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[rankus]

I was thinking of you when I blew the woofer cone out of my KRK V6 the other day William!  (IE: I can't be doing it wrong if WW monitors loud too!)  I like to feel the wind on my face when monitoring too...  But always check at lower volumes...

The louder you go the better the room treatment required though.  Spent a LOT of time tweaking the room.

C Dog:  It does sound like a monitor issue when things aren't translating...  Either the room or the speakers themselves... It made a huge difference when I switched from my old shit boxes to the KRK's

But treat the room first.  Even hanging up some blankets helps a lot. Leave a couple of inches air gap behind.

[rankus]

wwittman wrote on Thu, 15 February 2007 14:57

The secret of a good mix, in my view, isn't in the techniques and trick... it's in being able to tell what you're listening to and then BALANCING everything.

Quoted for emphasis.

There is a big difference between hearing and listening.   Listening is a trick of the mind.. and the mind is a tricky place.

[rankus]

PS: It can be a bitch to get the low end knockin with Reason... Look for some phat kik drum samples to augment them

Shit too many posts!  

[wwittman]

I don't know if there ARE just "tricks" or techniques that automatically will help.

Especially without HEARING anything you've done.

I still wonder... do you send your work out for mastering?

If you're comparing your pre-mastered work to commercial CD's it's not a fair comparison.

I'm not saying I think my mixes SUCK before mastering (at least I HOPE they don't), but they certainly translate better AFTER being mastered.

Plus, a good mastering engineer might be able to tell you exactly what he had to DO to your mixes to make them work.
That alone can be very useful.

[danickstr]

what has been said from a philosophical POV is true, but one good specific tip I have used to mix on many occasions that seems to help a bit is to keep one really crappy speaker on your console top, like a 3" radio shack full-range, and build a little box for it out of plywood.  

don't worry about the specs of the box, this thing is to simulate all the shitty cheap pieces of gear in our world where engineers messed up, which is a lot of them.

then listen to your mixes on it and fiddle with eq's to make your mix more present and less woofy, and see if it negatively affects the mix when you go back to your close range high dollar boxes.

another trick is to use a cassette cd adapter and listen in your car and have an assistant twist eq konbs and faders while you sit in the car, with a life feed out the studio door.

[RickRhino]

join Steely Dan

[redfro]

He said "better" not "sterile"...







(insert smiley of choice here)...

[Samc]

danickstr wrote on Fri, 16 February 2007 05:00

another trick is to use a cassette cd adapter and listen in your car and have an assistant twist eq konbs and faders while you sit in the car, with a life feed out the studio door.

Why spend money to build a good room and buy good monitors when we have "tricks" like these?

Here are two more "tricks".......First you need to learn how to mix, and make sure you can hear what you're mixing.

[Version]

Here's a good video of Scientist building these monitors for his little room that have like 8000 watts or something stupid like that.

http://video.dubroom.org/streams-scientistanddavedizzle.htm

He listens to things loud.

[littlehat]

Actually I have one other tactic that can be revealing to me...

At some point getting levels together I always run my 2mix through a little POS BRinger mixer and one at a time I cut ALL the highs and mids OUT (to see what's happenning in the bottom only), then I cut all the lows and highs (to see what the mids of everything are doing together), then the same with the lows and mids being cut out.

In a rock context, this often leads me to brighten guitars a bit and turn them down, tune up the thwap in the kick to sit at the right freq and level, tune the lowmid cut in the kick, tune the mids in the bass guitar... etc.

Obvoiously, I never print with this, or trust it over other systems, but it is helpful.

[thedoc]

Run, don't walk to a Mastering Engineer.  Be sure that you go to a pro.....

You will learn more from that than you can believe.

[danickstr]

well I am happy to give you another specific trick to help you get your mixes to sound more legit, and it has to do with using the stereo widening effect, which will lower your overall mix level, and then you can boost it back up.  

Thsi again is a quick fix, but will result in a more pro mix.  If your customers can afford a mastering engineer, that is great, but if you are a novice mixer, you are wasting their money by sending in a less than stellar mix.  Practice with twenty mixes using widening (and not), and different eq, etc. and then listen to them at different locations.

For this reason, I would recommend dinking around with it using the quick fixes, until you feel that you know where you are going with the mix before having a pro tweak it.

People that think my advice is less than pro can feel free to offer specific steps, but sweeping generalizations are not helpful.

[Ashermusic]

danickstr wrote on Sat, 17 February 2007 15:03

well I am happy to give you another specific trick to help you get your mixes to sound more legit, and it has to do with using the stereo widening effect, which will lower your overall mix level, and then you can boost it back up.   Thsi again is a quick fix, but will result in a more pro mix.  If your customers can afford a mastering engineer, that is great, but if you are a novice mixer, you are wasting their money by sending in a less than stellar mix.  Practice with twenty mixes using widening (and not), and different eq, etc. and then listen to them at different locations. For this reason, I would recommend dinking around with it using the quick fixes, until you feel that you know where you are going with the mix before having a pro tweak it. People that think my advice is less than pro can feel free to offer specific steps, but sweeping generalizations are not helpful.

Well as a sweeping generalization I would not take advice from a guy who cannot spell Seattle

Seriously though, a mastering engineer makes a huge difference. If the project does not warrant the expense however if you know your speakers well (and it is very helpful to have 2 diffferent sets) and a boombox close by  if it sound good on both sets of speakers and the boombox your mix is probably fine.

[compasspnt]

Sorry, but what exactly are you referring to as a "widening" effect?

[RSettee]

I find that monitoring on a flat response, and then boosted response works wonders, because then you see what might be exaggerated in the mix, especially what might be too boomy, or not full enough. I find that it's then good to have a balance between the two, between the flat and the boosted response...in the boosted response, I usually put the bass to about the 2 to three o'clock range on the knob.

I don't advocate making either your flat or your boosted mixes your main weapon, rather to toggle between the two to find a happy medium. For most stereos that I listen to the mixes back on, I find that anything above the 3 o'clock range on the knob generally tends to be much too muddy on any speakers. It's kind of a bonus and a drawback that there's treble, bass and sometimes midrange knobs, as well as equalization on stereos....because sometimes people turn them all the way up, which ruins the balance and care that the mastering and mixing engineers put into the recording. I also think that there's a misguided belief that listeners think that because they have an "XBS", "SuperBass" or whatever function on their stereo, that they need to have that stuff on.