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[Jonah A. Kort]

or quiet do you monitor?  I have a 002 and I think if you turned

the knob 2 millimeters (about as soon as the stereo comes into

view), that's how quiet I am.  I don't own a SPL meter yet, no

money(s).  I generally start mixing at 11pm, my parents sleep above

my room.  But I think if someone was talking while I was mixing

that they'd have to stop talking or leave or both or

never show up.

-jonah

[compasspnt]

85 dB gives you the best chance of hitting the mark.

Plus, not destroying your ears.

[j.hall]

i do most of my rhythm section framing at really high levels.  i just need to feel it.  that doesn't take a long time though.

after that, i bounce between 80dB and 100dB.  a lot of times i do my final listen VERY quiet.  if something really pokes it's head out you'll be able to tell at very low levels.

i'll do most of my lead vocal automation at very low levels.

[maarvold]

85 works good and, when you get used to working that way, you barely have to watch your metering.  I also like to check things at around 62 to see what might be popping out.  

[jchristopherhughes]

after many many years of WAY TOO LOUD mixing on ns10s...i.m very quiet these days.

usually when artists are in the room..they keep asking for me to turn up.

i do like it loud when getting the bass drums rockin...but usually its pretty quiet.  seem to have the most luck and least fatigue that way.

i'm on ns10s and proac 100s now.  i also use a little sony ghetto blaster...especially when riding vocals and such.

i do have a nice audiphile type rig with some big dynaudio stage 2's and levinson amps that i can crank for some vibe once a mix is done.

my ears have been thanking me of late.

best,

jchristopherhughes

ps...hi j.

i'm finally finding time to hang out here a bit.  hope things are well in your world.

[grantis]

As time goes on, I'm mixing quieter and quieter, (used to do 100 db) but am now down to between 85-90db most of the time.  I'll also go as low as 70 db when automating.  Monitoring that low is tricky, but I find it useful to see if everything still feels good and ***appropriately*** punchy at low levels.

Low end is a different story, I'll crank her back up to 100 db to hear bottom.  Never really for more than 10-20 min to rough in the bottom, then I'll check on it every now and again.

Here's a little interesting fact....the human ear can withstand 105 db without permanent damage at approximately 30 minutes per day.  I don't remember the figure for 100 db, but I think you'll be fine if you feel the need to monitor that loud for a moderate length of time per day.

[Etch-A-Sketch]

Jonah A. Kort wrote on Sun, 05 October 2008 12:50

or quiet do you monitor?  I have a 002 and I think if you turned the knob 2 millimeters (about as soon as the stereo comes into view), that's how quiet I am.  I don't own a SPL meter yet, no money(s).  I generally start mixing at 11pm, my parents sleep above my room.  But I think if someone was talking while I was mixing that they'd have to stop talking or leave or both or never show up. -jonah

Yup, as everyone has said, 85dB SPL at the listening position is a good reference level... but what is that in reference too?  This is what is important...

When you get the money, go to radio shack and buy an SPL meter for $30 or $40.  Set it to C-weighted (although some people will argue it should be A-weighted, but Dolby and I believe AES/EBU standards say C weighting, try both and see which works better for you) and slow response.  Turn the dial to 80dB.  Play back a pink noise signal (using the signal generator plugin) that is set to -15 inside the plugin window (your 002 is setup from the factory so that -15dB inside the computer is "unity gain", also known as +4dBu, or 1.228Volts, or 0 on an analog VU meter).  Keep the fader for the track set to "0".  

Now start with your monitor volume all the way down... turn it up until you start to see the volume appearing on the SPL meter in your hand.  Stop when you hit 85dB.  With a pen and some masking tape, mark that stop on your 002's monitor volume knob.

One thing to mention, if you are really close to your speakers, you should be using 82dB instead of 85dB.  Dolby recommends any speakers within 13'4" should be calibrated to 82dB... but that's not a rule... try both and see which gives you better results.

When you start tracking or mixing, set the volume knob back to the spot that you marked with the tape/pen.  THEN start setting mic preamp levels or start mixing.  At first, DO NOT turn down the monitor volume, if something feels too loud, turn down it's fader, if something is too quiet, turn up it's fader.  

Once you get a relative balance happening, then you can start dropping the volume to see what it sounds like quieter or turning it up to see what it sounds like louder.

