I keep mixing the darn vocals too LOUD!!

A common problem but easily solved. Vocal balances are best done thorugh a small Auratone type mono speaker down at low volume eg 70 db SPL or less. Then you will really hear how silly your vocal levels are.

Do this and drop them down so they sound balanced against the instruments in this mode and when you go back up to bigger speakers you will be amazed.

Most people do the opposite. But when you mix it down, write the level setting on the vox in a note book or something. Then after listening, if it's too loud... if you had it at -6db.... go ahead and pull the level down to -12 and try again..... adjust up or down as needed... keeping track of the numbers will help you zero in on the right level.

I think a small speaker is great for solving many mix issues not just vocal levels. This is the type of thing I am thinking:

http://www.avantelectroni.../AVANTONE_mixcubes.htm

You can get away with one and if you have a spare poweramp lying around you can get the cheaper passive model for about $240 or so. But the actives solve the amp requirements.
If you use one only you just have to passively sum L and R signals for the mono input signal. I do it from a spare headphone out on my Yamaha digital mixer.

The speaker reveals a lot as far as I am concerned. What I like to call the critical mix. It's good when you have got many things you are trying to balance. It helps you get them all in perspective. Snares and vocals will leap out if they are out of balance. Great for getting bass levels right too, Just enough gain to hear rhe bass line and you arer awa. of course listening on your mains up loud will reveal kick and reverbs and a ferw other things. But it is always nice opnce you get the small speaker sounding good, your mix up loud on your regular speakers will just sound excellent, everything in its place almost.

When I am sitting in front of the small mono speaker I pretend I am standing outside the door of a gig and I am hearing the music from on stage playing etc. or listening to them from down the hall.

Use you main monitors to listen to great commercial mixes and you will get to know how your main speakers sound with a good mix.  And use the small speaker as a second backup ie completely different monitoring mode. Put the two together and you can get mixes that translate very well over heaps of different playback systems.

I am mixing a very acoustic thing right now with two acoustic guitars, voice, very simple acoustic bass and a string quartet. The small speaker gets the guitars and bass sitting nicely and gets the vocals nicely eased into that. Then the rest is easy with the strings. The small speaker keeps the lead violins down to where they should be etc.. same as the vocals etc.. I even walk around the room and go outside and linger around listening to the small speaker from afar. It shows up a few things too.  But it's also great to sit 6 inches from it at low volume and hear all the detail in there.

I have done this before, though I don't ' think I did it last prior to mixdown & may have changed the levels since my last mono check (not as in the disease... as in not stereo) lol.   I will make a conscious effort to do so.

Listening to music on a small speaker like the Avantones and at low volume is like forcing your music through a narrow bottleneck and making sure you can still hear everything OK.

One good point that feedback50 has brought up is that if for any reason a track eg vocal or lead instrument is wandering a little level wise, you wont hear that too much up loud because even when the signal drops a bit you can still hear it OK. But on a small speaker down at low volume any slight variation in level eg 2 or 3 db down will make it disappear so the level variation problem stands out more so.

Another good trick is to have some sort of soft fan or aircon noise sound going on in the background all the time while you mix either on large or small speakers. That stops you from letting things drop down too low. You can feed pink noise into your mix buss at low level while you mix too. This has been done as well. Take it out before you print obviously! I like the fan approach. By just adding a little external noise it means you don't allow things to drop below a certain threshold.

This ay sound like be a dumb question....  but if I were to run my master bus in mono, & turn off one of my current monitors  so I a listening to a mono mix on one 5 inch speaker (& the tweater) would thi accomplish similar results?   Just a thought..  I'd like a 2nd set of drastically different monitors that color the sound differently, maybe the yamaha HS series (I remember the 80's sounded nice & full, but the 50's sounded harsh in the highs & upper mids) to cross refference my mixes.  When I have the money I'd rather buy another set, rather than a single speaker.

Jeff Evans


I think you should leave your main mix in stereo and listen to it that way and sum to mono for the purposes of driving a single small speaker. Switching to mono and only listening on one speaker is not the same thing.

This is only my opinion of course but I believe a single mono speaker such as the Avantone will offer much more than a second pair of monitors. It takes you to whole different place monitoring wise and really shows up things no normal monitors can do. I used to have Yamaha NS10's here as well as my main Mackie HR824's and yes they were handy but nothing like switching to the small speaker though.

You could have three or four sets of main near fields and they will all tell you much the same thing but none of them is the same as listening through the mono small speaker. I honestly could not mix without it. I spend hours on it and only listen up on the main speakers here and there for some bass and reverb reality checks.

If you want to improve your mixes especially setting lead and vocal sounds the little speaker is the way to go.

But the next best thing is simply turn your main speakers down quite low (70 db SPL and under eg 65 db SPL) and listen to your mixes that way. That is also very revealing. Also stand away from your monitors while you are doing this too. eg across the room. You will hear all sorts of imbalances. This won't cost you anything!

 
Hi Jeff, it may seem like a daft question but exactly how do you sum to mono, is it simply connecting both stereo outs to one speaker?
 
Cheers
Steve.

Hi Jeff..

I can easily route spare outputs from Sonar into my analog desk.

Would it suffice to pan both of these centrally to generate a mono signal?

One can of course simply do this:

Set your master bus in Sonar to Mono, and then Pan the master bus to either left or right. You'll get the entire mix coming out of one monitor.

I did the same last night & it did help me lock down the levels much better.   Sounded nicer & much more balanced wen I brought the other monitor back in & went back to stereo.   Maybe someday I will get the avantones, but I think this is a good enough work around for now.
THANKS JEFF!!

Got it!   Yeah was listening in mono at as low a volume as I could....  ya know like so many life long musicians, I am goin' friggen deaf!   Damn snare drums are brutal on the ears!