV TGIS
G.
Or hook your monitors up to one of those bass shakers, and use your butt to feel the mix 