[j.hall]

Etch-A-Sketch wrote on Thu, 30 October 2008 16:41

Stop when you hit 85dB.  With a pen and some masking tape, mark that stop on your 002's monitor volume knob.

that doesn't work.  just because your rig is referenced to -15dbfs doesn't mean that everything you listen to through it is at -15dbfs.

you have to use your meter all the time until you get a good feel for what 85dB sounds like in your room.

[0dbfs]

I haven't checked with my RadShack meter yet but I generally like to keep it quiet to moderately quiet. I find myself turning it down whenever it get's hard to hear the mix-elements and find it much easier to hear with less SPL. I've been meaning to check out the 85 dB SPL to see where I am consistently at naturally.

I'll move the cones much more when tracking gtr's or bass in the CR and periodically during the mix.

As a matter of fact, i've been re-amping in the CR with the monitors cranked a little just to get some bleed of the band into the re-amp'd track... Not sure that it does good or bad but the bleed is pretty much inaudible if the mic is closer to the amp.

Cheers,
j

[rankus]

j.hall wrote on Fri, 31 October 2008 07:42

Etch-A-Sketch wrote on Thu, 30 October 2008 16:41 Stop when you hit 85dB.  With a pen and some masking tape, mark that stop on your 002's monitor volume knob. that doesn't work.  just because your rig is referenced to -15dbfs doesn't mean that everything you listen to through it is at -15dbfs. you have to use your meter all the time until you get a good feel for what 85dB sounds like in your room.

Also mastered material will be a lot louder at 85db than mix material. (RMS vs. Peak)

[tom eaton]

I have a mic clipped to the track light that's above my console.  It feeds a preamp and then goes directly to a Dorrough meter that is right in front of me (sunken into the console surface). I LOVE always having a reference of the actual in room volume.  83 is my zero point.

The amazing thing I've discovered is how loud some people talk, how loud a sneeze is, how loud the sounds that are NOT music related are when there's no playback.  It's fascinating!

tom

[0dbfs]

tom eaton wrote on Fri, 31 October 2008 21:14

I have a mic clipped to the track light that's above my console.  It feeds a preamp and then goes directly to a Dorrough meter that is right in front of me (sunken into the console surface). I LOVE always having a reference of the actual in room volume.  83 is my zero point. The amazing thing I've discovered is how loud some people talk, how loud a sneeze is, how loud the sounds that are NOT music related are when there's no playback.  It's fascinating! tom

I agree and think this is a great idea and I have been meaning to set it up in my studio.

I also intend to add a pair of VU's that follow the source my monitors are currently switched to.

Cheers,
j

[Etch-A-Sketch]

j.hall wrote on Fri, 31 October 2008 07:42

Etch-A-Sketch wrote on Thu, 30 October 2008 16:41 Stop when you hit 85dB.  With a pen and some masking tape, mark that stop on your 002's monitor volume knob. that doesn't work.  just because your rig is referenced to -15dbfs doesn't mean that everything you listen to through it is at -15dbfs.

I was under the impression we were talking about mixing here... not casually listening to CDs.

And for the way the 002 is setup... the output of the Monitor outs are -15dBFS=+4dBu.  As long as each piece of gear is calibrated to +4dBu, it doesn't matter what they are referencing.  If you have a CD player that has a cal of -18dBfs=+4dBu.  When the meter on the CD player says -18dB the meter in protools will say -15dB, but they are the EXACT same level, volume-wise and voltage-wise.

Mastered CDs are different obviously because of the limiting and compression.  But the unit itself is still calibrated to reference +4dBu.  So while the program material is overloading the equipment, the epuipment is calibrated correctly.

The ONLY thing that changes your calibrated SPL is barometric pressure.  As the temperature and seasons change, so does the volume in your room.  My room changes by about 2dB from summer to winter.  But you shouldn't turn up your monitor output to compensate, you should turn up the TRIM on the back of your active speakers or on your speaker power amp.  Turning up the monitor output is essentially shrinking your headroom and making the device operate at a higher average voltage than +4dBu.



I still advice checking your calibration levels every so often.  But you don't have to constantly have an SPL meter going.  You can if you want.  

[j.hall]

calibrating the gain staging of your room is one thing.

saying that all program content played through your cal'd room while leaving your monitor knob in the same exact position to achieve a uniform spl is quite another.

i have yet to mix 100% consistently at the exact same operating level.  my room is cal'd to -15dbfs = 0vu = +4dbu  sometime i push the tracks harder and the mix in general is louder coming out the monitor path.

