The Ears of a mixer

grimtraveller

grimtraveller

If only for a moment.....
I've come to the conclusion that mixing contains an interesting paradox ~ the ability to hear not only with one's own ears, but, simultaneously, through the ears of many imaginary hearers as well.
Does that make sense to anyone ?
 
It does but I don’t care how it sounds to other people. If it sounds good to me, that’s good enough for me. Unless it’s 100% unanimous that I should change something.
 
I have a bit of sensitivity in the upper mids so even commercial releases sound a bit harsh to me on my studio monitors (JBL 8s with sub), though they sound fine on consumer products. In order to have my mixes have a similar eq I have a slight dip in that area of the input to my monitors, that way the end product will be equal-sih.
 
One of the best training grounds for producing or mixing is to do some DJ'ing. There is often a strong correlation between something that sounds good and people getting up and dancing to it (or at least staying on the dancefloor if you've got them up with something else).
 
A good mixing engineer dials things in on their studio monitors, then shops the mix around [playing it on earbuds, car stereo, home theater, bluetooth speakers, etc] before calling it 'done'. How it sounds to one person in their home recording studio is useless if it sounds off or poor everywhere else.

As far as being able to hear for others, I think I generally know a good mix when I hear one. The mix has to be pretty bad for the average Joe/Jane Q Public to notice [I always think back to Metallica's Death Magnetic, and how online fights broke out with people swearing it sounded 'awesome']. So I focus, as described above, on how the playback medium affects the experience versus asking for or assuming 7 billion unwashed opinions.
 
jamesperrett said:
One of the best training grounds for producing or mixing is to do some DJ'ing. There is often a strong correlation between something that sounds good and people getting up and dancing to it (or at least staying on the dancefloor if you've got them up with something else).
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There's truth to this. People may not recognize a poor mix [because they have no training to discern A from B, good from bad], but a good mix can go a long way to earning people's enjoyment. Rap, r&b, and dance music started the ducking craze [large kick drum sound] that also migrated into almost all subsequent heavy metal mixes. Having fat, in your face beats, is an easy recipe to success in certain genres. This isn't the same as 'sounding good', but to the listeners of this music it does. So mix to your audience/genre.
 
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jamesperrett said:
One of the best training grounds for producing or mixing is to do some DJ'ing. There is often a strong correlation between something that sounds good and people getting up and dancing to it (or at least staying on the dancefloor if you've got them up with something else).
Click to expand...
That's great advice if you're mixing dance music. In my experience if a song has a good danceable beat and the mix is heavy on the bass and drums people will get up and dance. I don't create music with dancers in mind so that's not how I do it.
 
grimtraveller said:
I've come to the conclusion that mixing contains an interesting paradox ~ the ability to hear not only with one's own ears, but, simultaneously, through the ears of many imaginary hearers as well.
Does that make sense to anyone ?
Click to expand...
I can't guess what others hear or what they listen on so I use reference tracks that are similar to what I am creating. Once I get in the ballpark I test the mix on several different systems and tweak until it sounds acceptable on all of them. I say acceptable because it is difficult to get a mix that sounds perfect on every system.
 
markmann said:
That's great advice if you're mixing dance music.
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It doesn't just apply to dance music - I used to play all kinds of stuff when I DJ'd. I was amazed when people even danced to Song To The Siren by This Mortal Coil (which is the song I sometimes used to clear the floor at the end of the night).
 
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