[Etch-A-Sketch]

j.hall wrote on Thu, 06 November 2008 13:31

calibrating the gain staging of your room is one thing. saying that all program content played through your cal'd room while leaving your monitor knob in the same exact position to achieve a uniform spl is quite another. i have yet to mix 100% consistently at the exact same operating level.  my room is cal'd to -15dbfs = 0vu = +4dbu  sometime i push the tracks harder and the mix in general is louder coming out the monitor path.

So then how do you know something is too loud and you should start pulling faders down vs pulling your monitoring volume down?  How do you know when something is too quiet and you start pulling faders up instead of turning your monitoring volume up?  If you are constantly changing your monitoring level then you have no starting point to judge if something is too loud or too soft relative to everything else.

Don't turn your monitor level down if something is too loud... turn THE SOURCE down.  Send the CD player into two channels on the console and turn it down from the faders if it's too loud.  Once you calibrate your listening volume, you set the bar for what is too loud and too soft.  Changing the monitoring volume based on the program material defeats the purpose and skews your sense of volume.

[John Suitcase]

Jonah A. Kort wrote on Sun, 05 October 2008 12:50

or quiet do you monitor?  I have a 002 and I think if you turned the knob 2 millimeters (about as soon as the stereo comes into view), that's how quiet I am.  I don't own a SPL meter yet, no money(s).  I generally start mixing at 11pm, my parents sleep above my room.  But I think if someone was talking while I was mixing that they'd have to stop talking or leave or both or never show up. -jonah

The theory goes that if you mix too quietly, you'll mix a little heavy in the bass and treble, because our ears (shown by Fletcher and Munson) aren't as sensitive to those frequencies at low volume. Similarly, if you mix too loudly, you may mix bass and treble too lightly. But at around 85db, our ears hear things pretty flat.

There are added considerations, however. When listening quietly, you can hear some details, particularly relative levels, that are harder to hear at louder volumes. Things like reverb can be a touch harder to hear, if the ambient sound in your room is too high (computer sounds, air conditioners, etc.) If you crank the volume up too loud, you can get into some distortion and compression at the speaker itself, which sometimes makes the mix sound better than it is.

Generally, I try to avoid mixing at levels higher than about 85db, until I'm done and just want to see how it feels cranked up.

If it sounds good at low volumes, 99% of the time it'll sound amazing cranked up.

If you don't have a decibel meter, you can sort of judge that level by simply asking yourself if it seems too loud. Maybe I'm crazy, but I can turn a stereo or monitor system up 'til if feels nice, not too loud, not quiet, put up my meter, and be within a db or two of 85db.

Lately, I've been doing a lot of mixing in headphones, then just checking them in the monitors. I find that getting a mix to sound great in phones (at a lowish volume) is difficult, and usually gets me close to a finished sound. Judging bass in the phones is a little tricky, but once you get a handle on what a good mix sounds like, you can mix on almost anything, at any reasonable level, I find.

[RSettee]

I do both, and multiple methods, because every method has it's advantages and flaws. When monitoring lower, I find that certain things are louder or quieter in the mix, and when monitoring louder, certain things take a phantom elevation in the mix. That happens alot on my own mixes.....one friend remarked that he couldn't hear the guitars on a couple of tracks, but his setup is a ridiculously imperfect room, and if the guitars were any louder, they'd start to completely mask all the synths, background vocals, pianos, orchestral parts. I had mixed it so that there was a good blend of audibility at normal listening levels.....but if you put on the headphones and or turn the speakers up loud, the guitars definetely start to bury the vocals and background vocals, and that the sub 150 Hz on the bass drums really, really start to make themselves apparent.

In that sense, if you EQ things in a very specific way to not be overly compressed or limited, you start to almost have a couple different mixes--one when quiet, one when turned up. Especially when you have alot of different things in the mix, like soft melodic parts (organ, synths with the filters rolled off), loud guitars, orchestral stuff. I've noticed that orchestral stuff, if you don't have it as the dominant instrument in the quieter mix, will get fairly obscured by loud fuzz guitars when turned up. But I also tend to have a whole bunch of instruments and instrumentation going on in that not everything can be audible, i'm a big fan of non-essential additional obscured buried sounds that you have to dig for. This might sound funny, but when i'd dub tapes for friends at high speed levels, i'd be hearing instruments and parts that I didn't hear at the normal speed, where they started to take precedence. It's like the psychoacoustical properties of mixes change with environment, dB levels/ loudness, speed, etc.